Rapid Prototyping Rule #3

by George on Sep.25, 2009, under Coding

Keep a handy-dandy starting template.

When you’re starting a prototype, you shouldn’t be messing around with setting up OpenGL, or render loops or anything extraneous. You should be writing ‘game’ code in the first five minutes.

Most IDEs support user defined project templates, and this is an option. However, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be constantly tinkering and adding to a template, trying to maintain the ‘perfect’ template which ends up being more of a chore than anything.

A simpler option that’s just as effective is to copy an existing project, and rip the ‘specifics’ out of it, leaving just general purpose stuff behind. When needed, grab code from other projects and drop it in. Give it a data/resources directory with a sample sound file and image file in it. It is worth ensuring that this project will compile and run (seriously!), and it can also be handy to leave in useful snippets of sample code – getting UI events, loading images, setting up cameras etc.

Then all you need to do is copy the project, open it in your IDE and start prototyping…

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