Game Engine Events

Introductions

Introduce yourselves!

Icebreaker: What’s your favorite Mobile game?

Groupwork

Games are inherently event-driven.

An event is anything that happens that a game object may need to take note of.

1. What are some examples of game engine events?

2. Generally, a game engine must: A) Notify interested game objects, and B) Arrange for those game objects to respond. This is called event handling.

• Consider handling “explosion” events in the below code.

    void Explosion::Update()
     ...
      if (explosion_went_off) then

        // Get list of all Objects in range.
        ObjectList list = WM.getObjectsInRange(radius)

        // Have each object react to explosion.
        for (int i = 0; i < list.getCount(); i++)
          
          list[i] -> onExplosion()

        end for
        ...

      end if

• For an explosion event, when does the binding to the onExplosion() method happen (i.e., during static compilation, during linking, or during runtime)? Does this use static typing or dynamic typing?

3. What’s the problem with using the binding in #2 for a general purpose game engine?

Hand-in

Each person in a group should submit their answers:

https://wpi.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8wPP93kWb5pt1Ea

Make sure to include the names of all group members.

Happy event-ing!

– Mark