Over the last 10 chapters, we have dived deeply into some of the most popular design patterns. The goal of each chapter was to understand and solve some common problems that everyone encounters when creating games. Along the way, we have created component-based game objects with flexible State-based, decision-making capabilities. We have created core engines such as the StageManager and ObjectManager using the Singleton pattern, so that communication between game objects, components, and engines is incredibly simple. We also looked at Object Pools and the Flyweight pattern, which allow our game to use memory more efficiently.

In this chapter, we will focus on graphics. However, we will not be focusing on how to implement a graphics engine. That would require more than a single chapter. Instead we will focus on concepts that need to be understood, regardless of which graphics Application Programming Interface (API) you use.

Graphics is a large part of any game engine and is very likely the performance bottleneck of the game. However, whether we are using DirectX, OpenGL, or some other graphics API, we must understand what is happening behind the scenes. We shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that just because we didn't write the graphics API, there are no design decisions to be made.