Prog&Play is a library designed for Real Time Strategy games (RTS). It enables players to program easily and interactively units of the video game. Currently, Prog&Play is integrated into the free Spring engine. This library is available in six programming languages: Ada, C, Java, OCaml, Python and Scratch.
Prog&Play and Kernel Panic (compatible with Spring engine) enable the design of serious games for programming practice. Three serious games have been designed:
- The first one (Kernel Panic Campaign: Digital War) immerses the player into an original scenario where s/he must program Bits, Bytes and Assemblers in order to raise an army and topple the enemy. The game scenario is divided into missions that take him/her around the story and bring him/her towards the final objective.
- The second one (Kernel Panic Campaign: Sili-Cium Alliance), provide a new campaign with new missions. With help of allies and a Pointer the player has to rebuild a base and recapture lost positions.
- The third one (Byte Battle) puts the player in competition with another player (that can be played by the computer). Each player controls the same number of Bytes. The objective consists in destroying all enemy Bytes. The end of the game depends on the strategy planned and its implementation.
Picture below shows Prog&Play functional structure. In order to use Prog&Play, you have to choose:
- an IDE in order to write your programs
- at least one programming interface for Prog&Play library
- one game compatible with Prog&Play
Scientific publications linked with Prog&Play:
- Journal papers:
- Mathieu Muratet, Elisabeth Delozanne, Patrice Torguet, Fabienne Viallet. Addressing teachers' concerns about the Prog&Play serious game with context adaptation. In: International Journal of Learning Technology, Inderscience Publishers, Vol. 7 N. 4, (en ligne), décembre 2012.
- Mathieu Muratet, Patrice Torguet, Fabienne Viallet, Jean-Pierre Jessel. Experimental feedback on Prog&Play: a serious game for programming practice. In: Computer Graphics Forum, Blackwell Publishing, Vol. 30 N. 1, p. 61-73, mars 2011.
- Mathieu Muratet, Patrice Torguet, Jean-Pierre Jessel, Fabienne Viallet. Towards a Serious Game to Help Students Learn Computer Programming. In: International Journal of Computer Games Technology, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Vol. 2009, (en ligne), 2009.
- Conference papers:
- Mathieu Muratet, Elisabeth Delozanne, Patrice Torguet, Fabienne Viallet. Serious Game and Students' Learning Motivation: Effect of Context Using Prog&Play (short paper). In: Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Chania, Crete, Greece, 14/06/2012-18/06/2012, Vol. 7315, Stefano A. Cerri, William J. Clancey, Giorgos Papadourakis, Kitty Panourgia (Eds.), Springer, LNCS 2012, p. 123-128, juin 2012.
- Mathieu Muratet, Patrice Torguet, Fabienne Viallet, Jean-Pierre Jessel. Experimental feedback on Prog&Play, a serious game for programming practice (education paper). In: Eurographics (EG 2010), Norrköping, 03/05/2010-07/05/2010, Eurographics, (support électronique), 2010 (selected by the Education board as one of two best papers at the Education program during Eurographics2010).
- Mathieu Muratet, Patrice Torguet, Jean-Pierre Jessel. Learning programming with an RTS based Serious Game (regular paper). In: Serious Games on the Move, Cambridge, UK, 23/06/2008-24/06/2008, Vol. ISBN: 978-3-211-09417-4, Otto Petrovic, Anthony Brand (Eds.), Springer, p. 181-192, juin 2008.
- Thesis :
- Mathieu Muratet. Conception, réalisation et évaluation d'un jeu sérieux de stratégie temps réel pour l'apprentissage des fondamentaux de la programmation (french). Thèse de doctorat, Université Paul Sabatier, décembre 2010.