Question

What are some of the more common design patterns used when developing 3D games? Are there any high-level architectural design patterns that are commonly used? What about general software patterns within the architecture?

Answer 1

• Composite for doing everything per update step (eg. rendering) (And indeed common amongst all UI libraries).
• Flyweight for drawing many of the same item type on the screen (trees/bushes/bullets)
• Observer for a lot of UI libraries (again, not game specific)
• State for transitioning between game/menu/console/pause/etc. states
• Abstract factory in some beat-em-up type of games for creating mobs/NPCs (the games with ridiculous amounts of AI characters at a time – ie. Left 4 Dead).
• Strategy for the swapping heuristics in path finding algorithms like A*
• edit> Command for games like MMO’s that have an actionbar with interchangeable buttons that you can click to cast spells and whatnot.

That’s all that I can think of seeing right now.