Title: Extending the implementation of a massively multi-player on-line historical role-playing game

Proposer: Hans-Wolfgang Loidl

Suggested supervisors: Hans-Wolfgang Loidl

Goal:

Completing and extending a distributed, scalable game engine for a historical role-playing game, and evaluate its usability, performance and modularity.

Description:

Role-playing games, set in an accurate historical context and supported by a scalable, distributed game engine, can provide an engaging learning environment for both players and game developers: players can learn about the historical and societal context of the game, and game developers can exercise modular design of a complex system in order to achieve scalability for a large number of players.

The goal of this project is to extend the implementation of a previously developed core game engine. This involves adding in-game functionality of the basic game model, such as enhanced player interaction or more accurate modelling of battles, performance improvements to the core game engine, such as faster database access, and assessing the extended game engine in terms of latency, performance and scalability.

The project will proceed in the following phases.

Resources required: Linux platform with C# running on mono and Riak as database back-end

Degree of difficulty: moderate

Background needed: Good general programming skills; interest in historical background is useful

References: