layout	pattern
title	Bytecode
folder	bytecode
permalink	/patterns/bytecode/
categories	Behavioral
tags	Game programming

Intent

Allows to encode behaviour as instructions for virtual machine.

Class diagram

Applicability

Use the Bytecode pattern when you have a lot of behavior you need to define and your game’s implementation language isn’t a good fit because:

• it’s too low-level, making it tedious or error-prone to program in.
• iterating on it takes too long due to slow compile times or other tooling issues.
• it has too much trust. If you want to ensure the behavior being defined can’t break the game, you need to sandbox it from the rest of the codebase.

Credits

• Game programming patterns