A Service Oriented Architecture Solution for Gaming Simulation Suites

Abstract

Serious Gaming is becoming a popular method for training and problem solving in companies. One of the companies who has taken an interest in this is ProRail. Together with the faculty of Technology, Policy and Management of the Delft University of Technology they started a project to develop a gaming simulation suite for training and decision making purposes, called the Railway Gaming Suite. In order to connect the games and simulators of the suite a solid architecture is needed. Three architectures were picked out to see if they are suitable for this, namely: Service Oriented Architectures, High Level Architecture and FAMAS Simulation Backbone. Using the Railway Gaming Suite as a case study, we have extracted requirements (like performance and flexibility) for an architecture for gaming simulation suites using the Architectural Trade-off Analysis Method. These requirements are used to determine the suitability of the three architectures. In this thesis the research on the suitability of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) is presented. A prototype SOA was created, called Service Oriented Gaming and Simulation (SOGS). This prototype was used to test the performance requirement for the evaluation. The suitability was investigated by evaluating SOA to see if it is able to support the requirements we found. We subsequently also compared the suitability of the other architectures. Intermediate results of this thesis project were used to help with the decision for selecting an architecture for the Railway Gaming Suite.