JAWS

1
JAWS

• Space-Shooter Game Design Language
• Justin Lu
• Guoxin Andy Lin
• Winston Chao
• Shoaib Anwar

2
The Riddle of all Riddles?

• Why do kids become comp sci majors?
• Answer To program financial software
• FALSE
• Real Answer To make GAMES of course

3
The Problem

• So what the Motivation behind a Game Programming
  Language?
• Designers VS Engineers
• Pros Pros
• Creativity - Able to implement technical
  Details
• Innovative Ideas
• Cons Cons
• Lack of Technical/Programming Skill -Dull and
  uncreative in Game Design
• -Ideas too nerdy to appeal anyone

4
The Solution

• JAWS
• Eliminate the need of in-depth game programming
  knowledge such as graphics manipulation,
  collision detection etc.
• Allow casual game designers to create games

5
Original Ideas

• JAWS should be able to create ANY kind of video
  game.
• Ha
• This would require making a languages like C or
  Java
• RPG Adventure a la The Legend of Zelda (original)
• Thats very similar to space shooters in terms of
  collision and movement. Generalize to a Space
  shooter language

6
Goals of the JAWS Language

• Create a simple language with easy syntax similar
  to popular languages such as Java so it can be
  picked up easily
• Allow the designer/programmer the most freedom
  and power and design while still keeping the
  language simple

7
Data Types

• The usual
• int, double, string, boolean
• New
• entity represents an interactive entity (player
  ship, enemies etc.)
• point represents a point in 2D space (x ,y)
• movement describes the AI of an entity
• attack describes the attack algorithms of entity
• map a layout of the background of a level

8
Special Features of JAWS

• Distance Operator
• Can be applied interchangeably between point and
  entity types
• Facilitates collision detection while still
  leaving freedom for the programmer
• Example
• if((playerShip0enemyShip0)0)
• statusBar0s label YOU LOSE

9
Special Features of JAWS

• Entity type implemented as an array
• Why?
• Because.
• In space shooters you are dealing with a large
  number of enemies at once.
• Example
• Entity small_alien10
• small_aliens locations x 5 //move all 10
  small aliens 5 //spaces to the right
• small_alien3s locations x5 //move a
  single //small alien 5 space to
  //the right

10
Super Funk Accessor Operator

• s
• We tried the old . operator
• It makes more sense to a non-programmer this way.
• Example
• Bob.hat ugly
• Bobs hat ugly

11
First an Example

• Heres a code example defining movement of
  metroid monsters in the game
• // now lets create some enemy aliens, lets make 5
• entity metroid6
• alien()
• Image metroid.gif
• // we will set their AI to dumb_ai,
• // a movement class we will define
• ai dumb_ai
• // lets set our enemy AI now
• // it will be a dumb AI which just moves the
  enemy downwards
• movement dumb_ai( )
• locations y - 1

12
Program Structure

• A JAWS program is divided into two main parts
• The declarations sections
• The engine section
• //A sample JAWS program
• declarations
• //all code and no play
• //makes jack a dull boy
• engine
• //all play and no code
• //makes jack fail PLT

13
Program Structure

• Declarations
• all point, entity, movement, attack and map
  classes are defined here
• Basically the rules and tools of the game are
  implemented and coded here
• Engine
• engine is the main game loop which keeps
  iterating during the execution of the game.
  Generally, you would use this section to describe
  the level progression of a game, the winning
  conditions etc.
• Really Simple games can even leave this part out

14
Implementation

• Language designed and specified using ANTLR
• Output Language JAVA
• Platform for graphics JAVA Swing/Java2D

15
Testing Plan

• PHASE 1
• component testing to examine basic functionality
  of each module parser, lexer, walker, and
  graphical engine.
• PHASE 2
• component integration testing.
• PHASE 3
• functional testing with sample codes.
• Incremental testing was implemented throughout
  all phases of the project.

16
Lessons Learned

• Trying to make another assignment operator and
  getting rid of sign is a bad idea.
• Difficult to get out of config trap while
  making a game language.
• Having a group member with access to the EE comp
  lab and the ability to install any application
  you want is key.