siegelanguage

Siegelanguage is a domain-specific language designed to describe and simulate siege scenarios in strategy games, historical reconstructions, and related computational models. It provides abstractions for fortifications, siege engines, logistics, morale, and terrain, enabling researchers and game designers to script complex interactions without extensive imperative boilerplate.

Origin and development

Siegelanguage emerged in academic and game development contexts in the early 2010s to standardize the representation of siege phenomena. It has evolved through community-driven revisions and reference implementations, with a formal specification that emphasizes portability across engines and platforms.

Design and features

The language emphasizes declarative definitions and data-driven rules. Core concepts include Fortification, Engine, Attack, Defender, SupplyLine, Morale, and Weather. It supports stateful models, time-step execution, and deterministic simulation. A built-in library covers common siege entities, statistics, and effect models, while plugin hooks enable custom calculations and integration with external data sources such as terrain maps and logistics networks. Siegelanguage aims for readability, reproducibility, and interoperability between tools and game engines.

Syntax and semantics

Siegelanguage uses a block-structured, human-readable syntax. Entities are defined with properties and constraints; actions and events express rules that trigger state transitions when conditions are met. The language favors clear naming, explicit timing, and testable behavior, with deterministic results to facilitate verification and scenario replication.

Example

fortification "Castle Black" {

walls: 15

towers: 7

defenders: 1200

}

engine "Trebuchet" {

range: 380

ammo: 30

}

rule breach_if_defense_low {

when defenders < 800

then event: "breach"

}

Implementations and ecosystem

Open-source runtimes and toolchains provide interpretation or compilation of Siegelanguage code into engine-usable formats (for example JSON or XML representations). The specification is maintained by a community group, with ongoing work on compatibility, testing, and extensions.

See also

Constructed languages, domain-specific languages, game simulations.