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Integrating ASP-Based Incremental Reasoning in the Videogame Development Workflow (Application Paper)

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Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages (PADL 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13880))

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Abstract

Challenging fields like real-time videogames constitute an ideal, reproducible and controllable ground for researching and experimenting on the new developments of incremental reasoners for Answer Set Programming (ASP). On the other hand, declarative methods show potential in cutting down development costs in commercial videogames: nonetheless, fulfilling the strict time requirements of this type of stream reasoning-like application is still an unsurpassed obstacle. Incremental reasoning techniques might help in overcoming this latter. In this work we report about the integration of an incremental ASP engine in a framework conceived for adding declarative decision-making modules in the typical videogame development workflow. Namely, the two systems are Incremental-DLV2, a recently introduced multi-shot incremental solver based on the ASP semantics, and ThinkEngine, a tool for developing declarative modules working in the context of the Unity game engine. After describing the features of both systems, we give an example showing how to program a declarative-based videogame character. We discuss how we adapted the architecture of ThinkEngine for accommodating incremental reasoning, and report about experiments showing the impact in performance after the introduction of Incremental-DLV2.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/DeMaCS-UNICAL/ThinkEngine-Showcase.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/DeMaCS-UNICAL/ThinkEngine-PADL-Experiments.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been partially supported by the Italian MIUR Ministry and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers under the project “Declarative Reasoning over Streams” under the “PRIN” 2017 call (Project 2017M9C25L_001) and under Italian Ministry of Economic Development (MISE) under the PON project “MAP4ID - Multipurpose Analytics Platform 4 Industrial Data”, N. F/190138/01-03/X44.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Calabria, Rende, CS, 87036, Italy

    Denise Angilica, Giovambattista Ianni, Francesco Pacenza & Jessica Zangari

Authors
  1. Denise Angilica
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  2. Giovambattista Ianni
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  3. Francesco Pacenza
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  4. Jessica Zangari
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Denise Angilica .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Michael Hanus

  2. Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA

    Daniela Inclezan

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Angilica, D., Ianni, G., Pacenza, F., Zangari, J. (2023). Integrating ASP-Based Incremental Reasoning in the Videogame Development Workflow (Application Paper). In: Hanus, M., Inclezan, D. (eds) Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages. PADL 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13880. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24841-2_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24841-2_7

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