Section: New Software and Platforms

MicroMachinations

Participant : Riemer Van Rozen [correspondent] .

Characterization:

A-2-up3, SO-4, SM-2-up3, EM-3, SDL-3-up4, OC-DA-3-CD-3-MS-3-TPM-3.

WWW:

Objective:

To create an integrated, live environment for modeling and evolving game economies. This will allow game designers to experiment with different strategies to realize game mechanics. The environment integrates with the SPIN model checker to prove properties (reachability, liveness). A runtime system for executing game economies allows MicroMachinations models to be embedded in actual games.

Users:

Game designers

Impact:

One of the important problems in game software development is the distance between game design and implementation in software. MicroMachinations has the potential to bridge this gap by providing live design tools that directly modify or create the desired software behaviors.

Competition:

None.

Engineering:

The front-end of MicroMachinations is built using the Rascal language workbench, including visualization, model checking, debugging and standard IDE features. The runtime library is implemented in C++ and will be evaluated in the context of industrial game design.

Publications:

[11]

• MMLib was finished to allow the execution of game economies directly within games. This supports “Live programming” of the behavior of games. The library has been used in the development of the real-life game “Johnny Jetstream”, designed by IC3DMedia.