mikeware / spacebattlearena

Space Battle Arena is a Programming Game.

Space Battle Arena

Space Battle Arena is a ‘Programming Game‘ where you must write code (in Java) to autonomously control a space ship to accomplish specified objectives.

To find out more visit our GitHub Website. Complete Learning materials and other guides are available there as well.

Space Battle Arena is licensed under the GPLv2. Gson is licensed under the Apache license and provided for convenience on our release page.

Student Environment

It is expected that students have completed a full year of Java programming in high school or just over a semester of programming at the college level.

We use jGRASP as our IDE of choice when working with High School students, but any Java IDE can be used that is capable of adding a jar to a classpath and executing a class from within the jar as the main class.

Resources

• Client Setup
  • Client Java Docs
  • Initial Guides
• Server Setup
• Mac OS X Server from Source
• Talks
  • You Have Died of Dysentery: Games in Education Are Still Alive - PAXDev 2014
  • Reach for the Stars - PAXDev 2012
• Development

Development Tools

• Visual Studio 2013 w/ Python Tools
• Eclipse or jGRASP

Dependencies

Space Battle was built against the following versions of libraries:

• Java Client
  • Gson 2.2
• Python Server
  • Python 2.7.12
  • PyMunk 3.0.0
  • PyGame 1.9.1
  • Py2Exe 0.6.9 (for server executable build)

See the Development Guide for more information on extending Space Battle Arena.

spacebattlearena's Issues

Server Doesn't Always Terminate on Exit

Think this is only when run from source. Think it's an extra thread in the networking side of things. But it's been an annoyance.

Add Server Configuration Guide in Markdown

Plug-in Ship's Rotation to Physics Engine

Currently, Ship's rotations are handled as an independent entity.

If we plug it into the Physics Engine, then collisions should cause changes to angular momentum. This would be more interesting and realistic. Though we would probably need a command to 'stop' rotation?

Implement Basic 'Testing' Framework/Simulator

Thought of a potentially 'easy' way to implement a 'testing' framework to let us craft specific scenarios and view/test on the outcome.

Debating on how much I want this to be configuration vs. code, but would be really nice to test out certain scenarios in controlled environments to understand the complexities of certain elements of SBA more.

Recreate Message Analyzer Log Parser

I wrote a preliminary Microsoft Message Analyzer Log Parser. Need to figure out where in the tree it should live.

It's pretty neat.

Add 'Survivor' Training Game

Score = Max(TimeAlive)

Add the Hunger Baubles Game

Need to enable AI Ships for Game Purposes

Currently, just using for testing, but should have a flag around if the AIShip 'counts' as a player and can advance in rounds (i.e. it's a bar to beat). You should decide if there's one per tournament or one per round...

Or is it just an auxiliary environment thing that should be ignored from scoring and advancement (i.e. you would add one or more during the world creation. Like turrets or defenders or something.)

Clean-up Main.py GUI Wrapper Creation

Should just do like games work now and construct the object based off the name so that it isn't a hard-coded value.

Add Sidebar to Website for News on Homepage and Outlines

Clean-up Server Documentation Strings and Generate HTML Docs

Client should exit when receiving a disconnect message.

Currently, it's stuck waiting for input.

See article here maybe for help unless you want to adjust how the client works: http://www.javaspecialists.eu/archive/Issue153.html

Think purely text client is good to keep, so not adverse if above method works.

See push of #14 when I do that soon.

Make default behavior to re-add ships to world in subgames

Need to clean-up the logic around ships respawning in the world, it's a little messy right now. This should just be the default behavior based on how we've used the system.

This will also help in cases where a 'player' isn't connected via the network...

Should have an option to set horz_res and vert_res to values which autodetect the resolution for fullscreen

Or just have fullscreen=true ignore the resolution and detect the monitor resolution.

Either case, it shouldn't be a manual process like it is now.

HITRADIUS always expects radius to be on object

Need to abstract and move to only 'Round' objects

Rebase Coordinate System

Currently, 0 degrees is E and positive angles are CCW.

We should have 0 degrees be N and positive angles are CCW.

Investigate why two torpedos fired in succession without delay causes one to bounce...

Doesn't seem to be explosion force, as disabled that for torpedoes...

Split-off tournament configuration settings into their own group

Test if using the Physics Engine with a shape_query is faster than the current implementation for Planet Gravity.

Not sure of the performance of either approach, but would be an interesting test to see if we could do less calculations in the gameloop for performance.

Would probably implicate that you don't get effected by gravity on the edge of the worlds, but not sure if that's working well anyway...

Client should expose extra game info in the registerShip method

the map on the REQUEST in TextClient.java just looks for the GAMENAME, but the game could return more info about its settings if we want.

We should think about exposing this in the future to the registerShip method.

Client trying to disconnect twice?

After QUIT seeing:

Attempting to disconnect...
Disconnect complete.
Shutting down...
Attempting to disconnect...
Disconnect complete.

Notice the extra two lines

Make the 'collisions' property actualy turn off collisions.

Right now, it's just a kind of hack in the game to put the Ship in the same group as the celestial bodies.

Though most game objects are also in this group...

Make Website Navigation Bar stay at top of page.

Check out example from http://jsfiddle.net/CriddleCraddle/Wj9dD/

Add Best Score, Time Left, and Total Round Time to BasicGameInfo

Add Guide/Lesson about the Universe of Space Battle and how things 'work'

• World Coordinates and Rotations
• Objects
• Coding Call/Response
• Ships 'Computer'

Implement Steer Command

Allows you to adjust your velocity vector by a number of degrees.

The time it takes is based on the amount of adjustment required.

Should refactor world reference out of Ship class

Currently, Ships need a reference to the world so they can fire torpedoes (and maybe create other things in the future).

It'd be nice to abstract this reference somehow so they look like other objects.

Build MacOS App using py2app

Would be great to just have a pre-built app of the server using py2app for OSX.

Just need someone with a Mac...

Document Ship Stats in Client (and in Guide)

Should specify how quickly you rotate or steer for instance, so that time and energy calculations can be made more predictable.

'disconnect_players_after_round' shouldn't disconnect players continuing to the next round...

Add Nebula Space Object

• Should be eclipse shape?
  • Possible Rotation?
• Thinking that it provides some basic 'friction' and slows ships down over time.
• Also inhibits radar effectiveness (either range or probability?).

Consolidate Object's and their 'influence' radius

e.g.

• Planets/BlackHoles have gravityfieldlength
• Nebulas use major/minor on PhysicalEllipse
• Ships have a RadarRange

Ideally, just migrate to a central major/minor convention for all three? Kind of already abstracted that way on the client.

Finish compile.bat script to compile Java Client package and Documents all at once

Would be nice to have the single script to automate client and server generation of binaries and documentation from the command line.

Client Should parse Server Broadcast messages

This currently should only occur when the server gets gracefully terminated. It just causes a big exception stack to show in the client, but it should be handled a bit more gracefully in general in the client.

This is due to the fact that the json is sending [0,null](server -> all), but the client is explicitly expecting [int, int] and doesn't seem to parse 'null' as an integer.

Add Smooth Camera Movement to Server

It'd be nice on the server when you zoom in or click to navigate that it does the transition more smoothly so the context of the world is maintained.

This would be nice for the tracking too, so it would jump more smoothly between ships (especially with the dynamic camera enabled).

Clean-up World/Game Instantiation

When the game is initially created and tries to instantiate its world, the world is starting to run right away.

If there happens to be a collision in the time before this initialization finishes and the game gets its world references, errors are currently spit to the console.

Not sure of impact. Think can either delay world gameloop or maybe since passing game to world anyway, just have it set the reference and clean-up messy create/reset stuff in game...

Investigate why we tend to get 0 degree turns on clients.

ERROR: Command ROT({DEG=0.0}) failed: Invalid Ship Command: 'Degrees Must be Non-Zero'

This tends to happen for students when we play find the middle. We should probably have the RotateCommand throw an exception if its constructed with 0 as the degrees? Not sure...

Add directory of ship images to website.

Add Lesson Plans to Documentation

Need to port over and clean-up lesson plans for Documentation section.

Clean-up Configuration Files

Need to clean-up configuration files as examples and to better correlate with lessons and subgames.

Should we Expose Some Ship Properties on the Server

• Ship Thrust
• Ship Mass
• Ship Rotation Speed
• Ship Radar Range
• Ship Max Health
• Ship Max Energy
• Ship Max Shield

Add Server GUI Guide in Markdown

Add Eclipse Client Setup Documentation

Refactor owner to be the player not the world object

This way if a player's ship is destroyed it's not a bad reference. It also makes it easier to pass around to give scores to the owners of things.

Ownership should be a more general property.

Headless flag on server doesn't work

No loop, so server exits immediately. Know this used to work, so not sure what happened.

Not a high priority, as not very interesting to look otherwise...

Better Dynamic Camera

It'd be nice for the Dynamic Camera to look at deltas in score changing and health/shield values/damage/possible destruction to create a more interesting hands-off experience.

Review new client properties

Want to review the new properties for Pull, Major, and Minor on the client?

Wasn't sure how best to describe it, but it was at the end part of brain power.

Add JavaDoc

• Create Generation Scripts.
• Store in doc/clientdoc and doc/pydoc in repository.
• Update vital documentation as needed.

Test Running Server on MacOS (or Linux)

Need to investigate running the server from source on MacOS or Linux.

It should work fine, but need to double-check.

Allow loading any number of config files

Would make it easier to split machine, world, game, and tournament settings up for instance.