Practical for Students of the ETH Zurich at the departement ITET

History

In 2004, Patrick Boenzli and Benjamin Grauer started to create Orxonox. In the autumn semester of 2005, they decided to offer Orxonox as a PPS at the ETH. The goal was to teach the students about open source development and to deepen their knowledge of programming and modeling and, last but not least, to create a cool game.

Since that time a lot has changed: The two fathers of Orxonox finished their studies and so former students of the PPS took over and continued the PPS. Every semester, the growing group of developers meet and organize a new PPS. There they try to learn from earlier mistakes and to build on gained experience. Because in the end, all we want is our students to be happy with their work and experience in our PPS.

Important resources

Coding guides, help, documentation: code (read this!)
Installing and building Orxonox: dev/LinuxTardis

Administrative Information

If you're a student at the ETH Zürich at the departement ITET and you're in the 3rd to 6th semester, you can participate in our PPS. The Project is intended for students interested in game development or programming and modeling in general. Feel free to look around on our page to find something you're interested in.

3rd to 6th Semester

Facts about our PPS for the 3rd to 6th semester:

• You get 3KP
• The PPS takes place on Thursday, 13:15 until 16:00
• The PPS starts on 28th of February
• Room: ETZ D96

For more information feel free to contact the PPS leaders:

• Leo Merholz (merholzl@…)
• Philip Wiese (wiesep@…)

Attendance: It is required that you attend at least the first 3 sessions. After that, you may be absent at most twice. However, a justification by email to the PPS leaders is mandatory.

Timetable

Date	Room	Topic	Slides
28.02.	ETZ D96	Introduction and Tools (wiki, forum, svn and blender), Download the game, ​Blender Tutorial, Blender to Orxonox	​Introduction, ​Blender
07.03.	ETZ D96	Framework and coding tutorial and level design tutorial	​Framework, ​Level design, ​Handout
14.03.	ETZ D96	Choose the projects, start planning. Download your Branch	​SVN-cheatsheet , ​SVN
21.03.	ETZ D96	Project Work
28.03.	ETZ D96	Project Work
04.04.	ETZ D96	1st Review / Project Work
11.04.	ETZ D96	Project Work
18.04.	ETZ D96	Project Work
02.05.	ETZ D96	2nd Review / Project Work
09.05.	ETZ D96	Project Work
16.05.	ETZ D96	Presentation Preparation / Polish Up
23.05.	ETZ E8	Presentation (12-13h)	​slides template

Requirements

• Requirements: You should at least be able to work on a computer. Most things will be taught by us, but we're not unhappy if you already know stuff about open source development tools.
  • Coding: Knowledge from the first year of the electrical engineering studies is sufficient
  • Design: Basic knowledge of image editing or 3D modeling
• Also: This is not a useless PPS, where you learn nothing and just get it over with. Everything you do in the PPS will be used in Orxonox and helps to make it better. In addition you learn a lot about how to work with others and participate in a project.

Recommended Projects

Ticket	Summary	Owner	Project-Page
#267	Improve HUD
#389	Progress bar for level loading
#391	Story Mode Map
#430	Highscore system for minigames
#490	Improve Super Orxo Bros.
#492	Pacman Ghost AI
#494	Spaceship with BumpMap

Alternative Projects can be found here. Of course own creative ideas are always welcome!

PPS Archive

Have a look at the past PPS semesters in the PPS Archive.

PPS Administration

How to lead a PPS - Some notes about the last PPS, so we can improve the next one (Don't take everything too seriously)