Gear2D: an extensible component-based game engine

Abstract

Game engines boost software reuse during development activities by centralizing commonly used domain abstractions within a set of coherent application programming interfaces. Most current game engines focus on class hierarchies, which is the intuitive way to model entity taxonomies but may lead to naming conflicts and code duplication. Component based engines, conversely, minimize this problem by exposing features through components instead. However, due to strong coupling that can still be introduced when using direct access to provide component communication, dynamic entity adaptability may be hindered. Gear2D is a game engine that uses a different approach, providing dynamic entity adaptability through decoupled components. This design results in greater flexibility for creating games, a characteristic discussed through a superficial comparison with a well known game engine and through the development of two nontrivial components: an AI pathfinder and a Lua proxy.