Guff: A Game Development Tool

Due to the real time nature of computer games, the main concerns of game developers have been related to efficiency of algorithm execution and visual presentation, instead of code reusability and maintenance. In order to support these concerns, game developers usually have been implementing all the required functionality to build a game, from scratch, in new projects. However, the complexity in game projects has been increasing over time, rendering such practices infeasible. Then, it is necessary to seek new approaches for game development. This work describes a game development tool (developed for a Master's Thesis), which applies an approach that can address this issue: a framework. The Guff framework is an easy to use tool that features automatic resource management on behalf of the developer, a state machine approach to specify and manage game levels, and extensive employment of free and open source libraries to avoid implementing already available functionalities.