Languages of games and play: A systematic mapping study

Digital games are a powerful means for creating enticing, beautiful, educational, and often highly addictive interactive experiences that impact the lives of billions of players worldwide. We explore what informs the design and construction of good games to learn how to speed-up game development. In particular, we study to what extent languages, notations, patterns, and tools, can offer experts theoretical foundations, systematic techniques, and practical solutions they need to raise their productivity and improve the quality of games and play. Despite the growing number of publications on this topic there is currently no overview describing the state-of-the-art that relates research areas, goals, and applications. As a result, efforts and successes are often one-off, lessons learned go overlooked, language reuse remains minimal, and opportunities for collaboration and synergy are lost. We present a systematic map that identifies relevant publications and gives an overview of research areas and publication venues. In addition, we categorize research perspectives along common objectives, techniques, and approaches, illustrated by summaries of selected languages. Finally, we distill challenges and opportunities for future research and development

Výukové scénáře v projektu Pogamut

Tento projekt si klade za cíl rozšířit platformu Pogamut o nástroj pro neprogramátory, zvláště pedagogy, kteří chtějí využít 3D virtuální prostředí jako výukový prostředek. Měl by jim umožnit jednoduše navrhovat scénáře, ve kterých mohou testovat své žáky v různých situacích. Tyto scénáře by měly být zapisovány v přirozeně vyhlížejícím, lokalizovatelném jazyku interpretovaném v produkčním systému Drools. Jednou ze součástí této bakalářské práce je i implementace ukázkového scénáře, který zkouší schopnosti žáků orientovat se v městské zástavbě. Projekt Pogamut umožňuje prezentovat tyto scénáře ve špičkových virtuálních světech, například ve hře Unreal Tournament 2004.: The goal of this project is to extend Pogamut platform with a tool for non-programmers, especially teachers, who want to use 3D virtual environment as a learning medium. They should be able to easily write scenarios, where they can test their students in different situations. One part of this bachelor thesis is the implementation of sample scenario proving student's abilities of orientation in urban environment. These scenarios can be scripted in naturally looking, localizable language interpreted in the Drools rule based engine. The Pogamut project allows to present these scenarios in first-class virtual reality worlds, for instance in Unreal Tournament 2004.Department of Software and Computer Science EducationKatedra softwaru a výuky informatikyFaculty of Mathematics and PhysicsMatematicko-fyzikální fakult

‘IMPLICIT CREATION’ – NON-PROGRAMMER CONCEPTUAL MODELS FOR AUTHORING IN INTERACTIVE DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS) constitutes a research field that emerged from several areas of art, creation and computer science. It inquires technologies and possible artefacts that allow ‘highly-interactive’ experiences of digital worlds with compelling stories. However, the situation for story creators approaching ‘highly-interactive’ storytelling is complex. There is a gap between the available technology, which requires programming and prior knowledge in Artificial Intelligence, and established models of storytelling, which are too linear to have the potential to be highly interactive. This thesis reports on research that lays the ground for bridging this gap, leading to novel creation philosophies in future work. A design research process has been pursued, which centred on the suggestion of conceptual models, explaining a) process structures of interdisciplinary development, b) interactive story structures including the user of the interactive story system, and c) the positioning of human authors within semi-automated creative processes. By means of ‘implicit creation’, storytelling and modelling of simulated worlds are reconciled. The conceptual models are informed by exhaustive literature review in established neighbouring disciplines. These are a) creative principles in different storytelling domains, such as screenwriting, video game writing, role playing and improvisational theatre, b) narratological studies of story grammars and structures, and c) principles of designing interactive systems, in the areas of basic HCI design and models, discourse analysis in conversational systems, as well as game- and simulation design. In a case study of artefact building, the initial models have been put into practice, evaluated and extended. These artefacts are a) a conceived authoring tool (‘Scenejo’) for the creation of digital conversational stories, and b) the development of a serious game (‘The Killer Phrase Game’) as an application development. The study demonstrates how starting out from linear storytelling, iterative steps of ‘implicit creation’ can lead to more variability and interactivity in the designed interactive story. In the concrete case, the steps included abstraction of dialogues into conditional actions, and creating a dynamic world model of the conversation. This process and artefact can be used as a model illustrating non-programmer approaches to ‘implicit creation’ in a learning process. Research demonstrates that the field of Interactive Digital Storytelling still has to be further advanced until general creative principles can be fully established, which is a long-term endeavour, dependent upon environmental factors. It also requires further technological developments. The gap is not yet closed, but it can be better explained. The research results build groundwork for education of prospective authors. Concluding the thesis, IDS-specific creative principles have been proposed for evaluation in future work

GAMESPECT: A Composition Framework and Meta-Level Domain Specific Aspect Language for Unreal Engine 4

Game engine programming involves a great number of software components, many of which perform similar tasks; for example, memory allocation must take place in the renderer as well as in the creation routines while other tasks such as error logging must take place everywhere. One area of all games which is critical to the success of the game is that of game balance and tuning. These balancing initiatives cut across all areas of code from the player and AI to the mission manager. In computer science, we’ve come to call these types of concerns “cross cutting”. Aspect oriented programming was developed, in part, to solve the problems of cross cutting: employing “advice” which can be incorporated across different pieces of functionality. Yet, despite the prevalence of a solution, very little work has been done to bring cross cutting to game engine programming. Additionally, the discipline involves a heavy amount of code rewriting and reuse while simultaneously relying on many common design patterns that are copied from one project to another. In the case of game balance, the code may be wildly different across two different games despite the fact that similar tasks are being done. These two problems are exacerbated by the fact that almost every game engine has its own custom DSL (domain specific language) unique to that situation. If a DSL could showcase the areas of cross cutting concerns while highlighting the ability to capture design patterns that can be used across games, significant productivity savings could be achieved while simultaneously creating a common thread for discussion of shared problems within the domain. This dissertation sought to do exactly that- create a metalanguage called GAMESPECT which supports multiple styles of DSLs while bringing aspect-oriented programming into the DSL’s to make them DSAL (domain specific aspect languages). The example cross cutting concern was game balance and tuning since it’s so pervasive and important to gaming. We have created GAMESPECT as a language and a composition framework which can assist engine developers and game designers in balancing their games, forming one central place for game balancing concerns even while these concerns may cross different languages and locations inside the source code. Generality was measured by showcasing the composition specifications in multiple contexts and languages. In addition to evaluating generality and performance metrics, effectiveness was be measured. Specifically, comparisons were made between a balancing initiative when performed with GAMESPECT vs a traditional methodology. In doing so, this work shows a clear advantage to using a Metalanguage such as GAMESPECT for this task. In general, a line of code reduction of 9-40% per task was achieved with negligible effects to performance. The use of a metalanguage in Unreal Engine 4 is a starting point to further discussions concerning other game engines. In addition, this work has implications beyond video game programming. The work described highlights benefits which might be achieved in other disciplines where design pattern implementations and cross-cutting concern usage is high; the real time simulation field and the field of Windows GUI programming are two examples of future domains

On the definition of non-player character behaviour for real-time simulated virtual environments.

Computer games with complex virtual worlds, which are populated by artificial characters and creatures, are the most visible application of artificial intelligence techniques. In recent years game development has been fuelled by dramatic advances in computer graphics hardware which have led to a rise in the quality of real-time computer graphics and increased realism in computer games. As a result of these developments video games are gaining acceptance and cultural significance as a form of art and popular culture. An important factor for the attainment of realism in games is the artificially intelligent behaviour displayed by the virtual entities that populate the games' virtual worlds. It is our firm belief that to further improve the behaviour of virtual entities, game AI development will have to mirror the advances achieved in game graphics. A major contributing factor for these advancements has been the advent of programmable shaders for real-time graphics, which in turn has been significantly simplified by the introduction of higher level programming languages for the creation of shaders. This has demonstrated that a good system can be vastly improved by the addition of a programming language. This thesis presents a similar (syntactic) approach to the definition of the behaviour of virtual entities in computer games. We introduce the term behaviour definition language (BDL), describing a programming language for the definition of game entity behaviour. We specify the requirements for this type of programming language, which are applied to the development and implementation of several behaviour definition languages, culminating in the design of a new game-genre independent behaviour definition (scripting) language. This extension programming language includes several game AI techniques within a single unified system, allowing the use of different methods of behaviour definition. A subset of the language (itself a BDL) was implemented as a proof of concept of this design, providing a framework for the syntactic definition of the behaviour of virtual entities in computer games

Adapting Game Mechanics with Micro-Machinations

In early game development phases game designers adjust game rules in a rapid, iterative and flexible way. In later phases, when software prototypes are available, play testing provides more detailed feedback about player experience. More often than not, the realized and the intended gameplay emerging from game software differ. Unfortunately, adjusting it is hard because designers lack a means for efficiently defining, fine-tuning and balancing game mechanics. The language Machinations provides a graphical notation for expressing the rules of game economies that fits with a designer’s understanding and vocabulary, but is limited to design itself. Micro-Mach

Effective Team Strategies using Dynamic Scripting

Forming effective team strategies using heterogeneous agents to accomplish a task can be a challenging problem. The number of combinations of actions to look through can be enormous, and having an agent that is really good at a particular sub-task is no guarantee that agent will perform well on a team with members with different abilities. Dynamic Scripting has been shown to be an effective way of improving behaviours with adaptive game AI. We present an approach that modifies the scripting process to account for the other agents in a game. By analyzing an agent\u27s allies and opponents we can create better starting scripts for the agents to use. Creating better starting points for the Dynamic Scripting process and will minimize the number of iterations needed to learn effective strategies, creating a better overall gaming experience

Micro-Machinations: A DSL for Game Economies

In the multi-billion dollar game industry, time to market limits the time developers have for improving games. Game designers and software engineers usually live on opposite sides of the fence, and both lose time when adjustments best understood by designers are implemented by engineers. Designers lack a common vocabulary for expressing gameplay, which hampers specification, communication and agreement. We aim to speed up the game development process by improving designer productivity and design quality. The language Machinations has introduced a graphical notation for expressing the rules of game economies that is close to a designer’s vocabulary. We present the language Micro- Machinations (MM) that details and formalizes the meaning of a significant subset of Machination’s language features and adds sever

The Computational Intelligence of MoGo Revealed in Taiwan's Computer Go Tournaments

International audienceTHE AUTHORS ARE EXTREMELY GRATEFUL TO GRID5000 for helping in designing and experimenting around Monte-Carlo Tree Search. In order to promote computer Go and stimulate further development and research in the field, the event activities, "Computational Intelligence Forum" and "World 99 Computer Go Championship," were held in Taiwan. This study focuses on the invited games played in the tournament, "Taiwanese Go players versus the computer program MoGo," held at National University of Tainan (NUTN). Several Taiwanese Go players, including one 9-Dan professional Go player and eight amateur Go players, were invited by NUTN to play against MoGo from August 26 to October 4, 2008. The MoGo program combines All Moves As First (AMAF)/Rapid Action Value Estimation (RAVE) values, online "UCT-like" values, offline values extracted from databases, and expert rules. Additionally, four properties of MoGo are analyzed including: (1) the weakness in corners, (2) the scaling over time, (3) the behavior in handicap games, and (4) the main strength of MoGo in contact fights. The results reveal that MoGo can reach the level of 3 Dan with, (1) good skills for fights, (2) weaknesses in corners, in particular for "semeai" situations, and (3) weaknesses in favorable situations such as handicap games. It is hoped that the advances in artificial intelligence and computational power will enable considerable progress in the field of computer Go, with the aim of achieving the same levels as computer chess or Chinese chess in the future

Adapting Game Mechanics with Micro-Machinations

International audienceIn early game development phases game designers adjust game rules in a rapid, iterative and flexible way. In later phases, when software prototypes are available, play testing provides more detailed feedback about player experience. More often than not, the realized and the intended game-play emerging from game software differ. Unfortunately, ad-justing it is hard because designers lack a means for effi-ciently defining, fine-tuning and balancing game mechanics. The language Machinations provides a graphical notation for expressing the rules of game economies that fits with a designer's understanding and vocabulary, but is limited to design itself. Micro-Machinations (MM) formalizes the meaning of core language elements of Machinations enabling reasoning about alternative behaviors and assessing quality, making it also suitable for software development. We pro-pose an approach for designing, embedding and adapting game mechanics iteratively in game software, and demon-strate how the game mechanics and the gameplay of a tower defense game can be easily changed and promptly play tested. The approach shows that MM enables the adaptability needed to reduce design iteration times, consequently increasing op-portunities for quality improvements and reuse