GAMESPECT: Aspect Oriented Programming for a Video Game Engine using Meta-languages

Video game programming is an area where code duplication is extremely prevalent. Similar types of tasks are performed in multiple places throughout a game engine codebase. For example: game balance, logging, and memory allocation are just a few of the areas which are located across disparate locations of the codebase. Meanwhile, aspect oriented programming (AOP) was created to make use of common themes in a codebase and allow for advice to be given during compilation or runtime. GAMESPECT is a Domain Specific language (DSL) which resides in a higher level language space, above the typical languages used by game engines such as Unreal Engine 4. The language is written with the popular XText language toolset and contains advices in the spirit of aspect oriented programming: point cuts and join points. These advices can be executed at runtime when the programmer wants to finetune values or perform debugging. The advising is made possible through the Clang toolchain. Unique to this approach, GAMESPECT takes a source language and converts into multiple target languages. Depending on the context, GAMESPECT can generate C++, LUA, Blueprints or Skookum Script. This type of source to source translation is made possible through GAMESPECT's “composition specifications”. With GAMESPECT, video game designers can increase their productivity and reduce the required lines of code for certain tasks by a 9-40% reduction. In addition, it provides for an AOP platform which is agnostic to the underlying game code. The applicability of this approach extends beyond game programming into software engineering as a whole.