SAM-an animated 3D programming language

Abstract

This article presents the animated visual 3D programming language SAM (Solid Agents in Motion) for parallel systems specification and animation. A SAM program is a set of interacting agents synchronously exchanging messages. The agent's behaviour is specified by means of production rules with a condition and a sequence of actions each. Actions are linearly ordered and execute when matching a rule. In SAM, main syntactic objects like agents, rules, and messages are 3D. These objects can have an abstract and a concrete, solid 3D presentation. While the abstract representation is for programming and debugging, the concrete representation is for animated 3D end-user presentations. After outlining the concepts of SAM this article gives two programming examples of 3D micro worlds and an overview of the programming environment.