Marc Lanctot on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:26:21 -0700 (MST)


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Re: [game-lang] a survey of previous work


On 07/23/2010 11:17 AM, Joel Uckelman wrote:
Thus spake Simon McGregor:

What do we want our game representation language to do?
I'd like the following features: -

1) A playable GUI version of a game can be automatically generated
from its description, assuming that the game is composed of standard
generic components (e.g. dice, cards, counters, tiles, board, etc.).
If the game features some weird component like a card which changes
appearance depending on the polarisation of ambient light, it should
be possible to write a plugin for it.

I'm hovering between 'orthogonal to a game rep language' and 'not
possible' on this one. The actual appearance of game components isn't
relevant to the proper logical relations between them, which is what
the rules capture. I think it's a good idea to have a standard format
for storing visual representations of game objects, because then programs
could use those to map objects in our nascent rules lanuage to their
visual representations---but I think it's a completely seperate issue
from representing game rules.

I'd like to second this. I think this was similar to Dave's original idea from the BGG post, eg. to make a "standard module format". I do certainly think that the game logic should be separated from any GUI implementation -- but that a standard module format should include the game rules in the general game language.

For the record, I think that standard module format (where images are bundled with the rules) would be a huge step towards standardization in the online gaming community, but I think we need the language first.

BTW, I've been mostly silent .. just because I've been mostly busy. I'll reply with more info on GALA soon, but I don't think it was too extensively studied.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but... I'd really like to know why we wouldn't want to form a superset of GDL.

Marc

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