Games Programmer, Anime fan, General nerd.
Super awkward but trying to improve~ n_n
(Have been advised to add: All views my own)
instead of writing things like this
if event == E_LEFT {
player.x += 10
} else if event == E_RIGHT {
player.x -= 10
} else if .... {
...
}
split it up into "decide what to do" and "do the thing", and don't overwrite the current state until you're done, either:
if event == E_LEFT {
action = ACTION_MOVE_LEFT
} else if ... {
....
}
var player_next = player
if action == ACTION_MOVE_LEFT {
player_next.x += 10
} else if .... {
...
}
player = player_next
why?
I once tried to write a game using fully immutable state which naturally leads you to writing in this pattern but I gave it up when I decided it wasn't feasible for what I was trying to write.
as you can see, i'm not entirely calling for fully immutable state, just updating the state in one place, well after any code can read it, but yeah you will trip down similar patterns in a fp style
I love this subtle attempt to get programmers to internalize how DFAs work. Bravo. Next hot tip for game devs: make your next_action and next_state functions const (or whatever keyword your language uses to express 'pure', as in having no side-effects on global state).
it's not so much how dfas work, and yeah, it's more about expressing things in an immutable, pure style
but it is also about expressing changes as atomic like updates, in that the handlers do not see partial new state as the event loop runs
