10/26/06
This reading was rather dry. Although the overall structure of games that the chapter described was new to me, the material was so dry and "theoretical" that not much has sunk in. "Theoretical" meaning I don't have a handle on how it functions in the real world as opposed to this wonderful diagram on paper, and then how the build starts and grows with this structural definition in mind. I imagine its like coral, where there's some basic formation underneath, and the programers grow all of the little organisms of code on top of it to create the final reef, which is a thousand times more interesting (both the process and the end result) than just the dry, stagnant idea of the structure. After understanding this process, I would be much more interested in seeing how the underlying structure is defined and how it shapes the final result. Understanding the process and relationships: way more interesting. Dry description of structure theory: not interesting.
One thing did jump off of the page for me here was the explanation of a decoupled game loop and multithreaded programming. I've heard the word "hyperthreading" all over the place with the new consoles and the super tech advancements and up to this point, it meant something along the lines of "a way faster processing thingy." But, from this reading, it suddenly made sense where the simulation can be run independent of the frame update. Which seems oh-so-effecient, where the frame can then vary with the hardware that the game is running on and yet still have a reasonable response time.