Design Patterns and Games
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Overview
To make a more interesting analogy for design patterns, in the same vein as my essay about Doom’s creation, I want to connect our design patterns we learned to the popular game Minecraft.
Model View Controller Pattern
Consider the MVC pattern as the underlying structure of your Minecraft experience. The Model is the game’s data layer—the blocks, items, and entities that constitute the world. It’s the hidden data that governs how elements interact, much like the crafting recipes and physics of the game. The View is everything you see on your screen: the biomes, the structures you build, the user interface. It’s the visual representation of the game’s state. The Controller is your role as the player—every movement, block placement, or interaction you initiate. When you decide to punch down a tree or build a house, your actions (Controller) update the world’s data (Model), which in turn changes what you see (View). This separation ensures that each component handles its specific responsibility, making the game run smoothly.
In my recent web application project, I employed the MVC pattern to create a clean separation between data management, user interface, and user input handling. The Model managed the data and business logic, the View presented the data to the user, and the Controller handled user interactions, updating the Model accordingly. This approach made the application more maintainable and scalable, much like how Minecraft’s structure allows for endless expansion without becoming unwieldy.
Factory Pattern
Now, think about crafting multiple items without manually assembling each one every time. In Minecraft, you might use command blocks or mods to automate repetitive tasks. This parallels the Factory Pattern in software design, which creates objects without exposing the creation logic to the client.
Observer Pattern
In Minecraft there is a block explicitly called an observer, that does just as the design pattern does, it observes for a change in state of an object. These blocks detect changes in the environment—like a block being placed or removed—and trigger actions in response, such as opening a door or activating a piston.
Conclusion
I believe games can be an easy way to observe certain design patterns being implemented through code in a fun way and with this connection to Minecraft, or really other games, it’s easier to not only remember how these patterns work, but what goal they try to accomplish with each pattern.