Project: Arianne Project Development from Sourceforge.org by Stephen Johnson (partner: Ryan Logue) I. Title. Development of a strategy game on an open source online multiplayer frame. II. Problem Statement. An Introduction to the Purpose and Scope of the Research Project Arianne is an open source framework for creating online multiplayer video games. The framework and the games created and posted on the Arianne website (http://arianne.sourceforge.net/) are open source and are being worked on by a small group of programmers. No one has yet attempted creating a strategy game for the Arianne framework. In creating a game we are presented with the opportunity to expose new bugs and suggest new refinement's for the open source Arianne framework. III. Purpose. What is the subject of the project; what are the goals; The subject of this product is open source programming as well as game coding and production values. The goals are to produce a fully functional game and post it on the Arianne website as open source material for others to improve and embellish. what is the project about? The project is about having fun making a game, while learning to program in Python, integrate code into an online framework, and contribute to an ongoing open source project. Why is the project worth doing; The project is worth doing because it will keep us out of trouble for 230 minutes each week, teach us more about computer science, and contribute to an on going open source project. why is it a good topic for the Computer Systems Lab? This is a good topic for the Computer Systems Lab because it will bring the lab directors fame and fortune, as well being related to computer science and contributing to the open source community. Who will be interested in the results; how can the results be applied? Hopefully the other programmers working on the Arianne project will be interested because our work will contribute to the project they're involved in. We also hope that anyone who likes video games will take a look at our game. IV. Scope of Study. Describe the overall bounds of the work that will be involved, e.g., the research or data that will be required, and the relationships and variables that will need to be programmed, the expected results, etc. [Hints: Most students have a hard time finishing their projects because of the complexities they encounter. So you may have to narrow down your research/project objectives. You need to be specific about what you want to develop. Try drawing a boundary around the area of study that you think you can finish. You may have to select a more modest piece of your original project idea to work on.] The Arianne framework requires the game code to be written in Python. The framework itself is written in Java, and provides for translation from language to language. In order to finish this project we will have to learn a lot about how computers communicate over the Internet. Understanding this interaction and making all the write connections between our game code and the on line framework will be the most difficult part of this project. V. Background and review of current literature/research in this area. Demonstrate that you know the background of your topic. What kinds of research have been done before in this area? How have others gone about trying to solve the problems you want to tackle? Where is the "state of the art" today? In what ways may your approach build on and vary from previous work that has been done in your project area? If you wanted to bring another student up to date on what you're doing, what would be the most important thing to read or website(s) to look at for information? The Arianne framework has been around for a little while and one of its main games (Stendhal) has been a big contributor towards finding and correcting bugs in the code. As I mentioned before, we will be programming a strategy game which places different demands on the framework. Hopefully we will be able to expose different bugs in the framework and in this way contribute to the open source project. What's going on in this project is by no means "state of the art". The video game industry is miles ahead of anything going on with this project. The kicker is that this project is open source and the goal is to make a framework that an average Joe could sit down to and make a game. Open source programming is all about accesability. Start thinking about a bibliography: all references in this background and literature review section should be in your bibliography, but not everything that will be in your bibliography needs to be included here. Bibliography http://arianne.sourceforge.net/ any python tutorial book VI. Procedure and Methodology. You should show that you clearly understand your task, have a logical time plan, say, by the research, design, programming, sub-testing and testing phases of your project. Show that you have identified the resources that you will need. What are the tasks and sub-tasks that will have to be accomplished to meet your objectives? First we will have to download the necessary files and run through the tutorial to find out how the framework works and how to use it. What materials and programming language(s)/tools will be necessary? We will have to learn and write in Python, which is already accesable in the Sys Lab. What graphics will be needed? As far as graphics goes, I have training with Adobe Photoshop and will be able to whip up simple graphics for testing purposes. What data will be needed and how will they be collected? What method or processes will be used to test and analyze the data? What error analyses will be performed on the gathered data? VII. Expected Results & Value to Others What results do you expect to obtain from your project? How will the final results and analyses be presented (including visuals such as graphs and charts)? What contributions can these results give to future researchers? What time frame do you think you will need to accomplish the identified tasks and subtasks? What form will be used as a work breakdown of your individual tasks, and how they interrelate, for planning and tracking your work, e.g. PERT Network(s) or Task Chart(s)?