Kalpaware, Inc

presents...

SimNetworkGame overview

• Genre: Real Time Strategy

• Similar to SimCity

• Player is a network designer of a large telecommunications firm

• Game goal: build a reliable network that connects customers with each others efficiently and make profit

• No winning rule: player can play for as long as he/she wants

• Losing rule: balance falls below certain amount or overall customer satisfaction falls below certain percentage

• Educational purpose: teach the fundamental techniques and strategies involved in the design and maintenance of digital communication networks

SimNetworkGame scene

User interface

Toolbar

Customer

SimNetworkGame rules

• Each customer specifies three requirements

• Monthly fee: amount customer is willing to pay

• Minimum bandwidth

• Peers: other customers to which customer wants to connect

• Three types of customers with different requirements: Residential neighbourhoods, Businesses, Industrial/Educational

• Based on the quality of service provided, a satisfaction rate out of 100% is calculated for each customer.

SimNetworkGame rules

• To solicit customers to subscribe, player has to first link them to the network

• Player then “negotiates” with customer:

• Player specifies the monthly fee for each customer

• Customer might or might not accept offer: the higher the difference between the customer-specified monthly fee, the lesser the likelihood that he/she will accept offer

• However, higher bandwidth might entice customer to accept offer (some AI functionality determines this)

SimNetworkUser interaction

• Two basic network buildings blocks

• Routers: 2, 4, 6, ... interfaces, each router has a finite maximum bandwidth

• Cables: 1, 10, 100, 1000 Mbps

• Cables are laid between two points in the map

• Multiple cables can be joined with an appropriate route

• User can also add routers to the map by clicking on the point router should appear on

SimNetworkUser interaction

Cable connecting two customers

Scene can be rotated about X, Y axes. Player can also zoom in/out and scroll

SimNetworkGame design: Toolbar• User operates the toolbar by clicking the individual

buttons

• When the button is selected, it changes appearance to indicate that tool has been selected by player

• Each tool has its own representation on the toolbar: an interactive button

• Demolish tool will remove any parts of the network and also clear up space for laying the cables (if for example a tree is on the way)

SimNetworkGame design: Toolbar

• The toolbar is part of 2D scene. 2D scene has its own orthogonal camera

• There are 9 tools total: 4 for laying down different cables, 4 for different routers, and demolish tool

• Each button is a set of 3 sprites: a sprite for normal state, sprite for hover state, and a sprite for selected state

• Each button has fixed widths and height which can be adjusted as needed

• Toolbar is dynamically positioned in top left corner of the screen, but can be easily moved anywhere within the screen view

• do_point( ) and do_timer( ) functions allow for the hover state to work. They each call the right toolbar handler that is required to complete the hover, select, or de-select actions

• Total number of lines of code ~200

SimNetworkFSM

Over all Game loop

SimNetworkFSM: Simulation pipeline

Simulation pipeline

High level Algorithm

SimNetworkBasic models

Questions?