From Declarative Languages to Declarative Processing in Computer Games

Recent work has shown that we can dramatically improve the performance of computer games and simulations through declarative processing: Character AI can be written in an imperative scripting language which is then compiled to relational algebra and executed by a special games engine with features similar to a main memory database system. In this paper we lay out a challenging research agenda built on these ideas. We discuss several research ideas for novel language features to support atomic actions and reactive programming. We also explore challenges for main memory query processing in games and simulations including adaptive query plan selection, support for multi-core and parallel architectures, debugging simulation scripts, and extensions for multi-player games and virtual worlds. We believe that these research challenges will result in a dramatic change in the design of game engines over the next decade.