Abstract The process of video game development is complex, requiring proficiency in various technologies for design and implementation, including mastery of game engines and associated programming languages. Defining the behaviors of game elements within the necessary subprocesses poses a significant challenge. This challenge arises partly due to the utilization of general-purpose programming languages, which offer a wide range of options and allow tasks to be approached from different angles. This study introduces GameScript, a simplified scripting language designed for video game development. Based on principles of structured programming and inspired by the While language, GameScript focuses on essential game behavior definitions using a limited set of statements, including IF-THEN-ELSE selection and operations related to game elements to create and destroy them, or to modify properties. By using only numeric variables and simple arithmetic and relational operators, GameScript simplifies data handling and allows for the creation of various arcade games with straightforward syntax. Integrated into a multi-agent system game engine, GameScript has been validated through the successful implementation of diverse arcade game mechanics, demonstrating its effectiveness.

Abstract In recent years, indoor or at-home sports have experienced significant growth. However, monotony is a common challenge in these static physical activities. Exergames, a genre of video games that combines physical activity and entertainment, have emerged as an attractive solution. Nevertheless, running on a treadmill and engaging in other activities simultaneously presents additional challenges. The balance and concentration required during running while interacting with a video game demand a special focus on the design of the Exergame. This paper presents a mobile Exergame designed specifically for treadmill running, utilizing interaction with a smartwatch. The game offers natural environments where, through smartwatch technology, it interprets the player's movements, transforming them into running speed and interactive actions by detecting gestures within the game. The main objective is to provide users with a satisfying gaming experience tailored to the characteristics of treadmill running. Particular emphasis has been placed on prioritizing the playful component of this Exergame, recognizing its relevance in the context of treadmill running. To evaluate the achievement of objectives and the proposed hypothesis, a comparative study was conducted between the proposed Exergame and a treadmill running simulator. Participants experienced both experiences and subsequently completed the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ), specifically the In-game GEQ version. The results obtained indicate that participants had a better gaming experience in the Exergame than in the simulator. These findings highlight the importance of prioritizing the playful component in Exergames and provide guidelines for future improvements and developments in the field.

Abstract Vegetation plays a major role in the realistic display of outdoor scenes. However, manual plant placement can be tedious. For this reason this paper presents a new proposal in the field of procedural modeling of natural scenes. This method creates plant ecosystems that maximizes the covered space by optimizing an objective function subject to a series of constraints defined by a system of inequalities. This system includes the constraints of the environment taking into account characteristics of the terrain and the plant species involved. Once the inequality system has been defined, a solution will be obtained that tries to maximize the radius of the projected area of the trees and therefore the extension of the vegetation cover on the ground. The technique eliminates the trees that do not achieve a minimum growth radius, simulating the typical competitive process of nature. Results show the good performance and the high visual quality of the ecosystems obtained by the proposed technique. The use of this kind of optimization techniques could be used to solve other procedural modeling problems in other fields of application.

Abstract Augmented Reality techniques allow the user to visualize part of the real world through a display device by incorporating graphical information into the existing physical information. In this sense, it is important to know how the physical presence of the user in the augmented reality experience can affect the perception and evaluation of the product. To this end, this work presents a theoretical framework that explains how users perceive and evaluate the benefits and quality of augmentation with augmented reality through their physical presence, compared to visualizing the same experience through a video. The application was developed for the exhibition and sale of ceramic molds. Users viewed graphical information about the mold, placed between them and the screen while seeing themselves in the television as if it was a mirror. The experiments showed that the integration of the product into the environment and the spatial presence of the users had a positive effect on the perceived value in terms of usefulness and enjoyment, improved comfort in the purchase decision, and reinforced the overall opinion of the product.

We present a half-day course to review several information theory applications for computer graphics and visualization. Information theory tools, widely used in scientific fields such as engineering, physics, genetics and neuroscience, are also emerging as useful transversal tools in computer graphics and related fields. We introduce the basic concepts of information theory and how they map into application areas. Application areas in computer graphics include viewpoint selection, mesh saliency, scene exploration, ambient occlusion, geometry simplification, radiosity, adaptive ray-tracing and shape descriptors. Application areas in visualization are view selection for volume data, flow visualization, ambient occlusion, time-varying volume visualization, transfer function definition, time-varying volume visualization, iso-surface similarity maps and quality metrics. The applications fall broadly into two categories: the mapping of the problem to an information channel - as in viewpoint applications - and the direct use of measures such as entropy, Kullback-Leibler distance, Jensen-Shannon divergence, and f-divergences. These would be used to evaluate, for instance, the homogeneity of a set of samples being used as metrics. We will also discuss the potential applications of the information bottleneck method that allows us to progressively extract or merge information in a hierarchical structure.

Online virtual trade fairs are becoming more popular in the business world. They enable companies to establish a economic trade relationship with their customers. This article presents a multi-user virtual trade fair developed using the technology of 3D game engines. This makes it possible to obtain a high degree of realism and benefit from every advantage of using this software: very real lighting, cast shadows, collision detection, animation, etc. Moreover, the virtual trade fair is accessible online only requiring a plug-in to be installed on the visitor's computer for them to be able to enter the virtual world. In order to facilitate management of the business fair, our application builds the 3D objects automatically. Participants in the trade fair can customize their virtual stand and the application will generate the necessary code for it to be included in the rendered virtual world. In addition, some interactive objects can be added to the virtual stand to provide fair visitors with essential information such as business contact details, publicity catalogues and so on. Finally, users, who are represented by avatars, can interact with each other while they are visiting the virtual fair.

Geometric models of high complexity are rapidly becoming commonplace. These models are usually represented by means of complex triangle meshes that create three important problems: visualization, transmission and storage. Interest in multiresolution representation is very keen, because it is an efficient method for addressing these problems. We propose a new data structure: multiresolution ordered meshes (MOM), with low storage cost, and an efficient algorithm to extract any level of detail. Meshes are stored in order, depending on the simplification process. It allows one to work interactively with highly detailed models and to transmit them progressively over a communication line. The model construction is very simple because the data structure is based on lists, which can be easily implemented with arrays. Moreover, the extraction of a given level is linear with respect to the number of triangles at that level.

Space partitioning techniques are a useful means of organizing geometric models into data structures. Such data structures provide easy and efficient access to a wide range of computer graphics and visualization applications like real time rendering of large databases, collision detection, point classification, etc. Binary space partitioning (BSP) trees are one of the most successful space partitioning techniques, since they allow both object modeling and classification in one single structure. However, with the advent of networked graphics applications, there is an increasing need for multiresolution geometric representations. The paper presents a novel method that extends BSP trees to provide such a representation. The models we present have the advantages of both BSP trees and multiresolution representations. Nodes near the root of the BSP tree store coarser versions of the geometry, while leaf nodes provide the finest details of the representation. We present different algorithms to construct multiresolution BSP trees in 2D. Then we propose extensions of our methods to 3D space.