Reuse without Compromising Performance: Industrial Experience from RPG Software Product Line for Mobile Devices

It is often believed that reusable solutions, being generic, must necessarily compromise performance. In this paper, we consider a family of RolePlaying Games (RPGs). We analyzed similarities and differences among four RPGs. By applying a reuse technique of XVCL, we built an RPG product line architecture (RPG-PLA) from which we could derive any of the four RPGs. We built into the RPG-PLA a number of performance optimization strategies that could benefit any of the four (and possibly other similar) RPGs. By comparing the original vs. the new RPGs derived from the RPG-PLA, we demonstrated that reuse allowed us to achieve improved performance, both speed and memory utilization, as compared to each game developed individually. At the same time, our solution facilitated rapid development of new games, for new mobile devices, as well as ease of evolving with new features the RPG-PLA and custom games already in use.