Towards a Video Game Description Language

… Computing-ICEC 2006, 2006

Abstract. In this paper we describe a language-driven approach to the development of videogames. In our approach the development process starts with the design of a suitable domain-specific language for building games, along with an abstract syntax for the ...

Proceedings of ICAART, 2009

The Game Description Language (GDL) has been developed for the purpose of formalizing game rules. It serves as the input language for general game players, which are systems that learn to play previously unknown games without human intervention. In this paper, we show that GDL can be readily used as a specification language for a large class of multiagent environments. The resulting specifications are declarative, compact, and easy to understand and maintain. At the same time they can be fully automatically understood and used by autonomous agents who intend to participate in these environments. Our main result is a formal characterization of the class of multiagent environments that can be described in GDL.

2020

While current General Game Playing (GGP) systems facilitate useful research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for game-playing, they are often somewhat specialised and computationally inefficient. In this paper, we describe the "ludemic" general game system Ludii, which has the potential to provide an efficient tool for AI researchers as well as game designers, historians, educators and practitioners in related fields. Ludii defines games as structures of ludemes -- high-level, easily understandable game concepts -- which allows for concise and human-understandable game descriptions. We formally describe Ludii and outline its main benefits: generality, extensibility, understandability and efficiency. Experimentally, Ludii outperforms one of the most efficient Game Description Language (GDL) reasoners, based on a propositional network, in all games available in the Tiltyard GGP repository. Moreover, Ludii is also competitive in terms of performance with the more recently prop...

Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGCHI symposium on Engineering interactive computing systems - EICS '12, 2012

In this paper we present the specification and preliminary assessment of Casanova, a newly designed computer language which integrates knowledge about many areas of game development with the aim of simplifying the process of engineering a game. Casanova is designed as a fully-fledged language, as an extension language to F#, but also as a pervasive design pattern for game development.

We present a simple extension of the Game Description Language GDL that makes it possible to describe a large variety of games involving a real-time factor. Apart from the formal syntax and semantics of our extension (acronymed rtGDL), we provide also a series of illustrative examples. In addition , we show that by combining rtGDL with the GDL-II extension one may obtain a simple and elegant universal game description language that enables the formalization of the rules of arbitrary n-player games allowing randomness, imperfect information and time-dependent events.

Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology

Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM) has shown its effectiveness of improving software productivity in many software domains [1], where Domain Specific Language (DSL) plays a key role. Also in the domain of video games, researchers have proposed various DSLs for developing different aspects of several game genres. This paper presents a DSL named RAIL for generating Non-Playable Character (NPC) behaviors in Action/Adventure Games. Our DSL borrows concepts from State Machines and adds some features to better suit the target domain. Further, we have implemented a tool-chain for RAIL using the Eclipse language workbench, and the tool-chain has been integrated with the level editor of the Torque2D game engine. To evaluate the DSL, we developed a prototype game and collected data regarding the development time and code lines. The results showed that RAIL significantly improves the productivity of developing NPC behaviors in the target game with a reasonable associated cost. In addition, the integration of the RAIL and the Torque 2D tool-chains provides a smooth development workflow.

2005

In this paper we describe a language-driven approach to the development of videogames. In our approach the development process starts with the design of a suitable domain-specific language for building games, along with an abstract syntax for the language and its operational semantics. Next an engine supporting the language is built. Finally games are built using the customized language and they are executed using the engine. This approach is exemplified with the <e-Game> project, which delivers the design of a language and the construction of an engine for the documental development of graphical adventure videogames with educational purposes.

International Journal of Computer Games Technology, 2009

There is an attention shift within the gaming industry toward more natural (long-term) behavior of nonplaying characters (NPCs). Multiagent system research offers a promising technology to implement cognitive intelligent NPCs. However, the technologies used in game engines and multiagent platforms are not readily compatible due to some inherent differences of concerns. Where game engines focus on real-time aspects and thus propagate efficiency and central control, multiagent platforms assume autonomy of the agents. Increased autonomy and intelligence may offer benefits for a more compelling gameplay and may even be necessary for serious games. However, it raises problems when current game design techniques are used to incorporate state-of-the-art multiagent system technology. In this paper, we will focus on three specific problem areas that arise from this difference of view: synchronization, information representation, and communication. We argue that the current attempts for integration still fall short on some of these aspects. We show that to fully integrate intelligent agents in games, one should not only use a technical solution, but also a design methodology that is amenable to agents. The game design should be adjusted to incorporate the possibilities of agents early on in the process.

2009

Recent work has shown that we can dramatically improve the performance of computer games and simulations through declarative processing: Character AI can be written in an imperative scripting language which is then compiled to relational algebra and executed by a special games engine with features similar to a main memory database system. In this paper we lay out a challenging research agenda built on these ideas. We discuss several research ideas for novel language features to support atomic actions and reactive programming. We also explore challenges for main memory query processing in games and simulations including adaptive query plan selection, support for multi-core and parallel architectures, debugging simulation scripts, and extensions for multi-player games and virtual worlds. We believe that these research challenges will result in a dramatic change in the design of game engines over the next decade.

2005

"The advent of programmable shaders for real-time graphical applications in recent years has shown that with relatively little effort, great advances in the graphical quality of computer games can be achieved. The introduction of higher level programming languages for the creation of these shaders (see [Fernando and Kilgard 2003]) has demonstrated that even better graphical quality for games is attainable. It is our belief that to achieve further improvements in the quality of computer games, a similar approach will have to be taken for the creation of the artificially intelligent characters that populate the virtual worlds found in modern computer games. We therefore propose a universally applicable extension programming language (AvDL) for the definition of artificial behaviour for creatures and characters in computer games and possibly in computer animation. The syntax of our language is based on that of the C++ programming language as described by [Stroustrup 1997] and provides for the definition of deterministic, as well as goal directed behaviour for artificial entities. This will make it possible to use our language for different purposes (the definition of NPCs – Non Player Characters – in games of different genres) and with a wide range of programs. References Fernando, R. And Kilgard, M.J. (2003). The Cg Tutorial. Addison-Wesley Stroustrup, B. (1997). The C++ Programming Language, 3rd Edition. Addison Wesley"