An Architecture for Extensible Simulation Games

Abstract

Simulation games have evolved through different stages. The current stage of development is characterized by its use of the microcomputer (Curran and Hornaday, 1989). A difficulty with development of games for microcomputers is that different systems are not compatible with each other. This difficulty gets compounded with advances in technology, since the same game has to be developed for many new platforms such as the Windows, and OS/2 environments in addition to the standard DOS and Macintosh environments. This implies that the game has to be fairly portable. In addition, the user interface of the game has to adapt to each environment. Such adaptation normally implies that the user interface segment of the code has to be rewritten. This rewrite can be avoided by developing an architecture, which is extensible. Extensibility implies that the existing code need not be changed and additions can be made without affecting the existing code. The purpose of this paper is to state some requirements of simulation gaming and develop an extensible architecture for simulation gaming that can meet these requirements. The next section discusses some requirements, which call for extensibility, and section 3 develops an extensible architecture.