GS for Game Development
Why This Domain Is Different
Games have hard frame budget constraints and emergent behavior from physics and AI systems. A game that runs at 30fps in development may drop to 12fps with more entities on screen. Save/load corruption is a catastrophic failure mode with no equivalent in web services. Player-facing behavior must be deterministic enough to reproduce bugs.
Relevant Tag
GAME — activates game-specific gates and verification strategies.
Active Quality Gates
| Gate | Why it matters here |
|---|---|
| no-circular-dependencies | Circular deps in game systems cause initialization-order crashes |
| no-hardcoded-secrets | API keys for analytics, leaderboards, cloud saves |
| environment-variables-config | Frame budget thresholds, physics substep counts, draw call limits |
Domain-Specific Gates Needed (Contribution Targets)
| Gate ID (proposed) | GS Property | Description |
|---|---|---|
frame-budget-profiling | Verifiable | P95 frame time under benchmark scene must be below spec budget |
save-load-roundtrip | Verifiable | save(state) then load() must produce a state equal to original |
no-physics-in-render-loop | Bounded | Physics updates must not be called from the render/draw path |
audio-budget | Verifiable | Simultaneous audio source count must not exceed hardware limit |
deterministic-replay | Verifiable | Given the same input sequence and seed, the simulation produces identical output |
Verification Strategy
| What to verify | How |
|---|---|
| Frame performance | Automated benchmark scene: record P50/P95/P99 frame time |
| Save/load integrity | Property test: save any valid game state, reload, assert equality |
| Memory | Peak memory profiling under maximum-entity load scenario |
| Physics correctness | Property tests on pure physics functions (collision detection, resolution) |
| AI behavior | Determinism test: replay recorded input, assert same entity positions |
Spec Patterns
A GS PRD for a game must include:
- Performance budget — target platform, frame budget in ms, memory ceiling
- Entity capacity — maximum concurrent entities the simulation must support
- Save format contract — schema version, migration policy for format changes
- Physics parameters — substep count, gravity constant, collision layers
- Determinism requirements — which systems must be seeded and reproducible
Contribute a Gate
Most underrepresented GS properties for GAME: Verifiable (performance) and Executable (automated playback).
See CONTRIBUTING.md.