Mobile applications and game development are attractive fields in software engineering. Despite the advancement of programming languages and integrated development environments, there have always been many challenges for software and mobile game developers. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is a software engineering methodology that applies software modeling languages for modeling the problem domain. In this paradigm, the code is to be automatically generated from the models by applying different model transformations. Besides, manipulating models instead of code facilitates the discovery and resolution of errors due to the high level of abstraction. This study presents an approach and framework, called MAndroid, that generates Android-based classic multiplayer 2D board games in a fully automated fashion, relying on the concepts of MDE. Structural and behavioral dimensions of the game are first modeled in MAndroid. Models are then automatically transformed to code that can be run on any mobile phone and tablet running Android 4.4 or higher. In order to evaluate the proposed approach, three board games are fully implemented. Additionally, applicability, developer performance, simplicity and attractiveness of MAndroid are evaluated through a set of questionnaires. MAndroid is also evaluated technically by comparing it to other Android game-development frameworks. Results demonstrate the benefits of using MAndroid.

移动应用程序和游戏开发是软件工程中有吸引力的领域。尽管编程语言和集成开发环境不断进步，但对于软件和手机游戏开发者来说，始终存在许多挑战。模型驱动工程 (MDE) 是一种软件工程方法，它应用软件建模语言对问题域进行建模。在这种范式中，代码将通过应用不同的模型转换从模型中自动生成。此外，由于高度抽象，操作模型而不是代码有助于发现和解决错误。本研究提出了一种方法和框架，称为MAndroid，它以完全自动化的方式生成基于 Android 的经典多人 2D 棋盘游戏，依赖于 MDE 的概念。游戏的结构和行为维度首先在 MAndroid 中建模。然后模型会自动转换为可以在任何运行 Android 4.4 或更高版本的手机和平板电脑上运行的代码。为了评估所提出的方法，完全实施了三个棋盘游戏。此外，通过一组问卷评估 MAndroid 的适用性、开发者性能、简单性和吸引力。MAndroid 还通过与其他 Android 游戏开发框架进行比较来进行技术评估。结果证明了使用 MAndroid 的好处。