Course Lab

We have (exclusive) use of Sieg 324. This is an incredibly great situation:

• It's above ground.
• It's all ours (so occasional noise is no problem).
• It's a single place, so will encourage you to work in physical proximity to each other. (It turns out that is really important -- it's surprisingly hard to make progress if working in separate locations, even using technology like IM. This is especially true at the beginning, end, and middle of the course.)
• It's right down the hall from the animation class lab and classroom (and the entire animation scene is way cool).

Entry is by card key. If you have problems getting in, let me know.

Location of Course Files

www.cs Web Files	The course home page links to a separate directory for each game (and possibly implementation). An example Unix path (for GameA) is: /projects/instr/cse481/04sp/GameA/web There are two equivalent Windows versions: \\ntdfs\cs\unix\projects\instr\cse481\04sp\GameA\web n:\unix\projects\instr\cse481\04sp\GameA\web
Per-game general file space	The entire tree rooted at (in Unix): /projects/instr/cse481/04sp/GameA
CVS Repository	There is a single, shared repository: /projects/instr/cse481/04sp/CVSRepository/
games.cs Web	The substree rooted at (for example): /projects/instr/cse481/04sp/GameA/GameControllerFiles/

Groups / Permissions

Everyone is the class has been added to two Unix groups: cse481a and c481srv. Nearly all course files belong to the cse481a group, and are group writable. The exception is that the control files for the game server belong to c481srv -- the server runs as a special, limited privilege account that is a member of that group (only).

In any case, you should be able to manipulate all course files, with the exception of the infrastructure course web pages.

Software / Policies

The CSE 481 lab is run differently than all other labs:

• Your account should have sufficient authority to install anything, and do do local administration. (I'm not sure exactly what the boundaries are, but the intent that lack of permission should never prevent you from doing anything that affects only the machines in the labs.)
• The machines are not reimaged. What you install stays installed. What you break stays broken.

We have five Maya licenses. We also own some old 3D Max licenses (V3.0, I think it is), but installing that program is an unbelievable pain, and won't be done except in extraodinary circumstances.

Lab Machines

There's good news, bad news, and just plain news.

• Good - New machines were required for the lab room, and since we're the ones about to use it we got to choose the machines: Dimension XPS, 3.2GHz, Radeon 9800 Pro cards, SATA drives.

• Bad - There are only a dozen of them. We might be able to scrape up some old (< 1GHz) machines for light use if necessary.

• Plain - The machines won't arrive until the first day of classes, and so won't be set up until sometime probably late in the first week.