CSE 481: Capstone Software Design - Spring 2005

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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	Directory: The course home page links to a separate directory for each game (and possibly implementation). An example Unix path (for cse481a) is: /projects/instr/cse481/05sp/cse481a/web There are two equivalent Windows versions: \\ntdfs\cs\unix\projects\instr\cse481\05sp\cse481a\web o:\unix\projects\instr\cse481\05sp\cse481a\web Files: splash.jpg - The image shown on the course home page for your team. teamName.inc - The name to display for your team on the course home page. index.shtml - The paged linked to for your team from the course home page. index.html - Don't touch it -- just redirects to index.shtml.
Per-game general file space	The entire tree rooted at (in Unix): /projects/instr/cse481/05sp/cse481a
CVS Repository	There is a repository per team: /projects/instr/cse481/05sp/cse481a/CVSRepository/ Each has been primed with the source from one of last year's teams, consisting of two projects: osbase and osengine.
games.cs Web	The substree rooted at (for example): /projects/instr/cse481/05sp/cse481a/GameControllerFiles/

Groups / Permissions

Everyone registered in the class will soon have been added to two Unix groups: cse481a (for example) and c481srv. Nearly all course files belong to the per-teams Unix groups (e.g., cse481a), 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 pertinent 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 until you notify someone who can fix it (normally support).

We have five Maya licenses.

Lab Machines

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

• Good - We get the fastest lab machines in the CSE labs, with the best video cards: Dimension XPS, 3.2GHz, Radeon 9800 Pro cards, SATA drives.

• Bad - There are only a dozen of them.

• Plain - Those primo machines will be supplemented with a few other, more vanilla machines that should suffice for much of the development work.