Islay3D—A Programming Environment for Authoring Interactive 3D Animations in Terms of State-Transition Diagram

Dandy Ling Kwong, Michitoshi Niibori, Shusuke Okamoto, Masaru Kamada, Tatsuhiro Yonekura

Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Ibaraki University, Hitachi, Japan.
Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ibaraki University, Hitachi, Japan.
Graduate School of Science and Technology, Seikei University, Musashino, Japan.

DOI: 10.4236/jsea.2014.73019                

Abstract

An educational programming language is a programming language that is designed primarily as a learning instrument and not so much as a tool for writing programs for production. Three-dimensional (3D) interactive animations provide an effective means to engage the attention of the audience to learn programming language. Traditionally, creating 3D games had been difficult as it requires specialized programming skills. However, it had been proven that the state-transition diagram, which is the most fundamental principle for automata, is intuitively so comprehensive that even children can create programs for interactive animations and video games in the two-dimensional world. Islay3D is a programming environment for authoring interactive 3D animations based on this concept. In this paper, the Islay3D animation language is introduced, where a character is modeled as an object, and its behavior is defined in term of a set of state-transition diagrams. The interpretation of the state-transition diagrams to JavaScript is also presented. Finally, the web-based programming environment is introduced. With the web-based platform, the public will be able express their creativity in creating interactive 3D animations and video games easily from within their browser.

Keywords

3D; Visual Programming Language; Computer Games; State Transition Diagram; Web Service

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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