Matrix Entertainment Language (MatrEL): A Board Game Creation Language Rochelle Palting [email protected] [email protected] Computer Science Department, Columbia University CS4115 Programming Languages and Translators Professor Stephen A. Edwards Fall 2008 1 Introduction Board games have been around for countless generations. There are numerous games that offer leisure that suits various minds and tastes from Tic Tac Toe, Connect Four, Minesweeper and Battleship. Matrix Entertainment Language (MatrEL) is a programming language that allows a designer to create a game with a square matrix board. With MatrEL, anyone can take any traditional matrix type board game and customize it to their liking. For the enthusiast, a totally new and original game can be fashioned with the ease of using MatrEL. In this paper we outline the various features of MatrEL and provide a sample program that uses this exciting language. 2 Language Functionality MatrEL will allow the programmer to create an interactive game using a square matrix as the game board. The typical use of the MEO programming language will be: - initialize game board with desired size and contents - initialize game rules and features - start the game by prompting and accepting player inputs - check to see if the player’s input results in either a win or lose situation or neither - prompt for another player input The MatrEL programming language will make matrix board game creation and play simple and fun. 3 Language Attributes 3.1 Identifiers and Keywords The following identifiers and keywords are reserved in MatrEL: matrix empty containsAll topDiagonal bottomDiagonalstring int bool while if then else input full print map row col gameOver 3.2 Data Types GameRule – an expression that evaluates to a Boolean int integer values map a map of key/value pairs string sequence of characters 3.3 Assignment Operator = The ‘=’ symbol will be used to set a value to an identifier. 3.4 Arithmetic Operators + addition operator - subtraction operator * multiplication operator / division operator 3.5 Equality and Relational Operators = == >= <= 3.6 Conditional Operators while 3.7 Control Structures if-then-else 3.8 Comments // The line that begins with ‘//’ will be treated as a comment.4 Example Program Below is the game Tic-Tac-Toe implemented using the MatrEL programming language. // initialize game board to size 3 with each cell being empty matrix game = 3 game[] = empty // create win rules GameRule threeInARow (rowNum, value) = game[rowNum][_] containsAll value; GameRule threeInAColumn (colNum, value) = game[_][colNum] containsAll value; GameRule threeInADiagonal (value) = game[topDiagonal] containsAll value or game[bottomDiagonal] containsAll value; // set other game features map players; players.put(1, ‘X’) players.put(2, ‘O’) gameOver = false int playerTurn = 1; while(not gameOver)-> print ‘Enter selection.’ input pos if threeInARow(pos.row, players.get(playerTurn)) or threeInAColumn(pos.col, players.get(playerTurn)) or threeInADiagonal(players.get(playerTurn)) then print ‘Player wins.’ gameOver = true; else if matrixFull then print ‘Tie game, squares are all full.’ gameOver = true;
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