Node-Based Native Solution to Procedural Game Level Generation

A Geração Procedural de Conteúdo (PCG) aplicada ao domínio do desenvolvimento de jogos tem se tornado um tópico proeminente, com um número crescente de implementações e aplicações. Soluções de PCG standalone e plugin, regidas por interfaces baseadas em nós e outros modelos de alto nível, enfrentam limitações em termos de integração, interatividade e responsividade quando inseridas no processo de desenvolvimento de jogos. Essas limitações afetam a experiência do utilizador e inibem o verdadeiro potencial que estes sistemas podem oferecer. Adotando uma metodologia de Action-Research, realizou-se um estudo preliminar com entrevistas a especialistas da área. A avaliação da pertinência desta metodologia nativa e da abordagem visual mais adequada para a sua interface foi efetuada através de uma série de protótipos. Posteriormente, foi implementado um protótipo funcional e conduzido um estudo de caso com uma amostra constituída por um grupo de especialistas em PCG e de desenvolvedores de jogos. Os participantes realizaram uma série de exercícios que estavam documentados com os respetivos tutoriais. Após a conclusão dos exercícios propostos, os participantes avaliaram a relevância da solução e da experiência do utilizador através de um questionário. No desenvolvimento de uma metodologia nativa de PCG baseado em nós, integrado no motor de jogo, identificamos limitações e concluímos que existem diversos desafios ainda por superar no que diz respeito a uma implementação completa de um sistema complexo e amplo.Procedural Content Generation (PCG) applied to game development has become a prominent topic with increasing implementations and use cases. However, existing standalone and plugin PCG solutions, which use Node-based interfaces and other high-level approaches, face limitations in integration, interactivity, and responsiveness within the game development pipeline. These limitations hinder the overall user experience and restrain the true potential of PCG systems. Adopting an Action-Research methodology, a preliminary interview was conducted with experts in the field. The relevance assessment of this native methodology and the most suitable visual approach for its interface was carried out through a series of prototypes. Subsequently, a functional prototype was implemented, and a case study was conducted using a sample consisting of a group of PCG experts and game developers. The participants performed a series of exercises documented with the respective tutorials. After completing the exercises, the solution's relevancy and user experience were evaluated through a questionnaire. In developing a native node-based PCG methodology integrated into the game engine, we identified limitations. We concluded that several challenges are yet to be overcome regarding fully implementing a complex and extensive system

Enhancing Feedback to Students in Automated Diagram Assessment

Automated assessment is an essential part of eLearning. Although comparatively easy for multiple choice questions (MCQs), automated assessment is more challenging when exercises involve languages used in computer science. In this particular case, the assessment is more than just grading and must include feedback that leads to the improvement of the students\u27 performance. This paper presents ongoing work to develop Kora, an automated diagram assessment tool with enhanced feedback, targeted to the multiple diagrammatic languages used in computer science. Kora builds on the experience gained with previous research, namely: a diagram assessment tool to compute differences between graphs; an IDE inspired web learning environment for computer science languages; and an extensible web diagram editor. Kora has several features to enhance feedback: it distinguishes syntactic and semantic errors, providing specialized feedback in each case; it provides progressive feedback disclosure, controlling the quality and quantity shown to each student after a submission; when possible, it integrates feedback within the diagram editor showing actual nodes and edges on the editor itself

Child programming: an adequate domain specific language for programming specific robots

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia InformáticaDue to the limited existence of dedicated robot programming solutions for children (as well as scientific studies), this work presents the design and implementation of a visual domain specific language (DSL), using the Model-Driven Development approach(MDD), for programming robotics and automaton systems with the goal to increase productivity and simplify the software development process. The target audience for this DSL is mostly children with ages starting from 8 years old. Our work implied to use the typical Software Language Engineering life cycle, starting by an elaborate study of the user’s profile, based on work in cognitive sciences, and a Domain analysis. Several visual design paradigms were considered during the design phase of our DSL, and we have focused our studies on the Behavior Trees paradigm, a paradigm intensively used in the gaming industry. Intuitive, simplicity and a small learning curve were the three main concerns considered during the design and development phases. To help validating the DSL and the proposed approach, we used a concrete robotic product for children built with the Open Source Arduino platform as target domain. The last part of this work was dedicated to study the adequacy of the language design choices, compared to other solutions (including commercial technologies), to the target users with different ages and different cognitive-development stages. We have also studied the benefits of the chosen paradigm to domain experts’ proficient on robot programming in different paradigms to determine the possibility to generalize the solution to different user profiles

Bridging the gap between textual and formal business process representations

Tesi en modalitat de compendi de publicacionsIn the era of digital transformation, an increasing number of organizations are start ing to think in terms of business processes. Processes are at the very heart of each business, and must be understood and carried out by a wide range of actors, from both technical and non-technical backgrounds alike. When embracing digital transformation practices, there is a need for all involved parties to be aware of the underlying business processes in an organization. However, the representational complexity and biases of the state-of-the-art modeling notations pose a challenge in understandability. On the other hand, plain language representations, accessible by nature and easily understood by everyone, are often frowned upon by technical specialists due to their ambiguity. The aim of this thesis is precisely to bridge this gap: Between the world of the techni cal, formal languages and the world of simpler, accessible natural languages. Structured as an article compendium, in this thesis we present four main contributions to address specific problems in the intersection between the fields of natural language processing and business process management.A l’era de la transformació digital, cada vegada més organitzacions comencen a pensar en termes de processos de negoci. Els processos són el nucli principal de tota empresa i, com a tals, han de ser fàcilment comprensibles per un ampli ventall de rols, tant perfils tècnics com no-tècnics. Quan s’adopta la transformació digital, és necessari que totes les parts involucrades estiguin ben informades sobre els protocols implantats com a part del procés de digitalització. Tot i això, la complexitat i biaixos de representació dels llenguatges de modelització que actualment conformen l’estat de l’art sovint en dificulten la seva com prensió. D’altra banda, les representacions basades en documentació usant llenguatge natural, accessibles per naturalesa i fàcilment comprensibles per tothom, moltes vegades són vistes com un problema pels perfils més tècnics a causa de la presència d’ambigüitats en els textos. L’objectiu d’aquesta tesi és precisament el de superar aquesta distància: La distància entre el món dels llenguatges tècnics i formals amb el dels llenguatges naturals, més accessibles i senzills. Amb una estructura de compendi d’articles, en aquesta tesi presentem quatre grans línies de recerca per adreçar problemes específics en aquesta intersecció entre les tecnologies d’anàlisi de llenguatge natural i la gestió dels processos de negoci.Postprint (published version

Interactions with Prompt Problems: A New Way to Teach Programming with Large Language Models

Large Language Models (LLMs) have upended decades of pedagogy in computing education. Students previously learned to code through \textit{writing} many small problems with less emphasis on code reading and comprehension. Recent research has shown that free code generation tools powered by LLMs can solve introductory programming problems presented in natural language with ease. In this paper, we propose a new way to teach programming with Prompt Problems. Students receive a problem visually, indicating how input should be transformed to output, and must translate that to a prompt for an LLM to decipher. The problem is considered correct when the code that is generated by the student prompt can pass all test cases. In this paper we present the design of this tool, discuss student interactions with it as they learn, and provide insights into this new class of programming problems as well as the design tools that integrate LLMs.Comment: accepted for CHI 202

An experimental evaluation of tools for grading concurrent programming exercises

Automatic grading based on unit tests is a key feature of massive open online courses (MOOC) on programming, as it allows instant feedback to students and enables courses to scale up. This technique works well for sequential programs, by checking outputs against a sample of inputs, but unfortunately it is not adequate for detecting races and deadlocks, which precludes its use for concurrent programming, a key subject in parallel and distributed computing courses. In this paper we provide a hands-on evaluation of verification and testing tools for concurrent programs, collecting a precise set of requirements, and describing to what extent they can or can not be used for this purpose. Our conclusion is that automatic grading of concurrent programming exercises remains an open challenge.This work is financed by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within project LA/P/0063/2020