1 research outputs found
ScriptButler serves an empirical study of PuzzleScript : Analyzing the expressive power of a game DSL through source code analysis
Automated Game Design (AGD) empowers game designers with
languages and tools that automate game design processes. Domain-
Specific Languages (DSLs) promise to deliver an expressive means
for rapidly prototyping and fine-tuning interaction mechanisms
that support rich emergent player experiences. However, despite
the growing number of studies that center around languages for
games and play, few prototypes are ever thoroughly validated and
evaluated in practice. As a result, it is not yet well understood what
the costs, benefits and limitations of DSL formalisms are.
To find out, we investigate to what extent rules, affordances and
play can be related by means of source code analysis. We study
PuzzleScript, a language and online game engine with an active user
community. We reverse engineer PuzzleScript’s design and propose
ScriptButler, a novel tool prototype and engine for its analysis. To
validate our approach, we conduct an empirical study on the quality
of the source code by performing an analysis on a curated collection
of 95 games. Our results show that ScriptButler can identify bugs
and helps relate PuzzleScript rules to game qualities