The entity system architecture and its application in an undergraduate game development studio

Abstract

This paper reports on the software architecture, methodology, and student learning experience from the development of Morgan's Raid, an educational game designed to teach fourth-graders about Indiana's Civil War history. The game was designed and developed during the 2010-2011 academic year and involved a multidisciplinary undergraduate team. The team used industrial best-practices of game development, including continuous integration, distributed version control, test-driven development, and Scrum. This methodology was supported by an entity system architecture, a software architectural design pattern that addresses many shortcomings of inheritance-based game engine architectures. Detailed definitions of the entity system architecture and methodology are presented along with the experience report. This combination of methodology and architecture directly contributed to the success of the project, both software development exercise and learning experience.