COMP 410 & Sky.NETMay 2nd, 2006

What is COMP 410?

Forming an independent company

The customer

The planning

Learning teamwork

Overall Sky.NET Idea

Last year’s class: first to make Sky.NET

Sky.NET’s world is made up of entities, attributes, behaviors, and rules Dynamically extensible, abstract

framework Capable of adding entities, attributes,

behaviors, and rules at run time

Our Sky.NET

Our task: Improve Sky.NET Implement rules framework Faster view / graphics Faster network / server access

Our Sky.NET

How we split up the tasks: Model, Network, Database, and

View groups

COMP 410

Any questions about what COMP 410 is?

Overall Design

Overall Design

Model

Simulation

IWorldBehavior

Database

IWorldQueryLambda IWorldAffectorLambda

Behaviors:

Model

Behaviors: Can take in arbitrary arguments Uses query and affecter lambda to

interface with the database Provides common interfaces for

working with the database adapter Allows the ability to write different

interfaces to perform other behaviors if desired

Allows more flexible rules implementations

Rules

RulesSimulation

IWorldBehavior

Database

IWorldQueryLambda IWorldAffectorLambda

Rules List

Model

Rules: Rules can permit or block the

execution of a behavior Rules can also change the way that

behaviors are run through wrapping the behavior, the affecter, or the query

They know all of the arguments given to the rule, and are given a direct link to the database, allowing a rule complete information about the world.

Model

Model Agents

Adapter between Network and Simulation Used by the Client to interact with the

Simulation Server Side Automation Client Uploaded User Permissions still in place Client’s discretion to choose how they

interact with Simulation Adds flexibility for Client to deploy an A.I.

agent

Model

Any questions about the model?

View

View – High Level Design

Model-View-Controller pattern View handles interaction with user Decouples data from its

presentation

View acts as a manager of: Media packages Devices Data feeds

View – Media Packages

Media Packages encapsulate files that can be used to represent an entity or behavior

Implemented as zip files with XML manifests

Store mapping of keys to media files

View - Devices

Devices actually present data to the user

Implementer can choose which media are relevant for a given device

ThreeDimDevice – uses Irrlicht engine to render 3d meshes that represent entities

View – Data Feeds

Data feed encapsulates a single view of a SkyNet simulation

Simulation can make any number of feeds available to user

User must consider different feeds when making decisions

View – Behavior Parameters Must allow flexibility for behavior

implementers

Need an abstract way to get user input of a requested type

GUI panels are generated dynamically to fulfill the parameters for a given behavior

View

Any questions about the View?

Network

High-Level Network Design Flexible framework:

supports for multiple clients, servers, clients access behind firewalls, client/server capability on a single machine

Scalable framework: low-level network supports Sockets for

connections Extensible framework:

arbitrary objects transferred, low-level network details insulated from the rest of the program

High-Level Network Design

Low-Level Network

TCP/IP Sockets DummyNetwork

loads carried out in another thread

development procedure

Server-Side Loading and Saving of the State of the World Implemented as a

Behavior Easy to understand:

SkyNetDataSet schema XML file to specify entity

creation Relational structure:

Entity, Attribute, AttributeType is expressed structurally and transferred into the Database

Loading/Saving to SQL

Relational structure mapping:

Entity, Attribute, AttributeType,stored in the database

Server-Side Loading and Saving of the State of the World Example:<Entity> <Guid>”3C1B97FC-38A5-47c0-A74D-7DD3471AFEB3”</Guid>

<Attribute> <Name>”Age”</Name> <Value>”21”</Value> </Attribute></Entity>

Network

Any questions about the network?

Any questions about server-side loading and saving of the state of the world?

Database

Database

Why do we need a database?

To store the state of the world To handle a lot of data To act as a file system To facilitate searching for data

Database

What are we storing in the database?

The four basic components of every simulation:

Entities and Attributes

Behaviors and Rules

Database Entities and Attributes

Many-to-Many relationship Each entity can have many attributes Each type can appear in the attribute

table multiple times

Database

Behaviors and Rules One-to-Many relationships Behaviors and rules stored as code A rule can affect multiple locations

Database

IDatabaseAdapter Flexible Portable

Store Query Database administrative function

Database - Implementation Gentle.NET

Object relational mapping

No licensing required

Database backend flexibility

Database - Implementation

Database

Any questions about the database? Structure Gentle.NET Querying

Sky.NET

Any questions overall?