Project%20Overview

1
Project Overview
Mapwad A Maze Generation language

• Team Ben Smith, Avrum Tilman, Josh Weinberg, Ron
  Weiss

2
Overview and Summary

• A high level language for creating mazes rendered
  in 3 dimensions using Quake.
• Built in data structures and functions to
  naturally express a map.
• Ability to define custom functions to ease
  implementation of maps
• Java/C style syntax and semantics

3
Motivation
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Motivation

• Designing mazes by hand is tedious and error
  prone
• Build large, complex mazes algorithmically

5
Goals

• Easy to use - intuitive syntax, simple language
  constructs
• Flexible - few constraints on maze - walls can be
  at any angle to each other, etc.
• Concise - able to generate complex maze with few
  lines of code

6
Language Design

• The language is designed around high-level data
  types that offer an intuitive description of a
  map
• Instead of dealing with planes you deal with
  rooms
• Mapwad eliminates the need to specify coordinates
• All objects are positioned relative to each other

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Mapwad syntax

• Java/C
• Whitespace ignored
• Comments // and //
• Blocks enclosed in
• Function default parameters
• MyFunc(int a,int b3,int c4)
• MyFunc(1,,10)
• MyFunc(1,2)
• dot operator (built-in types only)
• myRoom.Walls0.Length 10

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Reserved Words

• Control Flow
• if, else, for, while, break, continue, return
• Primitive Data Types
• int, float, boolean, string
• Values
• true, false, null

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Object Data Types

• Room
• Walls - Super Data Structure
• Wall
• Location
• Thing

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Built in

• Functions
• boolean Add(Room r, Wall newWall)
• boolean AddAfter(Wall w, Wall newWall)
• Remove(Wall w)
• boolean Attach(Wall a, Wall b, string
  connectpoint)
• boolean Close(Room r)
• boolean IsClosed(Room r)
• Math Functions
• Variables
• MapStart ltLocationgt
• MapHeight ltfloatgt
• CeilingTexture ltstringgt
• FloorTexture ltstringgt

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Semantics

• Scoping rules
• Global scope
• blocks have own scope
• Rooms and Things automatically added to map
• Primitive Types
• Passed by value
• Instantiated when variable is created
• int x //creates a variable and instantiates an
  int
• Object types
• Passed by reference
• Object-typed variables are references
• Must be explicitly instantiated
• Room r //creates a reference to a Room
• r Room() //instantiates a Room object

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Compiler Components

• Lexer/Parser
• Tree Walker
• Walks the AST generated by the parser
• Checks types, resolves symbols, etc.
• Executes the code
• Internal package
• Contains code called by the tree walker to
  manipulate Mapwad structures
• Code generator
• Creates Quake .map file - text file containing
  information about contents of map.
• QBSP
• Compiles .map file into Quake .bsp map file that
  the game understands.

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Block Diagram
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Sample Code

• //creates a regular polygon shaped room
• Room regularRoom(int walls, float length, string
  texture"BRICKA2_2")
• Room newRoom Room()
• float angle 180(walls-2)/walls
• int i
• for(i0i lt wallsi)
• Wall w Wall(length,angle,"",texture)
• Add(newRoom, w)
• Close(newRoom)
• return newRoom
• Map()
• Room r regularRoom(10, 15, "BRICKA2_4")
• Room start regularRoom(4, 5)

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Compiler Output

• "sounds" "1"
• "classname" "worldspawn"
• "wad" "quake101.wad"
• "worldtype" "0"
• ( 0 0 0 ) ( 100 0 0 ) ( 0 0 1 ) BRICKA2_4 0 0
  0 1.0 1.0
• ( 0 -1 0 ) ( 0 -1 1 ) ( 100 -1 0 ) BRICKA2_4 0
  0 0 1.0 1.0
• ( 0 0 0 ) ( 0 0 1 ) ( 0 -1 0 ) BRICKA2_4 0 0 0
  1.0 1.0
• ( 100 0 0 ) ( 100 -1 0 ) ( 100 0 1 ) BRICKA2_4
  0 0 0 1.0 1.0
• ( 0 0 0 ) ( 1 0 0 ) ( 0 1 0 ) BRICKA2_4 0 0 0
  1.0 1.0
• ( 0 0 100 ) ( 0 1 100 ) ( 1 0 100 ) BRICKA2_4
  0 0 0 1.0 1.0
• ( 100 0 0 ) ( 181 59 0 ) ( 100 0 1 )
  BRICKA2_4 0 0 0 1.0 1.0
• ( 101 -1 0 ) ( 101 -1 1 ) ( 181 58 0 )
  BRICKA2_4 0 0 0 1.0 1.0

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What does it look like?
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Error Checking

• There are three types of error checking in Mapwad
• Syntax Error
• Caught by the lexer/parser
• Semantic Error
• Caught by the tree walker
• Incorrect types, wrong arguments, etc
• Runtime Error/Warning
• Caught during code generation
• Invalid Geometry
• Locations outside of map

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Testing

• Modular Testing
• Each module was tested independently
• Regression Testing
• Basic test cases were reused as code evolved
• Integration Testing
• Modules were combined slowly and tested at every
  stage

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Lessons Learned

• Dont overextend yourself
• Our initial design was too ambitious for
• a one semester project
• Fully define interfaces early
• We had to modify all our methods late in
  development
• Generalize your code
• When we found problems we they were resolved
  without major code revisions

20
Future Work

• Support more generalized 3D structures
• More sophisticated error checking
• Support for more interactive objects
• Doors, Elevators, Moving platforms
• Integrate into a graphical level editor