Intro Graphics Assignment 2

Tank Game
Due: 14 September, 2006 by 11:59:59 p.m.

Required Features

Draw a 3D ground plane - it can be as simple as a flat grid of squares.
Draw a tank consisting of a body, turret, and gun. The geometry of these parts can be as simple as a box and a couple cylinders.
Use hierarchical transformations to draw the body at a 3D tank location, the turret in a specific location relative to the body, and the gun in a specific location relative to the turret.
Allow the user to control, with keyboard and/or mouse, the placement and rotation of the body, the left-right rotation of the turret, and the up-down rotation of the gun.
Have an initial camera location and look vector such that the tank and ground plane are in view. Use gluLookAt() to specify these.
Use a perspective projection (instead of, say, the orthographic projection used in the square assignment).
Allow the user to control the 3D location and rotation of the camera.

Getting Started

Use the skeleton code, or your additions to it, from the previous project. Note that you will need to change from a 2D orthographic projection to a perspective projection.

Sample solution coming soon.

Extra Credit

Head-to-head with multiple tanks (pretty easy, except for good key handling).
Real terrain: replace the flat ground plane with a height field, for example read in from a .BMP file using the code from the previous assignment. Add code so that the tank correctly translates and tilts up and down as it traverses the terrain.
Texture mapping of terrain and tanks.
Let tanks shoot bullets.
Deformable terrain: when a tank bullet hits the terrain, change that terrain (e.g. carve out a crater).
Real tanks: find a 3D model of a tank (or similar ground assault vehicle) online and write code to read it into your program.
First-person mode: toggle back and forth between third- and first-person views.
Automatic camera placement: design a camera algorithm that moves the camera in order to keep the tank(s) in view

Please be sure to get the basic assignment working before you go bananas on these extra credit items!

Submission

Write a web page describing what you did, extra credit steps performed, comments, etc.

Your web page should contain a link to a .zip file that contains ALL of the source code that your TA will need to build your assignment. It is your responsibility to make sure that the zip file is complete. We are not going to fix compile errors or fill in missing pieces of assignments.

Submit a hw2.zip file that contains all of the source code and web page. Never, NEVER e-mail the file to the TA. In particular, do NOT e-mail your .zip file or any images as attachments.

Advice

Start soon! Despite the simplicity of the "game" you have a great deal to do.

Begin by drawing the ground plane and a cube. Make sure you can set up the camera, etc so that these are visible on screen before you sink any time into the rest of the project.

Be careful with the near and far clip planes! It's easy to be doing everything right but get the dreaded "black screen of sadness" because you're inadvertently clipping the entire scene away.

Intro Graphics Assignment 2

Tank Game Due: 14 September, 2006 by 11:59:59 p.m.

Required Features

Getting Started

Extra Credit

Submission

Advice

Tank Game
Due: 14 September, 2006 by 11:59:59 p.m.