Design Doc - Kevin Modzelewski`s Home Page
Contents
1. since was sometimes confused about my modules 4 3 2 XML Parser While the XML Parser ended up satisfying all the requirements in the end it did not include full support for all of GB Arcade s features This was partly due to the fact that certain aspects of the parser were not well thought out initially and forced time to be spent on revision that could have otherwise been spent improving the parser 4 4 Known Bugs and Limitations 4 4 1 Editor There is a known bug in the editor It is not easily reproduced When a Gizmo is clicked in the editing mode it is painted by a certain graphic that allows the user to know that it has been clicked Upon exiting the editing mode that graphic should disappear and the original graphic should display However sometimes that graphic does not disappear There is also a limitation in the editor in the sense that future developers will have a hard time adding more user input TextFields The program was made without much design thought to the input space with the layout mostly taken from NetBeans although if the user uses NetBeans it would be fine There are also a couple of minor annoyances in the editor If the user disallows overlap he she cannot edit certain properties of a Gizmo if it is in an illegal spot unless it is a key mapping edit For example intuitively one should only be unable to update an illegally placed Gizmo only if the position is being edited Things like texture should2. 6 tested 7 tested 8 tested 9 tested Glass box required functionality 1 Scroll pane s viewable bounds correctly update as one undoes redoes actions Testing 1 tested 8 KeyableAction Black box required functionality 1 the set of Gizmos specified should be activated upon the invocation of the KeyableAction Testing 1 testing done for implemented classes 9 WelcomeScreen Black box required functionality 1 user should see three buttons Start New Game Load Saved Game and Quit 2 Start New Game should load a default world and close the window 3 Load Saved Game should bring up a JFileChooser so that the user can load an XML file Testing 1 tested 2 tested 3 tested 10 WorldModel Black box required functionality 1 public method allows XMLParser to add gizmos and triggers to the WorldModel 2 calling setDefaultFlipperKeys correctly initializes keys to the gizmos they are supposed to activate Testing 1 XMLParser was used to extensively test the loading scheme 2 Required functionality verified IV Reflection 4 1 Graphical User Interface Writing the GUI as expected took a lot of brute force tedious work especially with the menu items buttons and text fields There was a fair amount of thinking involved however in getting the game together by putting together all the pieces was happy to know about other parts of the project although it was only a titular recognition knew all about my GUI but not much
3. APPROVE OPTION is toggled whenever a user chooses a desired file Testing 1 Required functionality verified 2 GamePlay Black box required functionality 1 Welcome screen should show up 2 GamePlayModel and PaletteModel must be correctly loaded Testing 1 The window shows up without too much delay correctly 2 Required functionality verified 3 GamePlayModel Black box required functionality 1 correctly initializes 2 correctly runs the game at rate framerate 3 there is at most one thread that runs a game on a world at a given time 4 keyboard input correctly invokes the functions they are linked to 5 stalling functions such as quit load or pressing escape to go back to the welcome screen which requires a dialog box to pop up and the user to respond always pauses the game first if the game is in play mode afterwards the game mode is reverted to what it was before the dialog box pop up In particular if the original state was in pause mode no changes would occur Testing 1 required functionality verified 2 checked via observing intervals of update 3 checked via asking for Thread activeCount and checking whether the count increases every time load a game world 4 tested via pressing keys that were predefined 5 tested via trying all possible starting game modes 4 PaletteModel Black box required functionality 1 clicking various components that show up to the user should be reflected as changes in the internal mod
4. Ball While Balls are in many ways very similar to Gizmos an explicit distinction is made for three primary reasons and a variety of other minor reasons First Balls are not only mobile but have absolutely no anchor and can in theory travel to any point in a game world This is a property that no Gizmo has Because of this Balls contain internal state for velocity gravity and friction all of which Gizmos never have Second every collision involves at least one Ball meaning that collision checking is always done by iterating through the Balls in the game and checking for collisions between those Balls and other objects Third Balls are restricted to being spheres so they are composed solely of a PhysicsSphere physics primitive and thus unlike Gizmos do not contain an entire PhysicsModel 2 2 1 2 Gizmo All specific Gizmos extend the Gizmo java abstract class Internally Gizmos contain a PhysicsModel which is a collection of the five physics primitives to represent its physical properties Each specific Gizmo contains the appropriate constructors and mutators to provide the desired functionality Several mutators are common to all Gizmos and can be found in the abstract class namely mutators for position color texture coefficient of reflection rotation and delay The following is a set of the most common Gizmos that can be found in the GB Arcade world Note that some of the more complex Gizmos are not currently supported in the ed
5. GameObjects contain two major things a GraphicsProperties object which encapsulates the information needed for drawing an object and a list of default triggers which are always associated with specific instances GameObjects For instance since collisions are handled through the use of a SimpleCollisionTrigger SimpleCollisionTrigger is a default trigger for balls GraphicsProperties can be directly created directly from its corresponding GameObject s physical model and this is how it is almost always done in the system but it leaves open the possibility of an object being drawn differently than its actual physical representation in the game world One application of this is that it allows the creation of objects that appear to pass through each other without modifying the collisions framework of the system The appearance of an object can be specified either through a texture file or a color Since colors can be created with a level of transparency objects can as well Along these lines objects can and in many instances of the provided GB Arcade game worlds be created to be invisible or to be drawn in wireframe Graphics is split into three main classes First TextureHandler takes care of creating loading and applying textures Second PrimitivesDrawer takes care of actually drawing the physics primitives on the screen Third WorldDrawer pulls everything together handles camera movement and has the main drawing function 2 2 1 1
6. clicking on a gizmo when create gizmo is toggled should untoggle creation and focus on that gizmo 10 in editing mode exiting editing mode should relinquish focus on any gizmo and untoggle the creation of gizmo 11 in editing mode saving should exit edit mode first 12 during play mode no selected ness graphics should remain from editing mode during editing mode clicking on a gizmo gives it selected ness graphics Testing 1 tested 2 tested 3 tested 4 tested 5 tested 6 tested 7 tested 8 tested 9 tested 10 tested 11 tested 12 tested but sometimes found problems 6 Screen Black box required functionality 1 abstract class should implement the key inputs correctly Testing 1 tested 7 PaletteScreen Black box required functionality 1 panels display as desired 2 undo correctly undoes last action 3 redo works 4 done undone action items show up correctly in the history list 5 clicking on the history list performs desired actions specified earlier 6 clicking on a Gizmo to create makes the button have a yellow background with blue border 7 menu items work properly 8 user is able exit by pressing menu or button 9 menubar should have the following structure is a separator Edit Undo Redo Check for Gizmo overlap Refresh Exit Testing 1 tested 2 tested with respect to each action All of the types of actions were tested as well as variations for each action 3 tested as with undo 4 tested 5 tested
7. file dialog Of course activating Save Game As always brings up a save file dialog If the game is currently in play the game is put into pause mode If the user does not choose a file to save GB Arcade reverts back to its previous mode If the user chooses a well formed file GB Arcade saves the game and returns to play mode Ifthe user chooses a badly formed file GB Arcade reverts back to its previous mode and displays an error message Aside from the error message the program proceeds as if nothing happened Note that the title bar of the frame changes to reflect a successful save Also users do not have to include the extension xml in saving but may choose to do so For example saving as asdf is the same as saving as asdf xml as both will result in the output being written to asdf xml 1 3 2 3 Starting a New Game New games can be started through the following locations Welcome Screen This can be done simply by selecting Start New Game Play Screen This can be done simply by selecting the File menu and choosing Start New Game shortcut Ctrl N 1 3 2 4 Entering Editing Mode Editing mode can be started through the Play Screen by selecting the Game Play menu and choosing Go to Edit Mode shortcut Alt E Toggling the edit mode brings up a palette screen to the left of the main screen The palette screen is titled Palette and only has the close button available on its frame borde
8. immediate exists GB Arcade Before elaborating on the other two buttons first an introduction of some basic game functions that will appear throughout this section are in order 1 3 2 1 File Loading Files can be loaded through the following locations Welcome Screen This can be done simply by pressing Load Saved Game Play Screen This can be done by selecting the File menu and choosing Load Game shortcut Ctrl L Activating this brings up a load file dialog If a game is currently running it is put into pause mode Subsequently there are the following possibilities Ifthe user does not choose a file to load GB Arcade reverts back to its previous mode If the user chooses a well formed file GB Arcade loads the saved game and immediately enters play mode Ifthe user chooses a badly formed file GB Arcade reverts back to its previous mode and displays an error message No new files are loaded and aside from the error message the program proceeds as if nothing happened Note that the title bar of the frame changes to reflect a successful load 1 3 2 2 File Saving Files can be saved through the following locations Play Screen This can be done simply by selecting the File menu and choosing Save Game shortcut Ctrl S or choosing Save Game As Subsequently there are the following possibilities If there has not been a previous successful save or load selecting Save brings up a save
9. networked multiplayer so users can even play with people on other computers Upon startup of games with networked multiplayer support GB Arcade asks the user if they would like to play multiplayer If the user chooses multiplayer they can elect to be the server or the client for the game If server is selected the user should give a friend the server s hostname IP address to connect to Similarly if client is selected the user must provide the hostname IP address of the server to connect to Demo This game world simply displays some of the functionality of the GB Arcade system For instance delays exist in various Gizmos including the Flipper which has a delay of 0 25 seconds and the Absorber on the bottom which has a delay of 1 second Additionally Demo includes a small Teleporter below the Flipper which teleports Balls back to their original position Finally the camera can be set to rotate around the scene Each of the five Balls have associated Triggers which set the Color of anything a Ball hits to be the same Color as the Ball itself Thus when two Balls collide they switch colors Hotkeys note that hotkeys are CASE sensitive a Flips the flipper r Toggles camera rotation Breakout The object of Breakout is to break all of the blocks without allowing the Ball to hit the bottom of the screen Players prevent this from happening by moving the provided Paddle left and right to reflect the Ball In addition this Paddle can be
10. spheres of PhysicsModels for example is done automatically from the smaller bounding spheres of each PhysicsObject in them In addition PhysicsModels encapsulate the addition of basic geometric shapes in a manner that includes the additional edges and points that are needed for collision detection For instance adding a rectangular box with the edges and points is supported allowing for greater ease of use and more realistic collision detection Goal 2 PhysicsModels support rotation and translation by delegating to the appropriate behavior in each PhysicsObject The physics package supports movement in the absence of external forces and by allowing the velocity of objects to be set it allows for external handling of gravity and friction Goal 3 Collision detection and handling are performed separately in the system At each time step the physics engine detects the next collision by finding the minimum time for each ball to collide with the PhysicsModel of each other GameObject Each PhysicsModel handles detecting collisions between any ball and itself by delegating to the appropriate methods within its constituent PhysicsObjects After collisions are detected the game is updated until the collision and it is then processed to change the velocity of the ball based on the collision processing of each PhysicsModel which again delegate to the constituent PhysicsObjects Note that in this process it is imperative that every collision in
11. the system involves at least on ball since this means that collision detection and handling only need to be done between the primitive PhysicsObjects and balls Bounding spheres are used in this collision detection algorithm to optimize collision detection Each PhysicsModel has a bounding sphere that moves with it and if the ball will not be inside the bounding sphere before the collision time the ball is not checked against the PhysicsObjects in that PhysicsModel 1 5 2 World Simulation Graphically the system must actually be able to keep up with and display the game world This requires going forward in time and calculating how the game progresses from both a physics perspective described above and from a graphical perspective Since it is possible for a ball to move 400 times its diameter in one second it is necessary to be able to handle a wide spectrum of possible interactions From the highest level perspective the game world is processed time step to time step Within each time step the system first determines the time until the first collision If this time is larger than the time step the system simply updates all of the objects in the game by the time step Otherwise all of the objects in the game are updated by the time until the first collision the effects of the collision are taken into account and then the processing of this time step continues In addition user input such as key presses that occurs within a specific t
12. used to aim the Ball since it is curved In the traditional Breakout game players lose a life when the Ball hits the bottom though in this game it simply bounces off of the bottom There is also a box at the very top of the map which contains another Ball bouncing around inside it If this box is struck the other Ball is released thus doubling the player s block breaking potential Hotkeys Z Moves the paddle to the left Moves the paddle to the right MonkeyBall MonkeyBall is similar in spirit to the classic hand held Labyrinth game where players tilt the board to move the ball around while trying to avoid the holes However with MonkeyBall the Ball is being moved around in full 3D environments by tilting the world to navigate the Ball to the goal In addition players can also cause the Ball to jump which helps them to reach farther locations and in some cases makes some shortcuts possible The provided worlds include multiple 3D elements including rotating gizmos The camera is set to automatically follow the Ball and there are multiple levels Hotkeys Arrows These tilt the world so that the ball will accelerate in the direction pressed Multiplayer support After connecting to another player the server chooses which level to play Both players then play the level independently but can also see a Ghost Ball which indicates where the other player s Ball currently is While there is no limit to how many people can watch each ot
13. 6 170 Gizmoball ARCADE Final Design Team se51 Hyun Soo Kim Kevin Modzelewski Albert Ni Yi Sun Il REQUIREMENTS 1 1 Overview Gizmoball ARCADE also known as GB Arcade provides users with a 3D environment for designing and playing gizmoball a game similar to pinball but which also contains a variety of additional features In addition GB Arcade comes with a menagerie of arcade style games and multiplayer support for certain games GB Arcade contains both playing and editing modes In playing mode users control various components which they may use to attempt to accomplish various objectives depending on the nature of the specific game in action In editing mode users can edit the state of the game world by placing or removing gizmos as well as by modifying the properties of these gizmos 1 2 Revised Specification Full 3D Movement GB Arcade supports movement in all three directions and is not constrained to any particular Z plane This allows for greater flexibility in possible gameplay as is seen in the provided MonkeyBall game worlds Complete Grid Freedom Gizmos in GB Arcade do not need to adhere to an integer grid allowing for the creation of fancier game worlds as is done in the provided Pinball game worlds Absorber Storage The Absorber gizmo in GB Arcade stores the balls it holds below the Absorber instead of within it This allows Balls of arbitrary size to be held by the Absorber since the original specificat
14. AbsorbBallTrigger handles the functionality for absorbing a ball into a given BallShooter instead of having the Ball collide into it Note that this implies that AbsorbBallTrigger has a higher priority than SimpleCollisionTrigger ActivateGizmoTrigger An ActivateGizmoTrigger activates a given Gizmo CounterTrigger A CounterTrigger changes the value of a Counter which is an object used to store a specific count for a game by the given increment NoCollisionTrigger A NoCollisionTrigger reverses the effects of a collision SetColorTrigger A SetColorTrigger sets the color of the collided object to that of the colliding object SimpleCollisionTrigger A SimpleCollisionTrigger provides the default functionality for collision handling ToggleColorTrigger A ToggleColorTrigger switches the color of a Gizmo depending on its current color ToggleTrigger A ToggleTrigger toggles an underlying ToggleGizmo when it activates GroupTrigger A GroupTrigger wraps an underlying trigger to activate only if each of a set of ToggleGizmos is on It also runs a set of triggers to reset the state of the ToggleGizmos after it is activated 2 3 High Level View The GB Arcade system is run through the GamePlay class Code wise GamePlay java is quite simple as it basically just branches into the different major components GamePlayModel PaletteModel and ScreenManager that make GB Arcade work However the GB Arcade coding structure is highly modular with
15. Physic Object m Parser oon xL Physces ZALsb 1 Grap hres vo ye tes Po we bre 5 Prawe 7 H p tres Collection os TE poop lll Testing 3 1 Strategy 3 1 1 Physics Testing for the physics module took place through three different forms Unit Testing checkReps and Stress Tests 3 1 1 1 Unit Tests While the difficulty of determining the correct answers for most collision and movement methods precludes the usage of too many unit tests unit tests were still used to determine the correctness of the rotational collision methods 3 1 1 2 checkReps Extremely thorough representation invariants for each physics class were written and checkRep assertions were used at the beginning and end of each public method in order to ensure that no representation invariants are violated 3 1 1 3 Stress Tests The physics engine was observed for anomalous behavior during repeated gameplay Anomalous behavior was in many parts defined by what was usually observed due to the difficulty of otherwise defining what sort of behavior should be expected 3 1 2 Graphics The graphics system is almost impossible to automatically test Hence it was implemented one feature at a time and analyzed after the addition of each new feature At first the system would only draw polygons Once this was determined to be working as expected spheres were added then plane circles and so on Soon Graphics and the rest of the system
16. Runner acts as the heartbeat of a given WorldState and performs the calculations necessary for the advancement of the game in Playing mode one time step at a time Such calculations include collision calculations trigger calculations and object position update calculations 2 3 2 User Interface 2 3 2 1 Design Overview A variant of the Model View Controller was used to implement the GUI While the aforementioned GamePlayModel does not know about the existence of PaletteModel PaletteModel observes GamePlayModel and maintains a pointer to it PaletteModel also holds all of the information necessary to edit the game Both GamePlayModel and PaletteModel extend Model an abstract class containing practically nothing except for the fact that it implements Observable Preliminary design indicated that there might be considerable overlap between the two Models but this turned out not to be the case GamePlayModel contains a reference to the WorldModel the key to trigger mapping and camera position information It also holds information about the last file that was saved or loaded It also knows of the current mode of the game whether it is playing paused in edit mode or welcome mode It is also aware of what keys have currently been pressed down WorldModel is basically a wrapper class for WorldState WorldState can be understood as the minimum data structure required to load a game but ignores the existence of user inputs WorldMode
17. about anything else had fun creating the GUI and making it as intuitive as possible Although created many of the features because I thought they were intuitive am hoping that they are intuitive for everyone 4 2 Evaluation 4 2 1 Graphical User Interface believe the GUI turned out to implement most of the things wanted If there was a burning feature wanted usually ended up sitting down and chugging through until it was completed This led to a lot of time being spent on my part that is technically unnecessary since most of my features were not required Because of time constraints was not able to implement everything that wanted to implement for the GUI My goal would be to make the interface more intuitive Brand new features are nice but my main purpose in writing the GUI was to make everything as intuitive as possible 4 2 2 Physics The physics system developed has a great deal of flexibility and is able to achieve a great deal of functionality from a relatively small amount of basic source The use of primitive PhysicsObjects with common functionality and PhysicsModels that use the functionality of the contained PhysicsObjects allows for desired effects to be implemented once in each PhysicsObject and thus extended to all aspects of physics 4 3 Lessons 4 3 1 Graphical User Interface could have saved a lot of time by planning more ahead of time The module dependency diagram should have been thought out more
18. alid values i e alphabet characters where numbers are required an error message comes up Closing the palette screen returns the game to play mode The palette screen when it s invoked when editing mode is toggled shows up exactly to the left of the play screen History The user should take advantage of the History list which keeps track of changes made to the game world so far It is cleared upon returning to play mode or upon clicking Clear button below it Users can undo an action by either double clicking on the last valid action valid actions are in bold undone actions are in faint italics or going to the Edit menu and clicking undo If actions 1 2 3 4 5 are done in the given order then double clicking on 3 undoes actions 3 4 and 5 Double clicking on 4 then does actions 3 and 4 Performing an action at this point will get rid of 5 the undone action and replace it with the new action In general performing an action will remove all undone actions and do the new one The action history display is a scroll pane with actions as elements It scrolls automatically with respect to the last action that was done If the actions are undone the scroll will move so that the most recently done action shows up at the top Purge removes all undone actions from the history list Clear removes all actions from the history list For the user s convenience the position of the vertical scrollbar depends on the most recently done act
19. at take in balls and shoot them out from some other location and can be found in several of the provided GB Arcade game worlds Teleporters are currently unsupported in the editor DETECTOR PLANE DetectorPlanes are polygonal planes that detect the passage of a ball through them in a certain general direction and can be found in several of the provided GB Arcade game worlds DetectorPlanes are currently unsupported in the editor LIMITED GIZMOS Some Gizmos in the system have limited versions LimitedAbsorber and LimitedTeleporter which are associated with some counter These will only function as long as the counter is positive and are disabled afterwards LimitedGizmos are currently unsupported in the editor 2 2 2 Trigger Triggers are used to encapsulate responses in the game world to collisions Each trigger is defined by two GameObjects the GameObject for which a collision between a Ball and that GameObject cause the Trigger to be activated in the first place and the GameObject that is affected as a result Note that while technically the two objects are considered as the causer of the Trigger and the receiver of its effects it is certainly possible for these two GameObjects to be the same as is it possible for both GameObjects to be affected All of this is done through the run method in each Trigger which contains the game world s response logic specific to that Trigger For instance a SimpleCollisionTrigger is used to
20. aving GB Arcade provides users with the ability to save games so that they can be loaded and continued later Maps can be saved by going to the File menu and selecting Save Game hotkey Ctrl S or Save Game As l Gizmoball 2007 File Game Play Camera Sett New Game Save Game Save Game As Load Game If the current game has yet to be previously saved or if Save Game As is selected users are able to specify the name and location of this file Games are saved in the xml file format Return to Main Menu Esc 1 3 4 2 Loading Quit Ctrl Figure Save Game As in the File Users may load XML files corresponding to previously saved GB Arcade games Such files are first validated against a schema which checks that the file is in a format that GB Arcade can properly process and an error Esg message pops up in the event that the file does not actually validate menu 7 i Invalid XML file Any game world created solely through the use of Editing Mode can be saved and then loaded exactly Figure When users attempt to load an invalid XML file GB Arcade produces this message in its previous form However users should be cautioned that while it is possible to save games that were initialized through the use of one of the provided game worlds in almost all such cases some of the game information will fail to be properly saved Consequently the game world p
21. be supported in order to draw basic shapes In addition they must be able to combine these shapes into larger rigid bodies physics models to compose the structure of the gizmos 2 Physics Model Movement Objects must be able to move according to the laws of physics namely gravity and friction in the absence of external forces 3 Collision Detection and Response The system must be able to determine when a collision between a ball and any other object in the system will happen and respond to the situation appropriately 1 5 1 2 Achievement of Required Functionality The system accomplishes these goals in the following way Goal 1 Each primitive physics object is represented by a PhysicsObject abstract data type PhysicsObjects abstracts the basic functionality of a simple physical object PhysicsObjects can be put together to form more complicated PhysicsModels which are the physical representations of things such as gizmos Note here that balls are represented physically by PhysicsSphere a type of PhysicsObject since it is necessary to know more specific information about it than the generic fields of a physics model will allow By implementing all physics capabilities in terms of the basic operations common to all PhysicsObjects by extending those to PhysicsModels the physics system allows for creation and use of very complicated configurations without any need to think about or deal with them separately The calculation of bounding
22. each of these major components being almost completely separated from one another Thus it is fair to consider GB Arcade the central figure of the software system 2 3 1 GamePlayModel Everything that is needed for Playing Mode of the game to function properly works through GamePlayModel Most importantly GamePlayModel contains and handles a WorldModel and GameRunner each of which is described in further detail below Additionally GamePlayModel handles some a smattering of other components that involve the running of the game itself gizmo interactions etc One example of such an aspect of the game is the frame rate which is only a concern when the game is actually running Another example is the gizmo overlap Boolean which toggles whether or not gizmo overlaps are allowed since this Boolean only has an effect on the gizmos of the game 2 3 1 2 WorldModel WorldModel acts as a grand container for all the components that make a game run though it knows nothing about how to actually use these to do anything The most important component of a WorldModel is the WorldState In addition WorldModel contains information about hotkey triggers players and other components that aren t explicitly some form of GameObject or Trigger between Gizmos WorldState WorldState represents the end of the first top down branching path WorldState contains all of the GameObjects as well as all Triggers between pairs of Gizmos 2 3 1 3 GameRunner Game
23. el 2 currentGizmo should correspond to the current Gizmo that is focused 3 properties of currentGizmo should correspond to what is shown to the user via observing windows 4 saving changes should update the current world 5 not saving changes should revert to the old world 6 game control keys should not work in edit mode 7 functions in PaletteModel should only be enabled during edit mode 5 PlayScreen Black box required functionality 1 the window should show the game being played 2 the user should be able to see all of the gizmos in the world state 3the size of the screen should be 600x600 subject to change 4 menubar should have the following structure is a separator File New Game Save Game Save Game As Load Game Return to Main Menu Quit Game Game Settings Pause Game Hide Wall Wireframe Show Wall Wireframe Go to Edit Mode Camera Settings Shift Camera Right Shift Camera Left Shift Camera Up Shift Camera Down Reset Camera Help Hot keys 5 New Game should ask the user to choose from a world 6 Save Game should open up a JFileChooser if there is no current file being worked on otherwise no JFileChooser should open and the current game being played should be saved onto the file 7 in editing mode clicking on a gizmo should focus the current gizmo to be that gizmo 8 in editing mode clicking on a void when create gizmo is toggled should create that gizmo there 9 in editing mode
24. el GB Arcade consists of the following major components Physics Graphics Game World User Interface Editor and XML Parser These components do not strictly correspond to specific classes but rather sets of classes While these parts of the system are not all completely disjoint when interfaces between two of the aforementioned components do exist they are simple enough that the implementer of one needs to know very little about the design of the other The following subsections of this Overview section of the Design describes the major components with respect to the level of interaction between them 2 1 1 Physics The Physics portion is the most independent as for all intents and purposes it is capable of standing alone Naturally Physics handles the physics aspects of interactions within the game Helping to facilitate this process is concept of the five physics primitives spheres lateral cylinders plane polygons plane circles and tori of which every single object that can be found in the game is composed Thus processing physical interactions between different objects is reduced to processing physical interactions between physics primitives which substantially simplifies things In addition these primitives serve as the key to the interface between Physics and the outside world as the rest of the system need only be aware of the existence and properties of physics primitives 2 1 2 Graphics The Graphics module draws a
25. ens do not know about the existence of each other and the Models do not know about the existence of the Screens Dialog is a factory class that generates Dialog windows to notify the user of events and also get feedback EditAction is an abstract class that serves as the base for instantiable EditActions such as KeyMappingEditAction It necessitates the existence of the method invert in all of its children so that any user action can be undone GameObjectAddRemoveAction is used to remove or add Gizmos to the world GameObjectEditAction is used to alter properties of a Gizmo but not remove or add a Gizmo KeyMappingEditAction is used to add or remove keys linked to Gizmos KeyableAction holds information about actions that users can trigger during the game Properties holds the editable features of a Gizmo It contains a function apply which makes the argument Gizmo take on the properties within It contains the clone function that allows it to make copies of itself for editing and use 2 3 3 Module Dependency Diagram pm We led GUI in s SEES Clay Module Ve pend enc Drag ranm E Courter f Payer laic Cae e a A md P 1 1 t NAE A re rr 4 le55 l Tr Sse 4 Y MU ee oN Cane Play Mode s i P Orales Ball a eo ae 953 ue ldrtedel pem XC p nos Ae RIDE CELL Come Weel dState a e P devis Physses ede Phy sies Enywe V Gizmo Som 7 He OC
26. handle the modification of a ball s velocity upon that ball s collision with an object However Triggers can become quite complex with other possible functionality including GameObject removal and adding points to the score of a game In fact the Trigger system is so flexible that it is even used to process key pressed More specifically when a key is pressed or released it causes a set of Triggers containing logic for handling that key press to run Due to the common attributes of Gizmos and or GameObjects a variety of Triggers exist that work for any GameObject For instance since all Gizmos have an activate method the ActivateGizmoTrigger can work for any Gizmo However there are other cases in which a Trigger was specifically designed for a certain Gizmo An example of this is the getMoveLeftTrigger which returns a trigger that can move a Paddle as described in the Breakout section earlier to the left Since only Paddles have the functionality for moving left getMoveLeftTrigger does not function with other types of Gizmos The following is a set of some of the most commonly found Triggers in the GB Arcade system It should be noted that in some cases it is possible for two Triggers to have conflicting actions such as with AbsorbBallTrigger and SimpleCollisionTrigger To handle this different Triggers are assigned a priority which is used to determine which Trigger takes precedence in the event of a conflict AbsorbBallTrigger An
27. he Gizmo for editing and ignore the fact that the create Gizmo button is toggled on In general the user can edit a Gizmo by clicking on it in editing mode The selected object will take on a distinctive texture notifying the user that it has been selected Left clicking on a Gizmo sets the current focus to that Gizmo Right clicking does this as well but also shifts focus to the palette screen Editing Gizmos The palette holds the user s tools Below is a list of methods at the user s disposal Set Position There are three blank text fields for this purpose and they are the first triplet of text fields that appear in the Properties panel The first second and third text field from left to right represent the x coordinate the y coordinate and z coordinate The user may edit the text fields and press Apply to apply the changes to the Gizmo Note that the Properties screen s border will change to blue if any change is made to the position text fields or they just received focus The blue border indicates that the fields may have been changed and that what appears on the field may not reflect the properties of the selected Gizmo In order to see the properties of the selected Gizmo the user should select the Edit menu and choose Refresh For an easy way to change Gizmo positions set the focus to one of the text fields and press up or down The values will increment or decrement by 0 5 and apply immediately Set Velocity Setti
28. he physics engine passes unit tests in most cases but it is unclear what the correct output should be for some edge cases For fast movement of the ball it was found that the approximate collision detector was not always accurate enough to detect the collision In addition when the ball and a lateral cylinder intersect the output of the collision methods was found to be not consistent and dependent on some hidden factors 2 checkRep The physics package runs without violating assertions for many runs of the physics engine in the widely varied applications of Gizmo Arcade This gives a rather high degree of confidence that each state of the physics package is internally consistent and should eliminate bugs involving attributes of PhysicsModels such as bounding sphere 3 Stress Testing The physics engine runs without deviation from realistic physics in most cases however there are several special cases where strange effects happen The success of our engine in dealing with most other cases implies that we can have a relatively high level of confidence in its correctness since errors occur only in strange cases that the physics engine was arguably not designed to handle 3 2 2 Graphical User Interface 1 Dialog 2 GamePlay 3 GamePlayModel 4 PaletteModel 5 PlayScreen 6 Screen 7 PaletteScreen 8 UserAction 9 WelcomeScreen 10 WorldModel 1 Dialog Black box required functionality 1 for loading and saving the files are fi
29. her player currently the limit is set to be 2 Pong This is the classic game of pong but with a fresh twist Now instead of having flat Paddles they are slightly rounded meaning shots can be directed Also since the physics are realistic if a player s Paddle is moving towards the Ball the Ball is reflected with a higher velocity than if the Paddle is moving away from the Ball Hotkeys a Player 1 up Z Player 1 down up Player 2 up down Player 2 down Multiplayer support Two people play on the same computer against each other Slime Volleyball In this game players control a small blob known as a Slime which slides around on the field Each player aims to get the volley ball to land on their opponent s side while preventing it from landing on their own side Players can move around and jump and control the Ball by striking it with their Slime Hotkeys w Player 1 up a Player 1 left d Player 1 right i Player 2 up j Player 2 left l Player 2 right Multiplayer support Both people play on the same computer against each other trying to get the ball to land on the other side Space Invaders The goal of this classic is to survive and kill as many enemy ships as possible Players receive points for killing enemy ships and lose points for dying These points can be used to buy power ups and in multiplayer network mode cause bad things to happen to an opponent Each player has a corresponding score which is the sum of the p
30. ime step is stored and processed before the next time step Since each time step is 1 50 of a second this slight delay in response is completely unnoticeable The main issue in world simulation other than the physics routines is how to process the effects of a collision This requires functionality for storing actions as well as which actions should be executed as a result of specific collisions and is done through the use of a Trigger system 1 5 3 Graphical User Interface The main challenge in creating an effective GUI was to integrate a number of windows to work with each other with regard to an underlying data structure A number of windows may be open at the same time during the Editing mode but there will not be multiple copies of the state of the game The windows would be responding to the same set of data Another problem was in threading the application correctly There should be only one thread running the game in question but there are actually multiple threads working at once since user inputs correspond to extra threads This leads to some synchronization issues if a user input and game runner happen to edit the same piece of data There was also the problem of effectively taking in user inputs and temporarily storing and then altering them 1 5 4 The XML File Format 1 5 4 1 Saving Games must be saved into an XML file format that will validate against a provided schema In addition optimally the XML files should a
31. ion When an action is undone then the Gizmo to which the action was undone is focused unless that Gizmo has been deleted in which case focus is lost When an action is redone then the Gizmo to which the action was redone is focused unless that Gizmo has been deleted in which case focus is lost General The menu item Hot keys displays a list of keys that have triggers associated with them as well as the Gizmo that they are connected to Camera settings can be altered The user can move in one direction at most three times Reset camera resets the camera view to the original position Camera can be moved in any mode Hide Wall Wireframe hides the wireframe of the game s bounding walls while Show Wall Wireframe shows them Pausing the game does not affect any state of the game except for the fact that it stops running No key inputs will trigger anything if the game is paused Selecting File and then Return to Main Menu will prompt the user whether he really wants to do so Selecting File and then Quit will prompt the user whether he really wants to do so 1 3 3 Playing Mode In addition to custom game worlds created by users GB Arcade also comes with a variety of preset games that can be played to a user s heart s desire Multiplayer Support Many of the provided game worlds include multiplayer functionality so that users can play with their friends In addition the MonkeyBall and Spacelnvaders game worlds support
32. ion would require a specific hack to deal with the infinitely occurring collisions that result from storing a Ball larger than the size of the Absorber Overlapping Gizmos While overlapping gizmos are forbidden by default users are given the option to allow overlapping in order to create fancier game worlds This is used extensively in the provided game worlds 1 3 User Manual 1 3 1 Starting GB Arcade Obtaining GB Arcade requires an active connection to the Internet Users should open a web browser direct it to http web mit edu kmod www gizmoball and click on the provided link GB Arcade uses Java Web Start so users will need to have a Java Runtime Environment JRE installed In addition only the Windows operating system is officially supported by GB Arcade though it generally works with other operating systems as well Warning Security The application s digital signature cannot be verified Do you want to run the application Name Gizmoball 2K7 Publisher se51 Four Dawgs From http web mit edu C Always trust content from this publisher j Cancel More Information The digital signature cannot be verified by a trusted source Only run if you trust the origin of the application 1 3 2 The Graphical User Interface The user starts the game at the welcome screen which pops up at the center of the screen with the Start New Game Load Saved Game and Quit buttons Obviously Quit
33. itor but will be added at a later date BUMPERS Bumpers are standard objects in the playing field that Balls will reflect off of and have no other functionality from a strict physics perspective However Bumpers will commonly have associated Triggers which are set into action whenever a Ball collides into that a Bumper Shapes that Bumpers take on include spheres cylinders cubes rectangular and triangular prisms and tori WALLS The Walls surround the game are immovable and never change While Walls are technically gizmos by convention they have no associated triggers or anything else and are invisible by default However Walls can be toggled to be visible in which case a wireframe of the walls is displayed FLIPPERS Flippers can be triggered through an assigned keystroke to rotate 90 degrees The speed of this rotation is 6rt radians per second When the key is released flippers rotate back to their natural state BALL SHOOTERS BallShooters are Gizmos that absorb balls instead of reflecting balls that collide with them and shoot them out later when triggered There are two types of BallShooters in GB Arcade Absorbers and Teleporters ABSORBERS Absorbers are Gizmos that absorb instead of reflect balls store them and shoot them out from one end of the Absorber They are typically placed at the bottom of the game world to catch balls that have fallen down due to gravity TELEPORTERS Teleporters are gizmos th
34. l stores a key mapping that can be altered to acknowledge user input 2 3 2 2 Runtime Structure PaletteModel uses its reference to GamePlayModel and refers to it for information necessary about the game It mainly uses the GamePlayModel to get access to the WorldModel and to pass it to methods and classes that require it It also holds variables that allow state functions to exist such as the allowOverlap boolean value that stores whether the user allows overlapping during the editing mode It also keeps track of all of the Gizmo edits and key mapping edits done by the user so that he can undo and redo It creates and utilizes EditActions and stores a list of them ScreenManager initializes and keeps references to all of the Screens in use in the game There is exactly one copy of each Screen ScreenManager initializes the observers Screens so that PlayScreen observes GamePlayModel and PaletteModel WelcomeScreen observes GamePlayModel PaletteScreen observes GamePlayModel and PaletteModel KeylnputScreen is used to receive user key input about what keys he wants to link to Gizmos We deviate slightly from the MVC model implemented by Java here Java has the update method for Observers take in an Observable ob However for something observing two things we would like to take in both object s information when updating the observer Hence we have copies of GamePlayModel and PaletteModel in ScreenManager that the screens have access to The Scre
35. le out of creation mode by pressing F5 If no gizmo is focused on the input fields will be disabled as well as the Deselect button If a gizmo is focused appropriate input fields will be enabled The user is able to edit the texture that is on the Gizmo with a drop down combo box The user is able to edit the coefficient of reflection of the Gizmo The user is able to edit the position of the Gizmo The user is able to edit the velocity of the Gizmo if the Gizmo is a ball The user is able to rotate the Gizmo 90 degrees clockwise from user s view The user is able to edit the key that activates the Gizmo if that Gizmo is not a ball The user is able to remove the key that activates the Gizmo simply type the same key to remove the mapping The user can specify whether he wants key down or key up to affect the trigger When the user adds a Gizmo to the world it is selected as the current Gizmo to be edited When the user removes a Gizmo the Gizmo focus is lost The KeylnputScreen first displays a window asking the user to type in a key to map key pressed events Any key the user presses will be read by the program The user can get out of the key setting process entirely by taking focus of another window If the user clicks on the key window a second window will pop up requesting the user to map key released events After typing a key a message dialog shows up confirming the key If any of the text fields have inv
36. lity for saving and loading games meaning it collects all of the information needed to convert a Game World into a format that it also knows how to process and restore into a Game World Thus the XML Parser is in essence the end product of the process of converting abstract concepts into a tangible and quantifiable form 2 1 7 Continuation This rest of this section aims to provide a fairly in depth view of the design of the GB Arcade system To do so two different perspectives will be used to examine the system s structure The first perspective focuses on the low level building blocks of the system The second perspective takes a more top down view to show how the system puts everything together 2 2 Low Level View GB Arcade can be thought of as having two fundamental building blocks namely GameObjects and Triggers Technically GameObjects are actually composed of other smaller pieces namely physics primitives However these smaller pieces are effectively completely encapsulated within GameObjects as they have no impact on the system except through the GameObjects that they compose Thus from a design perspective it is sufficient to understand the composition of GameObjects and then consider everything else in terms of GameObjects and Triggers 2 2 1 GameObject At the highest level every physical thing that can be found in a game world is a GameObject and more specifically a Ball or a Gizmo From an implementation perspective all
37. ll the objects in the 3D world Although it uses the given physics primitives aside from that it is completely separate from physics and the rest of the game world 2 1 3 Game World Encapsulating Physics and Graphics for the purposes of GB Arcade is a Game World Game Worlds consist of both the physical objects within a game as well as the other aspects required for full functionality such as triggers Objects must obey the laws of physics corresponding to the parameters of a specific game world and be displayed properly Obeying the laws of physics simply requires knowledge of the physics primitives since an object can then select the proper combination of primitives to compose it and let these primitives handle physical interactions Displaying objects then follows since the Graphics portion of the system also uses physics primitives to produce the proper visuals 2 1 4 User Interface The User Interface converts the Game World from a collection of abstract concepts to a tangible cohesive physical display Additionally it provides an interface through which users can interact with a Game World 2 1 5 Editor The Editor uses the User Interface and knowledge of the various components that can go into a Game World to provide an interface through which users can manipulate a Game World 2 1 6 XML Parser The XML Parser is unique in that for the most part it has very little effect on the user experience However it provides the functiona
38. lso be able to store as much information pertaining to the unique aspects of GB Arcade as possible To make all XML files validate against the provided schema for the specific types of Gizmos corresponding to the special cases within the schema the required attributes are approximated as best as possible Such an approximation is necessary in some cases since the provided schema has certain restrictions such as integer coordinates for the gizmos and multiples of 90 degrees for the rotation while GB Arcade supports more general positioning As for storing information specific to GB Arcade the XML Parser uses a general strategy of storing the inputs to the constructor of a Gizmo and tagging them appropriately In addition other attributes of Gizmos unique to GB Arcade such as color texture etc are also stored with specifically pre defined tags 1 5 4 2 Loading When parsing each line of an XML file the parser checks for tags indicating that specific line was generated by the GB Arcade XML writer If such tags are found the parser simply parses the tags corresponding to the constructor of the Gizmo for that line and feeds them into the constructor However if no such tags are found thus indicating the line was generated by some other implementation of gizmo ball s XML writer the parser then resorts to using the default attributes corresponding to the provided schema to generate the Gizmo ll Design 2 1 Overview At the highest lev
39. ltered so that the user is defaulted to only see XML files 2 for loading and saving there is the file filter option as well in case the user wants to risk breaking the contract 3 closing the dialog does not alter game objects 4 for loading and saving user can see directories 5 for loading and saving user can select an XML file and see it loaded or saved 6 invoking a dialog pauses the game if the game is in play mode 7 canceling out of a dialog reverts the game mode to its original state 8 message dialogs show up correctly pauses the game if game is not paused and returns game to previous state if dialog is exited 9 pressing game control keys while the window is displayed should not work 10 the game window itself should not be focusable while the window is displayed Testing 1 the window was invoked and checked to see that the default filter was XML files 2 the file filter option was existent 3 closing the window did nothing to the state of the world 4 could see directories 5 could select an XML file among multiple ones and the correct one would load 6 7 to test these aspects tried invoking the screen from all possible game play modes and verified the desired responses 8 required functionality verified 9 game control keys did not register while the window was displayed 10 the game window was not focusable while the window was displayed Glass box required functionality 1 for loading and saving JFileChooser
40. ng the velocity is enabled only for movable objects In GB Arcade the only movable objects are Balls so only Balls can have their velocities edited There are three blank text fields for this purpose and they are the second triplet of text fields that appear in the Properties panel The first second and third text field from left to right represent the x velocity the y velocity and z velocity Set Coefficient The user is also permitted to set the coefficient of reflection of a GameObject and can increment or decrement the value by 0 1 by pressing up or down with the current focus on the corresponding text field Rotate Clicking this button rotates the selected Gizmo clockwise by 90 degrees Set Texture Selecting a texture from the drop down list alone does not do anything The user must also press Apply to apply the texture to the Gizmo If the currently selected texture is custom color then the texture of the Gizmo is a plain color determined by the last color that was set or accessed Set Key Assignments Clicking this button brings up two splash screens each asking for user input The first screen records the user s key input to link the key pressing action to triggering the current Gizmo The second screen records the user s key input to link the key releasing action to triggering the current Gizmo Note that repeating a key that already has an associated trigger deletes that key s assignment to the specified Gizmo Also n
41. oints gained through killing enemies minus the points lost through dying or from buying items The following power ups are available for purchase Shields Shields protect a player s ship from attack Players start with one shield by default Fire Rate Fire Rate power ups enable a player s ship to shoot faster Guns Guns increase the number of shots fired at a time A player can have up to 5 guns Enemy Ships In multiplayer mode players may purchase enemy ships which will then appear on their opponent s screen to hopefully overwhelm them These purchased enemy ships are distinguished by being yellow but are otherwise behaviorally equivalent to the normal enemy ships Hotkeys left Moves the ship left right Moves the ship right space Fires the ship s gun this can be held down for continuous fire limited by the ship s fire rate Purchases a firing rate increase of 1096 cost 500 points Sends one enemy ship to the opponent cost 75 points Sends ten enemy ships to the opponent cost 600 points Purchase a single use shield cost 300 points note that shields stack Purchases a new bullet gun cost 1000 points Buys a new beam gun cost 1000 points Note that the cost of dying is 500 points TQ Ua Multiplayer support After connecting to a friend both games will start to play simultaneously Each player can see their own score as well as their opponent s score at all times 1 3 4 Saving and Loading 1 3 4 1 S
42. ote that pressing any key will register as an input There are two ways to get out of the Set Key process without making any changes The first way is to lose focus of the window such as by clicking something else The other way is to click the window which is programmed to close Features in a nutshell Editing Left clicking on a Gizmo allows user to focus to edit that Gizmo Right clicking on a Gizmo in addition returns focus to the palette Once a user edits a certain editable component that component is stored Whenever the user right clicks on another Gizmo recall that right clicking on a Gizmo returns focus to the palette that saved component receives focus Hence if the user is in the editing coordinates mood he can simply right click on a Gizmo use arrows to move it since the focus is on the text field right click another Gizmo use arrows to move it etc Once a user gets focus on an editable component or edits a field the Properties panel s border turns blue This feature is to let the user know that the values in the fields do not necessarily reflect that of the object selected In order to get the object s traits press Refresh F5 If the border is not blue the user is guaranteed that the selected Gizmo has the properties listed in the properties panel Refresh F5 also untoggles the Gizmo that is to be placed on the screen That is if one is about to create a Gizmo and clicks on Left for example he can togg
43. r It also has three panels Gizmos Properties and History The Gizmos panel holds the buttons that allow a user to place Gizmos on the screen There are a total of seven Gizmos to choose from From left to right and top to bottom RectangleBumperGizmo CircleBumperGizmo TriangleBumperGizmo RightFlipper LeftFlipper Absorber and Ball Placing Gizmos The user can place a Gizmo into the world by selecting its corresponding button which lets the user know that it has been toggled by changing background color to yellow and border color to blue Then by clicking on the play screen users can place a Gizmo at the location of his click The default z position of the Gizmo is O If Gizmo overlap is disabled attempting to produce a Gizmo that will overlap with another will produce an error message There is one exception as specified by the original specifications as a ball can be placed within an absorber If overlapping is chosen to be legal the user can place any Gizmo anywhere even outside of the normal game bounds the walls Overlapping can be toggled on off by selecting the Game Play menu and navigating to Check for Gizmo overlap The user can un toggle the create Gizmo option by pressing F5 which refreshes the palette window Refresh can also be run by going to the Edit menu on the palette window Selecting Gizmos If a user clicks on an existing Gizmo while having a create Gizmo button toggled on this will still select t
44. reached a state in which testing could be done through the creation of specific test levels involving the latest added feature 3 1 3 Game World The components of the Game World are roughly in the middle of the system as it depends on the graphics and physics systems to run properly and is run by the GUI Once graphics and physics reached a basic level a stub was written for the state of the world as well as a testbed for testing This allowed for the testing of features of the Game World such as Gizmos and Triggers without requiring a working GUI Since it is nearly impossible to specify exactly what the correct behavior of the game world is testing consisted primarily of setting up situations in which the expected outcome is known and then observing the resulting behavior 3 1 4 Graphical User Interface The main strategy used was to make sure that the functions did what they were expected to do which was not hard For the menu bar we simply clicked on each item under various circumstances and verified their functionalities It was not too tedious since there was only a small number of states the game could be in in terms of game modes and windows open Testing the threading was usually difficult as bugs crept up seemingly randomly The timing of user key inputs seemed to create some threading problems under our old system We tested the system by pressing the keys profusely 3 2 Results 3 2 1 Physics 1 Unit Testing T
45. roduced upon reloading will not be completely the same as the game world used to save it Additionally since games are saved in the highly versatile XML file format these files can be transferred from computer to computer and even run through other gizmoball systems Of course due to variations in the implementation of these systems it is highly unlikely that loading an XML file through another gizmoball game will produce anything near the same thing as loading it through GB Arcade 1 4 Performance In general GB Arcade runs smoothly at 50 frames per second on a 2 0 GHz machine with 256 MB of main memory and properly installed video drivers However it is conceivable for users to create game worlds with enough gizmo balls so that this frame rate is no longer obtainable Additionally there currently exists an unresolved performance issue where multiplayer mode has caused a significant slowdown of the entire system Attempts thus far at deterministically reproducing this problem have failed 1 5 Problem Analysis This section outlines the major conceptual obstacles that any gizmoball system and specifically GB Arcade needs to be able to overcome 1 5 1 Physics 1 5 1 1 Required Functionality Fundamentally the physics package used in GB Arcade needs to support three basic capabilities 1 Physics Model Creation Primitive types of physics objects such as spheres plane circles plane polygons lateral cylinders and tori must
46. still be editable Also the scroll pane for the history of actions has to scroll appropriately so that the most recently done action element is at the top of the scroll pane Sometimes this is not the case and the scroll pane is off by a couple pixels 4 4 2 Physics When the coefficient of reflection of a flipper is significantly less than 1 0 the ball will sometimes sink into the flipper causing strange effects In addition when on top of a rotating cylinder with coefficient of reflection less than 1 0 the ball will sometimes actually sink into the cylinder We believe that these problems are largely due to the fact that the physics engine was not built to deal with objects sitting on top of a surface
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