In the first post of this series, we discussed why object-oriented programming (OOP) was helpful for game development, and learned how to identify objects, their states, and their behaviors. In this article, we’ll look at the specific OOP principle of cohesion and how it applies to games.
Note: Although this tutorial is written using Java, you should be able to use the same techniques and concepts in almost any game development environment.
What Is Cohesion?
Cohesion is the principle of being or doing one thing well. In other words, cohesion means grouping together code that contributes to a single task.A great non-programming example of this principle was covered in one of the first Gamedevtuts+ articles which talked about the Covert Action Rule:
Don’t try to do too many games in one package … Individually, those each could have been good games. Together, they fought with each other.The same rule applies to object-oriented programming. Each object should only have one responsibility. Every behavior of that object should only do one task. Any more than that and you’ll have a much harder time making changes to the code.
Why Is It Helpful?
Code that is organized by functionality and does only one task is said to have high cohesion. Highly cohesive code is reusable, simple, and easy to understand. It also creates objects that are small and focused [...]Read more: Quick Tip: The OOP Principle of Cohesion
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