I came across Robert Nystrom’s Game Programming Patterns site a little while back; a link to it has been sitting in my Instapaper queue for a while now, accompanied by a note that says I should write something about it. The site is the online counterpart to a book that Nystrom, a lead engineer at EA Tiburon, is in the process of writing. The book itself sounds like it will shape up to be a modern, game-oriented version of the classic Gang of Four patterns book, and while the website is still relatively sparsely populated, the content that is available makes for good reading.

Two of the current articles are worth calling out specifically: the component pattern is something that has become increasingly trendy in game development recently, but most available material on the subject covers one particularly approach or another, which tends lead people to wonder which way is “best.” Nystrom tries to point out that there are many approaches, each with advantages and disadvantages, and that there is no “best.”

The other article I enjoyed reading was the one on the singleton pattern. This was really the make-or-break piece for me: I’ve found that a developer’s thoughts on (and arguments for) the pros and cons of the singleton can reveal a lot about how they approach software design and development, and in this regard Nystrom did not disappoint. Like me, he is ultimately not in favor of the pattern, but he presents a very balanced view of the issue.