Design patterns

A design pattern is a reusable solution to a coding problem. In fact, most games (including this one) will use multiple design patterns. The key point about design patterns is this: they are already proven to provide a good solution to a common problem. We are not going to invent any design patterns – we are just going to use some that already exist to solve the problem of our ever-expanding code.

Many design patterns are quite complicated and require further study beyond the level of this book if you want to even begin learning them. What follows is a simplification of a few key game development-related patterns that will help fulfill the second objective of this book. You're urged to continue your study to implement them more comprehensively and alongside even more patterns than will be discussed here.

Let's look at the design patterns that are used in the Space Invaders ++ project.

Screen, InputHandler, UIPanel, and Button

This project...