Design Patterns and Code Maintainability in Games: A Case Study

• Vitor Braga Estevam UFC
• Alysson Diniz dos Santos UFC
• Matheus Paixao UECE

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbgames_estendido.2023.234103

Resumo

Design patterns are a common strategy employed in software development to promote several aspects of software quality, including code maintainability. Game development is a multidisciplinary field that includes not only software development but also animations, interactivity, sound design and others. Given the short deadlines in which game developers commonly operate, on top of the intrinsic complexity of the field itself, code maintainability is often overlooked by game developers. Hence, this work investigates how design patterns can impact the code maintainability of games. First, we performed a review to understand how (and which) design patterns can be applied to different game mechanics. Next, we selected two small games and refactored the code by applying design patterns to some of the games’ mechanics. By leveraging static analysis to assess the games’ code maintainability before and after the application of the design patterns, we observed an overall code maintainability improvement of 5.5%. The preliminary results indicate the potential to use design patterns as a strategy to improve code maintainability in the context of game development.

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