Game Information

Title: Indirect Pong

Author: Eric Fang

Design Document: indirect pong

Screen Shot:

How To Play:

• The game requires two players to play.
• The goal is to move the ball into the opposite wall. Each impact counts as one point for the opposite player.
• Bullets fired by the turret can impact the ball trajectory.
• The player who first gains five points wins.
• A/D key rotates the turret clockwise or counterclockwise.
• W key fires bullets, only one bullet may be fired a second.
• A convenience launch file launch_local has been included for UNIX systems which will launch the server and two local clients. Please launch in project directory.

Changes From The Design Document:

The original design called for score display by numbers on the top. Due to the fact that the existing text meshes did not include numbers, so I decided to substitute with display by number of asterisks instead.

An attempt was made to create a fuller set of font meshes, but numerous spacing and style related issues cropped up and so I decided to revert to the original meshes.

Good / Bad / Ugly Code:

• Good: The serialization code using cereal is, due to the library, quite simple to understand and elegant.
• Bad: The client side control handling code is not very robust and the differences between the firing and turret rotating controls required inelegant flag settings and conditionals.
• Ugly: The server side network recieving code is quite nasty looking, requiring tons of conditionals to check for full recieve and the underlying system is also prone to being overwhelmed.

Using This Base Code

Before you dive into the code, it helps to understand the overall structure of this repository.

• Files you should read and/or edit:
  • main.cpp creates the game window and contains the main loop. You should read through this file to understand what it's doing, but you shouldn't need to change things (other than window title, size, and maybe the initial Mode).
  • server.cpp creates a basic server.
  • GameMode.*pp declaration+definition for the GameMode, a basic scene-based game mode.
  • meshes/export-meshes.py exports meshes from a .blend file into a format usable by our game runtime.
  • meshes/export-walkmeshes.py exports meshes from a given layer of a .blend file into a format usable by the WalkMeshes loading code.
  • meshes/export-scene.py exports the transform hierarchy of a blender scene to a file.
  • Connection.*pp networking code.
  • Jamfile responsible for telling FTJam how to build the project. If you add any additional .cpp files or want to change the name of your runtime executable you will need to modify this.
  • .gitignore ignores the objs/ directory and the generated executable file. You will need to change it if your executable name changes. (If you find yourself changing it to ignore, e.g., your editor's swap files you should probably, instead be investigating making this change in the global git configuration.)
• Files you should read the header for (and use):
  • Sound.*pp spatial sound code.
  • WalkMesh.*pp code to load and walk on walkmeshes.
  • MenuMode.hpp presents a menu with configurable choices. Can optionally display another mode in the background.
  • Scene.hpp scene graph implementation, including loading code.
  • Mode.hpp base class for modes (things that recieve events and draw).
  • Load.hpp asset loading system. Very useful for OpenGL assets.
  • MeshBuffer.hpp code to load mesh data in a variety of formats (and create vertex array objects to bind it to program attributes).
  • data_path.hpp contains a helper function that allows you to specify paths relative to the executable (instead of the current working directory). Very useful when loading assets.
  • draw_text.hpp draws text (limited to capital letters + *) to the screen.
  • compile_program.hpp compiles OpenGL shader programs.
  • load_save_png.hpp load and save PNG images.
• Files you probably don't need to read or edit:
  • GL.hpp includes OpenGL prototypes without the namespace pollution of (e.g.) SDL's OpenGL header. It makes use of glcorearb.h and gl_shims.*pp to make this happen.
  • make-gl-shims.py does what it says on the tin. Included in case you are curious. You won't need to run it.
  • read_chunk.hpp contains a function that reads a vector of structures prefixed by a magic number. It's surprising how many simple file formats you can create that only require such a function to access.

Asset Build Instructions

The meshes/export-meshes.py script can write mesh data including a variety of attributes (e.g., positions, normals, colors, texcoords) from a selected layer of a blend file:

blender --background --python meshes/export-meshes.py -- meshes/crates.blend:1 dist/crates.pnc

The meshes/export-scene.py script can write the transformation hierarchy of the scene from a selected layer of a blend file, and includes references to meshes (by name):

blender --background --python meshes/export-scene.py -- meshes/crates.blend:1 dist/crates.scene

The meshes/export-walkmeshes.py script can writes vertices, normals, and triangle indicies of all meshes on a selected layer of a .blend file:

blender --background --python meshes/export-walkmeshes.py -- meshes/crates.blend:3 dist/crates.walkmesh

There is a Makefile in the meshes directory with some example commands of this sort in it as well.

Runtime Build Instructions

The runtime code has been set up to be built with FT Jam.

Getting Jam

For more information on Jam, see the Jam Documentation page at Perforce, which includes both reference documentation and a getting started guide.

On unixish OSs, Jam is available from your package manager:

	brew install ftjam #on OSX
	apt get ftjam #on Debian-ish Linux

On Windows, you can get a binary from sourceforge, and put it somewhere in your %PATH%. (Possibly: also set the JAM_TOOLSET variable to VISUALC.)

Libraries

This code uses the libSDL library to create an OpenGL context, and the glm library for OpenGL-friendly matrix/vector types. On MacOS and Linux, the code should work out-of-the-box if if you have these installed through your package manager.

If you are compiling on Windows or don't want to install these libraries globally there are pre-built library packages available in the kit-libs-linux, kit-libs-osx, and kit-libs-win repositories. Simply clone into a subfolder and the build should work.

Building

Open a terminal (or x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2017 on Windows), change to the directory containing this code, and type:

jam

That's it. You can use jam -jN to run N parallel jobs if you'd like; jam -q to instruct jam to quit after the first error; jam -dx to show commands being executed; or jam main.o to build a specific file (in this case, main.cpp). jam -h will print help on additional options.