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Data-oriented Design (DOD) has become standard practice for AAA games and indie devs who need to squeeze every drop of performance out of hardware and deliver games on a rapid schedule. DOD is a programming practice that streamlines the way your code accesses, stores, and uses data, taking advantage of modern CPU architecture and accelerating the dev process. This book is a unique and comprehensive guide to architecting and coding games using DOD principles.

Modern games need to be smooth, high-framerate experiences with deep gameplay that keeps users hooked for years. Data-oriented design takes advantage of modern CPUs to upgrade game performance, easily outpacing traditional object-oriented programming. DOD uses arrays instead of objects, avoids design patterns and subroutines, and utilizes pure atomic functions as much as possible. Plus, because you’re only thinking about data and logic, DOD-games take less manpower and time than building with OOP. This book reveals how you can bring this powerful programming approach to your own projects. You’ll discover both the essential theory behind DOD, and put it into practice to develop a complete game project.

In High Performance Unity Game Development you'll learn:

• Data-oriented Design and its application to game development
• Optimize performance on modern CPU architecture
• Reduce complexity by separating data from logic
• Improve code extensibility through data-first problem solving
• The Entity Component System (ECS) and its relationship to DOD
• Implement DOD in Unity and other object-oriented engines

About the book

High Performance Unity Game Development teaches you to deliver high-performance games, with code that’s simpler to extend and maintain. You’ll learn to design games from scratch using DOD and also how to apply DOD to existing object-oriented codebases. Through a simulated development process—complete with Jira tickets—you’ll construct a complete “survivor” style game that runs at a high framerate on limited hardware while being easy to expand. The book is fully illustrated with Unity architectural examples, diagrams, and engaging war stories from author Nitzan Wilnai’s 20+ year career, punctuated by helpful sidebars that dispel DOD myths.

About the reader

For game developers, team leads, and software directors. Examples in Unity.

About the author

Nitzan Wilnai is an experienced game developer and engineering leader. He has worked in the game industry for the past 24 years, doing everything from making web games at Yahoo! to AAA titles at Electronic Arts to mobile games that topped the App Store charts.