Balisage Paper: GameX — Event-Based Programming with XML Technology

Abstract

GameX, a student project at Technische Universität München, is a 'serious' browser game that is intended to further systemic thinking in players. GameX is implemented almost exclusively with XML technology, which makes the game essentially platform independent. XML lends itself to involving domain experts in all phases of development, and to the model-driven designs which can adapt easily to changing requirements. Browser games, however, are quintessentially event-driven, reactive systems — how can such applications be built using the XML technology stack? GameX uses XForms, SVG, XProc, XSLT, and XQuery, as well as the native HTML DOM to put the event-driven programming paradigm into practice on an implementation platform of XML technology.