Improved Iterative Software Development Method for Game Design

Abstract

This paper describes a game making and editing tool which simplifies the process of game making by removing the need to recompile the code. For this reason a simple side scrolling game engine was developed which also supports an inbuilt editor. With the help of this editor all the objects present in the game engine can be changed to look the way a user wants them to. This reduces the communication gap that is normally found in between the coding and art development team for a game. The artists are now given the liberty to draw the objects by themselves and that is automatically integrated into the game. In order to save all the changes done to the objects, XML files are used, which store all the information necessary for drawing an object and its constituent sub-objects. These XML files can be worked on separately by the users and then later exchanged which speeds up the whole development process and also provides the functionality to share each other’s work. Thus, the game engine remains the same, but the same engine can be used to create two totally different games that look totally different from each other.

Key words and terms: Game, editor, object, recompile.Game, editor, object, recompile