Golang

From Object-Oriented to Data-Oriented Traditional object-oriented programming (OOP) encourages you to model game entities as objects with inheritance hierarchies. While intuitive, this approach leads to poor cache locality, rigid hierarchies, and performance bottlenecks. Data-oriented design, particularly the Entity Component System (ECS) pattern, flips this on its head. With Go 1.18+ generics, we can now build type-safe ECS architectures that deliver both performance and flexibility. Let me show you how. The OOP Problem Here’s the typical OOP approach to game entities: ...

Go Concurrency Patterns Series: ← Select Statement | Series Overview | Fan-Out/Fan-In → What is the Pipeline Pattern? The Pipeline pattern is a powerful way to structure concurrent data processing by breaking work into stages connected by channels. Each stage runs in its own goroutine, receives data from an input channel, processes it, and sends results to an output channel. This creates a chain of processing stages that can run concurrently, dramatically improving throughput. ...

Go Concurrency Patterns Series: ← Channel Fundamentals | Series Overview | Pipeline Pattern → What is the Select Statement? The select statement is Go’s powerful tool for handling multiple channel operations simultaneously. It’s like a switch statement, but for channels - it allows a goroutine to wait on multiple communication operations and proceed with whichever one becomes ready first. Think of select as a traffic controller at an intersection, managing multiple lanes of traffic (channels) and allowing the first available lane to proceed. This enables non-blocking communication, timeouts, and elegant multiplexing patterns that are essential for robust concurrent programs. ...

Go Concurrency Patterns Series: ← Goroutine Basics | Series Overview | Select Statement → What are Channels? Channels are Go’s primary mechanism for communication between goroutines. They embody Go’s concurrency philosophy: “Don’t communicate by sharing memory; share memory by communicating.” Think of channels as typed pipes that allow goroutines to safely pass data back and forth. Channels provide both communication and synchronization, making them incredibly powerful for building concurrent applications. They’re type-safe, can be buffered or unbuffered, and support directional constraints for better API design. ...

Beyond Rigid If-Else Logic Traditional approaches to varying behavior use conditional statements scattered throughout code. Need different sorting algorithms? Different pricing strategies? Different attack behaviors in a game? You end up with messy switch statements and tightly coupled code. The Strategy pattern lets you encapsulate algorithms and swap them at runtime. In Go, first-class functions make this pattern beautifully simple-no heavyweight class hierarchies required. The Traditional Approach: Conditionals Everywhere Here’s what happens without the Strategy pattern: ...

What is Command Pattern? The Command pattern is a behavioral design pattern that turns a request into a stand-alone object containing all information about the request. This transformation allows you to parameterize methods with different requests, delay or queue a request’s execution, and support undoable operations. Think of it like a remote control - each button is a command that encapsulates the action to be performed on a device. I’ll demonstrate how this pattern can help you build flexible, undoable, and queueable operations in Go applications. ...

Go Concurrency Patterns Series: Series Overview | Channel Fundamentals → What are Goroutines? Goroutines are lightweight threads managed by the Go runtime. They’re one of Go’s most powerful features, allowing you to write concurrent programs that can handle thousands of simultaneous operations with minimal overhead. Think of goroutines as extremely efficient workers that can run independently while sharing the same memory space. Unlike traditional threads that typically consume 1-2MB of memory each, goroutines start with just 2KB of stack space and grow as needed. This efficiency allows Go programs to spawn millions of goroutines without overwhelming system resources. ...

Why Behavior Trees for Game AI? If you’ve ever built game AI using finite state machines, you’ve likely hit their limitations: rigid transitions, difficulty composing behaviors, and maintenance nightmares. Behavior trees offer a more flexible, modular approach that’s become the industry standard for game AI. In this post, I’ll show you how to implement behavior trees in Go using interfaces, creating reusable AI components that can power everything from enemy NPCs to complex AI companions. ...

What is Proxy Pattern? The Proxy pattern is a structural design pattern that provides a placeholder or surrogate for another object to control access to it. Think of it like a security guard at a building entrance - they control who can enter, when they can enter, and might even log who visited. The proxy acts as an intermediary that can add functionality like caching, logging, access control, or lazy loading without changing the original object. ...

What is Facade Pattern? The Facade pattern is a structural design pattern that provides a simplified interface to a complex subsystem. It acts like a friendly receptionist at a large corporation - instead of navigating through multiple departments and complex procedures, you just tell the receptionist what you need, and they handle all the complexity behind the scenes. I’ll demonstrate how this pattern can dramatically simplify client code and hide the complexity of intricate systems in Go applications. ...