eNVyMyCar

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eNVyMyCar
a Multi-player Car Racing Game for Teaching
Computer Graphics
Fabio Ganovelli Massimiliano Corsini Visual
Computing Lab, ISTI - PISA
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Before starting...

• meet
• SoftOGL
• how to make your students hate you

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2006 appointed contract professor at University
Of Siena for the course of
Fundamental of Computer Graphics

• 7 weeks
• 42 hours (middle term test and lab included)?
• 9 students

Pisa
Siena
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Possible Course Program

• Introduction (history, uses, trends...)?
• general notions (rendering paradigms,
  hardware...)?
• tranformations
• rasterization
• lighting and texture mapping
• final project simple projects using OpenGL...

I could have done this way...
still...
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Course project SoftOGL.sf.net
Implementing a working OpenGL-like graphics
API benefit to make the students gain a
solid understanding of CG algorithms
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namespace softogl namespace impl //
DDA segment rasterization // void
DDASegmentRasterization(Segment2d s,int size1)
// .................implementation............
...... // // Bresehnam segment
rasterization // void BresenhamSegmentRasteri
zation(Segment2d s,int siz 1) //
.................implementation..................
// // Polygon Filling // void
PolygonFilling(Polygon2d p) //
.................implementation.................
// // // end impl namespace
sdk // ... // end sdk
students iplementation
me environment and SDK tools
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SoftOGL
first day, Feb 27, 2006
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last day, April 9, 2006
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Mistakes

• programming skills (
• little sense of achievement (
• way too much work for the number of credits given
  by the CG course (

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2007 My collegue Massimiliano was appointed
contract professor at University Of Ferrara
Ferrara
Pisa
Siena
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Goals of the course project

• Give them a reachable target
• Generate cooperation and competition between
  students
• Make them learn some CG
• Set the students in a common framework without
  too much specialized tasks
• Do not burden them with non-CG problems

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yeah..
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eNVyMyCar.sf.net
a Multi-player Car Racing Game for Teaching
Computer Graphics
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Concept

• A software framework implementing a simple
  multi-player car-racing game over a LAN
• Student's task implement a client for the game
• RENDER the scene interactively
• take the user input

doesn't it remind you something?...
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Goals of the course project

• Give them a reachable target
• Generate cooperation and competition between
  students
• Make them learn some CG
• Set the students in a common framework without
  too much specialized tasks
• Do not burden them with non-CG problems

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Envy factor

• At any moment, a client may send a snapshot of
  its view to all the others connected

NVMC_Server
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Goals of the course project

• Give them a reachable target
• Generate cooperation and competition between
  students
• Make them learn some CG
• Set the students in a common framework without
  too much specialized tasks
• Do not burden them with non-CG problems

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NVMC Architecture
\
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include ltgame_client.hgt extern NvmcClient
cli void draw_scene() cli.UpdateScene() /
...../ cli.UpdateScreenshots() void
process_event(....) switch(..) case ...
cli.Command(COMMAND_INCREASE_SPEED) break case
... cli.Command(COMMAND_DECREASE_SPEED)
break case ... cli.Command(COMMAND_TURN_LEFT)
break case ... cli.Command(COMMAND_TURN_RIGHT
) break case ... cli.Command(COMMAND_BRAKE)
break case ... cli.Command(SEND_SCREENSHOT)br
eak int launch_viewer() ......
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making a circuit

• NVMC provides a simple code to convert a bitmap
  in a circuit

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Implementation

• the simpler the better
• C
• VCG for geometric concepts (vcg.sf.net)?
• QT for networking and multi threading
• whatever you/they like for GUI (sdl -glut -qt)?
• used with Windows ( .net), Mac (xcode), Linux
  (eclipse/Kdevelop)

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Goals of the course project

• Give them a reachable target
• Generate cooperation and competition between
  students
• Make them learn some CG
• Set the students in a common framework without
  too much specialized tasks
• Do not burden them with non-CG problems

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Encourage clean code

• code must be modular if student A includes
  features written by student B it is a bonus for
  both
• Q How do you know who did it first?
• A1 trust them
• source code is open envymycar.sf.net
• CVS repository
• A2 have a look to the commit timestamps

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Goals of the course project

• Give them a reachable target
• Generate cooperation and competition between
  students
• Make them learn some CG
• Set the students in a common framework without
  too much specialized tasks
• Do not burden them with non-CG problems

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Conclusion

• NVMC was used in 2 courses in 2006 and in one
  course in 2007 (just finished)?
• The feedback of the 39 students of these courses
  was very satisfactory (after the usual
  it's-too-much-work default complaint)?
• problems can be in the background knowledge of
  c and the bit of Stl they need to know.

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Future Work

• Implementation is quite poor
• no collision detection
• only flat circuits
• ...other things we can put there having time..
• Set up a public NVMC server for students of
  different campus to show off

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Thanks!
http//envymycar.sf.net
thanks to all our students who worked with
nvmc Renata Otfinoswka for all the drawings