Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming: Defining Good Middleware

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Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Defining Good Middleware

Yesterday, Kyle Wilson (Day 1 Studios) posted a "Defining Good Middleware” opinion piece on Gamasutra.com.

It is a good, direct, cogent little piece of writing better and more succinct than most of the "buy versus build" seminars I've endured over the past decade.

Wilson discusses several attributes of "Good Middleware", including:

Provides you with more code than you could write yourself for a fraction of what it would cost you to try
Offers structure ("Middleware draws a line between the things that you have to worry about and the things you don’t")
Lets you hook your own memory allocator
Lets you hook your own I/O functions
Has extensible functionality
Avoids symbol conflicts
Is explicit about its thread safety
Fits into your data pipeline
Is stable
Gives you source code

Using Wilson's article as a starting point, Gamebryo architect Vincent Scheib posits, "Is Gamebryo Good Middleware?"

Fortunately, the answer is Gamebryo is good middleware. Very good middleware.

Give it a read, and let me know what you think.

Labels: Emergent Game Technologies, Gamebryo