Software Quality Enhancement Through Code Refactoring: An Empirical Evaluation of Roblox Game Development

Roblox, a prominent platform in the metaverse, is recognized for its intuitive interface, robust developer support, and customizable features, making it ideal for creating virtual experiences. However, maintaining a clean and efficient code structure in game development is crucial as projects scale. Roblox Lua-based scripting environment presents challenges when managing complex codebases, particularly when critical functions are housed within a monolithic script, leading to "code smell" and lower software quality. This research focuses on addressing these challenges through code refactoring, a process that improves software quality by restructuring without altering its external behavior. The study applies various refactoring methods to a monolithic game script to enhance its software quality, using metrics such as the Number of Operations, Lack of Cohesion Metrics, Instability, Cyclomatic Complexity, Service Granularity Metrics, and Maintainability Metrics to assess improvements. The results indicate substantial improvements post-refactoring, with the NOO reduced from 17 to 5, LCOM from 0.900 to 0.556, Instability from 1.000 to 0.376, CC from 102.000 to 17.667, and MI increased from 41.897 to 84.505. These enhancements demonstrate that refactoring effectively boosts the scalability, adaptability, and quality of the game codebase, supporting its continued growth and potential expansion into additional educational subjects by maintaining a well-structured, modular codebase.