- Gabriel C. Ullmann ORCID:orcid.org/0000-0002-3274-078911,
- Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc ORCID:orcid.org/0000-0002-4361-256311,
- Fabio Petrillo ORCID:orcid.org/0000-0002-8355-149412,
- Nicolas Anquetil ORCID:orcid.org/0000-0003-1486-839913 &
- …
- Cristiano Politowski ORCID:orcid.org/0000-0002-0206-105612
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Abstract
Game engines support video game development by providing functionalities such as graphics rendering or input/output device management. However, their architectures are often overlooked, which hinders their integration and extension. In this paper, we use an approach for architecture recovery to create architectural models for 10 open-source game engines. We use these models to answer the following questions: Which subsystems more often couple with one another? Do game engines share subsystem coupling patterns? We observe that the Low-Level Renderer, Platform Independence Layer and Resource Manager are frequently coupled to the game engine Core. By identifying the most frequent coupling patterns, we describe an emergent game engine architecture and discuss how it can be used by practitioners to improve system understanding and maintainability.
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Notes
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Multi-User Dungeon, a text-based precursor of MMORPG games.
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Acknowledgement
The authors were partially supported by the NSERC Discovery Grant and Canada Research Chairs programs.
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Authors and Affiliations
Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Gabriel C. Ullmann & Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc
École de Technologie Supérieure, Montreal, QC, Canada
Fabio Petrillo & Cristiano Politowski
Univ. Lille, CNRS, Inria, Centrale Lille, UMR 9189 - CRIStAL, Lille, France
Nicolas Anquetil
- Gabriel C. Ullmann
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- Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc
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- Fabio Petrillo
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- Nicolas Anquetil
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- Cristiano Politowski
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Correspondence toGabriel C. Ullmann.
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University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Paolo Ciancarini
University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Angelo Di Iorio
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Helmut Hlavacs
Italian National Research Council (CNR), Rome, Italy
Francesco Poggi
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C. Ullmann, G., Guéhéneuc, YG., Petrillo, F., Anquetil, N., Politowski, C. (2023). Visualising Game Engine Subsystem Coupling Patterns. In: Ciancarini, P., Di Iorio, A., Hlavacs, H., Poggi, F. (eds) Entertainment Computing – ICEC 2023. ICEC 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14455. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8248-6_22
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