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

[Marc Lanctot <lanctot@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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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