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Prototyping Games Using Formal Methods

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Formal Methods – Fun for Everybody (FMFun 2019)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1301))

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Abstract

Courses on formal methods are often based on examples and case studies, which are supposed to show students how to apply formal methods in practice. However, examples often fall into one of two categories: First, many are artificial and thus do not relate to practice. Second, other examples are based on projects of industry partners and therefore often are too involved for students to understand them.

In this paper, we present a different approach. By formalizing the rules of commonly known games, we achieve examples both engaging and suited for students. Furthermore, we broaden the horizon of formal methods, driving research at the same time: we present extensions such as playable visualizations and explore the relationship between game AIs and model checking heuristics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Regarding the trade-off between ease of implementation and efficient execution see [16] for a general point of view and [22] for a perspective on B and Event-B.

  2. 2.

    A full version of the model can be found at:

    https://github.com/pkoerner/EventBPacman-Plugin/tree/master/eventb.

  3. 3.

    The main B machine can be found at:

    https://github.com/pkoerner/b-chess-example/blob/master/b/board.mch.

  4. 4.

    https://lightbot.com/.

  5. 5.

    Available at: https://www3.hhu.de/stups/models/fmfun19/lb.zip.

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Acknowledgement

We thank Christoph Heinzen who created several versions of the Pac-Man case study, as well as Philip Höfges for the chess model, AI and GUI.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Information Security, Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, Mönchengladbach, Germany

    Sebastian Krings

  2. Institut für Informatik, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Philipp Körner

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  1. Sebastian Krings
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  2. Philipp Körner
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sebastian Krings .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan

    Antonio Cerone

  2. Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Markus Roggenbach

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Krings, S., Körner, P. (2021). Prototyping Games Using Formal Methods. In: Cerone, A., Roggenbach, M. (eds) Formal Methods – Fun for Everybody. FMFun 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1301. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71374-4_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71374-4_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-71373-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-71374-4

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