The paper entitled “ACTA: A GENERAL PURPOSE FINITE STATE MACHINE (FSM) DESCRIPTION LANGUAGE FOR SMART GAME DESIGN”, presented by Dr. Emmanouil Zidianakis, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Human Computer – Interaction Laboratory of ICS-FORTH, received the Best Paper Award at the 11th International Conference on Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction, 21 – 23 July 2017, Lisbon, Portugal.
This work presents ACTA (ACTivity Analysis), a general purpose finite state machine (FSM) description language for rapid prototyping of smart games. ACTA facilitates smart game design by professionals who are not familiar with traditional programming languages. Professionals are able to model the game’s logic and interaction using a straightforward and intuitive notation which can be customized for every different game.
In order to support a customized scripting vocabulary, a reflection-oriented model was adopted allowing dynamic linking between ACTA generated rules and multiple data types. Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is the “glue layer” connecting ACTA’s scripting vocabulary with the application internals. Moreover, developers can use ACTA not only for developing event-driven sequential logic games, but also for applications of behavior composed of a finite number of states, transitions between those states and actions, as well as for applications based on rules driven workflows.
The paper’s authors are: Dr. Emmanouil Zidianakis, Dr. Margherita Antona (Human Computer – Interaction Laboratory of ICS-FORTH), and Professor Constantine Stephanidis (ICS-FORTH and University of Crete).
