Game and simulation development is a difficult process because there are many low level infrastructure concerns that need to be addressed. This is a barrier to development for inexperienced programmers and distracts from pure game (and simulation) design. MERTIS seeks to ease the development process by reducing the design to the important elements, removing software design from the simulation design. This is achieved by using an extensible scripting engine that allows all elements of a simulation to be specified outside the operation of the program and dynamically loaded at run-time. The only foreseen limitation at this time is that the graphics used in the script will be two-dimensional. This paper outlines the motivation for, and the development of, MERTIS. It further discusses the specific requirements, functional and non-functional, with the aid of the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
Frederick C. Harris Jr., Leandro Basallo, Ryan E.