2009/09/09 by Benjamin Sowell, Alan Demers, Sowell, Benjamin +9
Computer Science · #Advanced Data Storage Technologies #Advanced Database Systems and Queries #Artificial Intelligence in Games #Databases (cs.DB) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Multiagent Systems (cs.MA) #cs.DB #cs.MA
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0909.1770
CIDR 2009
arxiv created 2009/09/09 · openalex publication_date 2009/09/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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 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.