There have been some posts recently to GD-Algorithms concerning resource management. This happens to be an area I’ve investigated recently as part of my Sandbox project (which, btw, is becoming more of an excuse to experiment with different design patterns than actually doing game-code at the moment).

I’m going to define a resource manager as needing to have the following qualities:

• Provide universal access to all modules needing to retrieve externally persisted data (resources).
• Ensure that resources exists as a single, shared instance in memory.
• Ensure that resources are properly garbage-collected as necessary.
• Allow resources to be retrieved/referenced by unique key.

These requirements immediately evoke several classic design patterns that we should be leveraging. First, the universal access requirement means that the resource manager should be a singleton. Second, the two requirements of shared instance and garbage-collected means smart pointers. Finally, retrieving by unique key smells of some variation on the factory method.

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Okay, so first the bad news… the Single-Player Project has been postponed indefinitely. Work and everything else just soaked up too much of my time over the last few months and I was simply unable to get the game to the point that was satisfactory. To show that I haven’t been a lazy bum since then, check out the 35MPH blog to see what I have been working on.

Now, the good news… I will still be doing the presentation at XGDX, and the focus will still be on how a single individual can make a project. But, instead of looking at it from the successes of the project I will be looking at it from the failures. In other words, what not to do!

Also, instead of entering the IGF this year (as planned) I will instead be judging again. To be honest, that’s pretty cool because I really enjoyed the judging last year.

Finally, I plan to kick off a new project over the next few months, likely in cooperation with some fellow developers, for an IGF entry for next year.

Of course, I don’t think anyone actually ever sees this blog, so I may just be talking to myself.