Regular Games -- an Automata-Based General Game Playing Language

TL;DR

Regular Games (RG) is a new automata-based GGP system that offers efficient game rule representation and faster forward model generation, improving over existing systems like Ludii and Regular Boardgames.

Contribution

RG introduces a minimal, automata-based language for defining finite turn-based games, enhancing computational efficiency and supporting comprehensive game design tools.

Findings

RG outperforms existing GGP systems in speed.

The low-level automata language simplifies automatic processing.

RG includes a full ecosystem with editing, visualization, and benchmarking tools.

Abstract

We propose a new General Game Playing (GGP) system called Regular Games (RG). The main goal of RG is to be both computationally efficient and convenient for game design. The system consists of several languages. The core component is a low-level language that defines the rules by a finite automaton. It is minimal with only a few mechanisms, which makes it easy for automatic processing (by agents, analysis, optimization, etc.). The language is universal for the class of all finite turn-based games with imperfect information. Higher-level languages are introduced for game design (by humans or Procedural Content Generation), which are eventually translated to a low-level language. RG generates faster forward models than the current state of the art, beating other GGP systems (Regular Boardgames, Ludii) in terms of efficiency. Additionally, RG's ecosystem includes an editor with LSP, automaton visualization, benchmarking tools, and a debugger of game description transformations.