Engines, graphics, and gameplay code.
2 topics
Unity is the most popular engine for indie and mobile games. GameObjects + Components architecture, MonoBehaviour lifecycle, scenes, prefabs, physics (Rigidbody, Colliders), UI (Canvas, TextMeshPro), animation (Animator, Mecanim), and scripting in C#. Asset Store for ready-made assets. Supports 2D and 3D.
2 resources
Unreal excels at AAA-quality 3D games. Actor/Component model, Blueprints (visual scripting), C++ gameplay framework, Nanite (virtualized geometry), Lumen (global illumination), Niagara (particle systems), and Sequencer (cinematics). Blueprint for prototyping, C++ for performance-critical code.
Rendering pipeline: vertices → vertex shader → rasterization → fragment shader → framebuffer. Concepts: meshes, textures, materials, shaders (HLSL/GLSL), lighting models (Phong, PBR), shadows, post-processing effects, LOD (Level of Detail), and occlusion culling. Shader programming for custom visual effects.
Physics engines simulate rigid body dynamics, collisions, raycasting, and joints. Gameplay systems: input handling, camera controllers, AI (state machines, behavior trees, pathfinding with A*), inventory systems, save/load, and dialogue systems. Game design patterns: component, observer, state, command.
1 topic
Optimization: profiling (CPU/GPU bottlenecks), draw call batching, texture atlases, object pooling, LOD, async loading. Audio: spatial audio, music systems, sound effects. Publishing: platform requirements (Steam, consoles, mobile stores), build pipelines, playtesting, and certification processes.