A documental approach to adventure game development

In this paper, we propose a documental approach to the development of graphical adventure videogames. This approach is oriented to the production and maintenance of adventure videogames using the game’s storyboard as the key development element. The videogame storyboard is marked up with a suitable domain-specific descriptive markup language, from which the different art assets that are needed are referred to, and then the final executable videogame itself is automatically produced by processing the marked storyboard with a suitable processor for such a language. This document-oriented approach opens new authoring possibilities in videogame development and allows a rational collaboration between the different communities that participate in the development process: game writers, artists, and programmers. We have implemented the approach in the context of the project, by defining a suitable markup language for the storyboards (the language), and by building a suitable processor for this language (the engine).