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: Coding? (read this!)

Administrative Information

If you're a student at the ETH Zürich at the departement ITET and you're in the 3rd or 4th 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.

4th Semester

Facts about our PPS for the 4th semester:

• You get 3KP (6 PPS-points)
• The PPS takes place on Thursday, 13:15 until 16:00
• The PPS starts at the 27th of February 2013
• Room: ETZ D 96

For more information feel free to contact the PPS leaders:

• Sandro 'smerkli' Merkli? (coding)
• Maxim Aebischer (coding)
• Florian Zinggeler (allround)

Timetable

Date	Room	Topic	Slides
27 feb	ETZ D 96	Introduction and Tools (wiki, forum, svn and blender), ​Blender Tutorial	​Introduction, ​Licensing, ​SVN, ​Blender
6 mar	ETZ D 96	Framework and coding tutorial?	​Framework, ​Handout
13 mar	ETZ D 96	Choose the projects, start planning.
20 mar	ETZ D 96	Project Work
27 mar	ETZ D 96	Project Work
3 apr	ETZ D 96	Project Work
10 apr	ETZ D 96	1st Review
17 apr	ETZ D 96	Project Work
24 apr	ETZ D 96	Hunting Easter Eggs
1 may	ETZ D 96		Labor Day
8 may	ETZ D 96	Pizzaessen
15 may	ETZ D 96	3rd Review
22 may	ETZ D 96	Presentation Preparation / Polish Up
to be announced	ETZ J 91	Presentation	​Slide-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	Assistant
#409	Multiplayer: Masterserver debugging/extension
#410	Multiplayer: Game testing and debugging
#381	Waypoints
#384	Inside a space station II
#420	Auto Collisionshapes
#338	Create a Level?
#408	Formation Level
#325	Gametype?
#392	Scriptable Controller
#152	Cut Scene Camera
#356	Big Ships II
#326	Weapons
#404	Revamp the Spaceships
#411	Embedding Sound Effects
#394	Upgrade the Turret
#405	In-Game HUD overhaul

Alternative Projects can be found here.

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)