Abstract
The lack of formalities in the development of video games is one of the main obstacles for the incorporation of new professionals to the field. Although there are general proposals to describe and specify video games with techniques such as Game Design Document or Game Description Language, these are usually aimed at implementations in predetermined media, which determines the game specification from the outset to its implementation in the selected platform. This paper proposes a method for the definition, specification and implementation of a video game based on multi-agent systems, where its elements, functionalities and interactions are established independently of the platform used for its development. To prove its validity and capabilities, the classic arcade game Frogger has been used as a demonstrator. This game has been defined in its general form and subsequently implemented on three different platforms following the same specification. Each of these implementations has been made using different engines, languages and programming techniques, but in any case, meeting the requirements of the game and multi-agent systems.
Keywords
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ampatzoglou, A., Stamelos, I.: Software engineering research for computer games: a systematic review. Inf. Softw. Technol. 52(9), 888–901 (2010)
Anderson, E.F., Engel, S., McLoughlin, L., Comninos, P.: The case for research in game engine architecture (2008)
Anderson, E.F., McLoughlin, L., Watson, J., Holmes, S., Jones, P., Pallett, H., Smith, B.: Choosing the infrastructure for entertainment and serious computer games-a whiteroom benchmark for game engine selection. In: 5th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications, pp. 1-8. IEEE (2013)
Aranda, G., Trescak, T., Esteva, M., Rodriguez, I., Carrascosa, C.: Massively multiplayer online games developed with agents. In: Pan, Z., Cheok, A.D., Müller, W., Chang, M., Zhang, M. (eds.) Transactions on Edutainment VII, pp. 129–138. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)
BinSubaih, A., Maddock, S., Romano, D.: A survey of ‘game’ portability. University of Sheffield, Technical report CS-07-05 (2007)
Brachman, R.J., Levesque, H.J., Reiter, R.: Knowledge Representation. MIT press, Cambridge (1992)
Botti, V., Carrascosa, C., Julián, V., Soler, J.: Modelling agents in hard real-time environments. In: European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agent World, pp. 63–76. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)
Callele, D., Neufeld, E., Schneider, K.: Requirements engineering and the creative process in the video game industry. In: 13th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering, RE 2005, pp. 240-250. IEEE (2005)
Carrascosa, C., Bajo, J., Julián, V., Corchado, J.M., Botti, V.: Hybrid multi-agent architecture as a real-time problem-solving model. Exp. Sys. Appl. 34(1), 2–17 (2008)
Ebner, M., Levine, J., Lucas, S.M., Schaul, T., Thompson, T., Togelius, J.: Towards a video game description language (2013)
Fagin, R., Fagin, R., Fagin, R., Halpern, J.Y.: Reasoning about knowledge and probability. J. ACM (JACM) 41(2), 340–367 (1994)
Ferber, J., Weiss, G.: Multi-agent Systems: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, vol. 1. Reading: Addison-Wesley, Boston (1999)
Frogger Game, 15 November 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frogger
Gamesonomy, 15 November 2019. http://www.gamesonomy.com
Garcés, A., Quirós, R., Chover, M., Huerta, J.: E-Commerce transaction modeling using moderately open multi-agent systems. In: ICEIS, vol. 4, pp. 167-172 (2007)
Garcés, A., Quirós, R., Chover, M., Camahort, E.: Implementing virtual agents: a HABA-based approach. Int. J. Multimedia. Appl. 2, 1–15 (2010)
Genesereth, M., Love, N., Pell, B.: General game playing: overview of the AAAI competition. AI Mag. 26(2), 62–62 (2005)
Love, N., Hinrichs, T., Haley, D., Schkufza, E., Genesereth, M.: General game playing: game description language specification (2008)
Marín-Lora, C., Chover, M., Sotoca, J.M.: Prototyping a game engine architecture as a multi-agent system. In: 27th International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision, WSCG 2019 (2019)
Marín-Lora, C., Chover, M., Sotoca, J.M., García, L.A.: A game engine to make games as multi-agent systems. Adv. Eng. Softw. 140, 102732 (2020)
Occello, M., Demazeau, Y.: Modelling decision making systems using agents for cooperation in a real time constraints. In: 3rd IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, vol. 1, pp. 51-56 (1998)
Parsons, S., Wooldridge, M.: Game theory and decision theory in multi-agent systems. Auton. Agent. Multi-Agent Syst. 5(3), 243–254 (2002)
Perez-Liebana, D., Samothrakis, S., Togelius, J., Schaul, T., Lucas, S.M.: General video game ai: competition, challenges and opportunities. In: 30th AAAI (2016)
Rebollo, C., Marín-Lora, C. Remolar, I. Chover, M.: Gamesonomy vs Scratch: two different ways to introduce programming. In: 15th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age, CELDA 2018. IADIS Press (2018). ISBN 9789898533814
Remolar, I., Garcés, A., Rebollo, C., Chover, M., Quirós, R., Gumbau, J.: Developing a virtual trade fair using an agent-oriented approach. Multimedia Tools Appl. 74(13), 4561–4582 (2015)
Schiffel, S., Thielscher, M.: A multiagent semantics for the game description language. In: International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence, pp. 44–55. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Thielscher, M.: A general game description language for incomplete information games. In: Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2010)
Thielscher, M.: The general game playing description language is universal. In: Twenty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2011)
Tisue, S., Wilensky, U.: Netlogo: A simple environment for modeling complexity. In: International conference on complex systems, vol. 21, pp. 16-21 (2004)
Unity 3D Game Engine, 15 November 2019. https://unity.com/
Van den Berg, J., Lin, M., Manocha, D.: Reciprocal velocity obstacles for real-time multi-agent navigation. In: 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 1928-1935. IEEE (2008)
Wooldridge, M.: An Introduction to Multiagent Systems. Wiley, Chichester (2009)
Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (TIN2016- 75866-C3-1-R, TI2018-098651-B-C54) and the Universitat Jaume I research projects (UJI-B2018-56, UJI-B2018-44).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Marín-Lora, C., Cercós, A., Chover, M., Sotoca, J.M. (2020). A First Step to Specify Arcade Games as Multi-agent Systems. In: Rocha, Á., Adeli, H., Reis, L., Costanzo, S., Orovic, I., Moreira, F. (eds) Trends and Innovations in Information Systems and Technologies. WorldCIST 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1159. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45688-7_38
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45688-7_38
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45687-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45688-7
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)