Starlogo camera controls and enhancements

Abstract

The purpose of this research and development project was to further develop Starlogo, a block based programming environment to allow students to create 3D games and simulations to help them learn programming. I improved the Sarlogo "camera", a representation of the view within a 3D world. Starlogo has a 1 person perspective camera called "Agent Eye", a 3rd person perspective camera called "Agent View", and a customizable camera called "Aerial". Previously, the view could get obscured by the terrain and was disorienting at times making games difficult to play. The cameras now automatically move around obscuring terrain, have a larger field of vision, and move smoothly making games easier to control and fun to play. Users can also manually control the cameras and have a full range of vision within Starlogo worlds. These recent camera developments will be used in the next release of Starlogo and will greatly improve gameplay.