Model-Driven Game Development Addressing Architectural Diversity and Game Engine-Integration
Meng Zhu · 2015
Model-Driven Game Development (MDGD) is an emerging research field, which uses models to specify some or all of the game elements that traditionally had been manually coded. The PhD thesis presents research in the MDGD domain, which is intended to push MDGD further towards industrialization by reducing two gaps: 1) The integration of MDGD tools and game engines, and 2) The support for a diversity of game architectures. These gaps have been identified through a literature review of existing MDGD approaches, which is also documented in the thesis. To reduce the first gap, the model-driven approach Engine Cooperative Game Modeling (ECGM) has been proposed, which uses a run-time game engine as the base for building a domain framework, and engine tools together with MDGD tools for creating game code and data. The code generator generates both game code and level data from game models, making the game models operable in the engine tools. ECGM has been evaluated through being instantiated with a Domain Specific Language (DSL), Reactive AI Language (RAIL) tools, and the commercial game engine Torque 2D. The DSL and