Abstraction: Game Studio

[Alexander Morou]

Abstraction: Game Studio
This project is a game studio geared towards a bit more serious developer. It's still in its infancy, so I won't bother giving screen shots that portray a twenty minute Visual designer's result: things aren't as easy as composing controls.

One of the major factors I'm focusing on with this is automation. The games that you create with it will be a fully capable executable, the details of which I'll leave for a later discussion.

The major focus right now is a code generation platform, of which this is my third. The first two worked, and they worked well, but with each iteration, and successive use, I learned that it could be better since my needs have evolved.

The latest iteration doubles as a scripting language platform, geared at composing an objectified view of code in a general form. The primary reason for this is I'm dually coding a parser compiler that needs very robust code composition, using features that aren't available in either C# or Visual Basic: being able to push the RuntimeMethodHandle of a known method onto the stack without using reflection, this will be key in creating a dynamic AST construction framework; the data's structure is known, but the exact data is not until a parse is performed.

After the scripting foundation is finished, I can focus on the engine and tools. As a point of reference, the half-finished scripting foundation is over 86 thousand physical executable lines of code. That's not a bragging point, by any means, it's more a measure of how much work has gone into it up until this point, and how much there is to go.

If it would be possible, please suggest ideas for this project. I would list what I plan on, but I want this to be an open discussion on what would be interesting. I won't make any promises, because I'll have to weigh everything together so I can get a realistic outcome.

It's been a while since I've been able to work on this (nearly two years since I've been full steam), but I figured a new job brings new beginnings. I finally have the time and motivation to work on it, so here we go.

 

[Zeriab]

It's good to see that you are taking it up again and putting loads of effort into your project :D
I look forward to see how your code generation platform works out.
Have you heard about Java Emitter Templates?
A couple of my friends had about it in a course I didn't take myself, so I don't know if the ideas present in it are useful for you.

What are your thoughts about libraries to accompany the game maker?
What thoughts have you had about the user interface? (I don't only mean the graphical part.)

*hugs*

 

[Alexander Morou]

It's good to see that you are taking it up again and putting loads of effort into your project :D
I look forward to see how your code generation platform works out.
Have you heard about Java Emitter Templates?

From what I can tell about the Java Emitter Templates, its focus is quite different from my own. Where their system constructs a uniform method of text generation, mine focuses on the construction of code objects in a language-neutral manner. The result is a series of objects that can be translated into C# and Visual Basic.NET in the same run of the program. Its focus is to always generate syntactically accurate code.

Edit:
As a point of reference, the amount of code typically generated by previous systems is within the realm of tens to hundreds of thousands of lines.

What are your thoughts about libraries to accompany the game maker?

Well, since the entire engine will be written by myself, and I'll co-develop a game, or two, along side it, users will have the libraries that I used to develop those games. Since I hope to have a real language or two integrated, I plan on having the ability to reference libraries like you would in any other development software.

What thoughts have you had about the user interface? (I don't only mean the graphical part.)

Can you please elaborate?

 

[Skyler]

I have a few suggestions of my own, some are probably no brainers.

-A tutorial: Obviously a tutorial on how to use your game studio would be vital to its use and the development of great-quality games.

-An encryption function: If there are some copywritten things in someone's project, they probably don't want them getting out for other people's use.

-A "preview" function: Sort of like, lets you play through the finished product before you compile the game itself to make sure there are no bugs (or at least as few as possible).

-What exactly can you do with this game studio? I don't mean to be vague, but what are the core functions that would be included in the final product?

 

[Alexander Morou]

1. A tutorial: This will come in time, it's not my focus right now.

2. An encryption function: A large majority of the data associated to the projects aims to be stored within the resulted program that is produced. I will consider an encryption process; however, you must know that regardless of any method I use, it will ultimately be defeated if someone wants the information bad enough. Not only that, but things like sprites, and sounds can be obtained through other means (screen captures, piping the output from the speakers into something else that can capture it directly, and so on).

3. A preview function: this is a given.

4. What can you do in this program: the full feature set hasn't yet been determined; as such, I believe it's too early to give a list of features, since the program isn't far enough to have even one of them checked complete. As a point of reference to feed your curiosity: it's called 'abstraction game studio' for a reason, it aims to focus on more than one genre of game, because of this, expect to see more than just role-playing game editors.

 

[Alexander Morou]

PS: As an update, I just purchased an XNA Creator's Club membership, for the next year. Here's hoping that I can get enough research about the platform that I can target XNA and C# as a target build point.

While I know that the Action Game Maker project also targets the XBox 360 in the same manner, this is different in that you're probably going to be using a language similar to C# anyway, the only difference is you'll see how the system structures everything when a project is built.