![](bga.png)
case, the glass case can take advantage of the geom-
etry’s bounding-boxes to check for the intersection
of a geometry’s local bounding-box edge with an-
other. The bounding-boxes provided by the geome-
tries can allow the glass case to implement the ori-
ented bounding-box concept (He, 1999).
In the future, video recording functionality will be
added. This will allow a user to record and display
unique character model animations without running
the Runaway application or having access to the in-
ternet.
To gauge Runaway’s helpfulness, it is the current
intention to design and perform usage tests on object
oriented programming beginners to determine if pro-
gramming visually (in Runaway) provides a smoother
transition to text-based programming languages than
other available systems.
10 CONCLUSIONS
Runaway introduces the glass case which reduces the
number of joint manipulation calculations and the use
of forward-kinematics reduces the number of calcula-
tions that the developer has to be involved with. Char-
acter models provide visual objects that can be ma-
nipulated by the application of user controlled com-
mands. Inserting these character models into a Adobe
Flash-based, web-accessible visual programming sys-
tem allows any user to perform 3D manipulations on-
line. The implementation approach of Runaway has
led to a compact codebase of less than 5,000 lines of
code.
Runaway is an advanced prototype because it has
the ability to do general animations based around the
prototypical spider and humanoid character models.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank Huw Evans for his as-
tute guidance (without which the project would have
been largely unfocussed) and for his assistance in the
writing of this paper.
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