Tool support for computer role-playing game programming : foundations, guidelines and applications

Computer role-playing games (CRPGs) are a genre of computer games, which aim at providing similar player experience than their ancestors, paper-and-pen role-playing games. For a type of digital games, their evolution is already rather long, as the first ones were created in 1980s. Typically CRPGs emphasize character development and to support this huge fantasy worlds and sophisticated storylines are also present. CRPG development has unique challenges, which derive from these typical features. Content creation is a continuous issue, since huge virtual worlds and long storylines must be filled with content. Personalization is also an important issue, because all fun of creating personalized character is lost if it has no effect into the game. Low starting threshold is important for successful game. It is becoming essential that the player can start playing quickly and she is not required to spent time waiting the installation to be completed. This can be achieved by web-based approach, since web-based games do not require installations. There are also other benefits, such as instant distribution, platform independence, and instant upgrades. As it is likely that in the future CRPGs are web-based, software tools for developing browser-based games are even more important in the future. However regardless of the platform the unique challenges of CRPG development remain the same. This dissertation addresses these unique challenges and simplifies CRPG development with software tool support. The software tools presented in this dissertation begin with construction of a novel game engine called CAGE. We used this game engine in the game programming course of Department of Software Systems in Tampere University of Technology as a software platform, and students developed their games using it. Several content generators were created during the research to tackle this challenge. Using those, content, objects, non-player characters, and even quests can be generated into a game world. The last phase of the research targeted browser-based environment, and this dissertation includes surveys of browser-based games and technologies. In this part, we define attributes of a game engine for browser-based games. Finally, we present a prototype browser-based CRPG using content generation.