Easy creation of network-based interactive animations using Islay

This paper describes an implementation of our tool for authoring network-based interactive animations. The tool is named Islay. The interactive animation addressed in this paper is one of computer animations whose scenario is varied according to key and mouse inputs by viewers. An animation made by the tool is constructed as a collection of characters. The behavior of a character is defined by a state-transition diagram. The GUI editor makes it possible to create a simple animation by mouse manipulation within half a minute, if the prepared pictures are used. The animation interpreter in the tool serves multi viewers who operate each network-connected computer. The core routine of the interpreter runs on each viewer's computer in this case. The communication between the computers is implemented using our software DSM (distributed shared memory) library. This paper shows the implementation details of the interpreter, as well as the brief overview of the rest of the tool.