Paper Draft: "Ceptre: A Language for Executable Game Descriptions"

I briefly interrupt this recent series on Twine to announce that I've recently completed a paper draft on my thesis programming language, Ceptre (pdf, 8 pages):

Abstract

We present a language called Ceptre in which we unify the concepts underlying several rule-based game design tools, such as Kodu, PuzzleScript, and Inform 7. We illustrate how to capture common mechanical idioms found in these frameworks, such as movement, item acquisition, and agent-based simulation, without specializing anything in Ceptre to those ideas. By distilling the essence of several systems in one using a small, general set of primitives (based on linear logic), we provide a setting in which to recombine fragments of existing world models and to define new ones, freeing designers from genre constraints and assumptions. Our eventual aim is to implement this language as a prototyping tool for game logics and mechanics.
From a PL perspective, this paper introduces the ideas behind forward-chaining linear logic programming, as well as the construct of stages that I extend it with, in order to describe game mechanics.

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