Knight Guard is a 2D Action-Adventure-Platformer that draws inspiration from various games like Mega Man X and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Knight Guard will have the player jump, battle and explore the crypts of Calupus. One of the major goals for the game during development is for it to be instantly intuitive and support a “Pick up and play” experience while also providing a challenging and enjoyable experience for the player. Championing current and refined game design practices while also looking towards older ones in hopes that game play will be very much intuitive for both experienced gamers and inexperienced a like. Knight Guard has been developed with the Unity Engine for the Windows operating system with possible expansions to Mac OS and Linux operating systems. One design goals is for the game to run smoothly on low end machines using simple sprite work and lighting effects. Minimum system requirements allow enjoyable playtime to those with laptops or those who might not have the financial resources to obtain a gaming PC. The presentation covers the structure of the game, inheritance hierarchies, mechanics, UI automation and other features like saving and graphical options. A live demo of the game will be presented.
Game development is now more accessible than ever before. With resources like the Unreal Engine 4, professionals and hobbyist alike are now capable of easily diving into the world of game development. Escape From Roswell is a 3rd person action platformer built to demonstrate the ease of professional game design. In the game, the player assumes the role of an alien who has crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico. Frantic and unaware of this new world, the player must find a way to the elusive Area 51 where the military police has taken their spaceship. In this presentation, we discuss how Unreal Engine 4's visual programming allows quick prototyping and implementation. We also explain our approach in developing Escape from Roswell from concept to an actively immersive experience that explores desert landscapes and that allows the player to battle dynamically responsive enemies.
Food is important to us all. However, it is not always easy for a person to determine which food is beneficial for individual needs. Right Recipes is a web application that seeks to offer a different view of food preparation by offering menu suggestions based on provided health concerns. The stored recipes can be sorted based on diet restrictions. The system assigns tags that helps track an individual's needs and habits. Users can create accounts, take suggestions, and make suggestions. The site is designed to facilitate easy navigation for users regardless of technical background. In this presentation, we showcase the representations and methods learned in the course Web Technology used to create this application.
Budget Buddy is a program that was built because it is often common for humans to keep track of money and figure out the smartest way to spend it. This program is meant to help find a good spending budget and help people stick to it. Budget Buddy is a Java application that calls remotely to a PostgreSQL database where line items are stored. A user inputs various details about their life and those details are then stored in the database and used to come up with a proper spending budget. The program is designed in a way that is intuitive to all users no matter what stage of life they may be in. Budget Buddy is intended to communicate helpful feedback and is meant to be easy to follow. The goal of this program is for anybody to be able to use it.
The UNC Asheville degree audit and advising tool, GradPlan, is helpful in planing classes on a semester by semester basis. However it does not provide tools to facilitate multi-semester plans towards graduate. Students must gather additional information required to make informed decisions from sources external to GradPlan. This information must be used with GradPlan rather by GradPlan. The application, LongView, consolidates GradPlan's program requirements, course information, grade information with the additional information of students' interest, historical workload, and the frequency of class offerings. In this presentation we demonstrate how the usage of LongView facilitate student exploration of the possible paths toward graduation arising from various options and choices. We also present our design that applies the set theory of exclusion upon the requirements a student must fulfill from year one to graduation and our implementation that represents and stores requirements and their relationships in a relational database.
In our fast-paced world, we are constantly pulled in many directions and given many chores to manage. One of those unending chores is maintaining the home. In this presentation we will introduce “Help Me Thrive!”, a web-application that assigns, tracks, and rewards each family member for completing assigned chores. “Help Me Thrive!” obtains the necessary information through a questionnaire that gathers information such as the number of family members, rooms, and optional chores categories. This information is then processed and stored in a MySQL database using PHP. One significant part of the assignment process is the decision tree for age appropriate chores for the children. The process decides the time frame for the chores, either on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or seasonal basis. Once the chores are individually designed, then a review will be shown where the “Head of Household” can adjust the chores such as reassign, add or delete. Lastly there will be a reward side to the web-application in either the form of money earned, or points earned. The chores will be saved for the following time frames: daily chores for 90 days, weekly for one year, annual, five years, and seasonal five years. Our test families have tested the program and found that the web-application has allowed them to maintain a better, cleaner household. Also, the children are more responsive to doing their chores with the rewards system. This has allowed a more peaceful home environment.
Tippet is a web application designed for fly anglers that allows them to access crucial information in one easy to use tool. With this application, users can easily find information such as tutorials about casting methods, gear requirements, knot-tying, entomology, and fly patterns. Fly anglers often study the hundreds of books, videos, and articles dedicated to fly fishing so that they can learn and be successful on the water. The primary challenge within this community is the need to bring this information together into a single source for all fly anglers, regardless of their skill level. Tippet’s aim is to consolidate these materials into a single application that anglers can access via multiple devices and platforms. In this presentation, the design and implementation of Tippet is described. Code testing procedures and user-feedback trials are discussed as well. The MEAN stack (MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node.js) is used for the development platform. The application features a cloud database (Amazon Web Services) which is deployed via mLab. A cloud platform called Heroku is used for deploying the application. SSL Certificates are used to secure the web server and ensure that user information is safe. Designed with a responsive and mobile-first structure using Bootstrap 4, Tippet is tailored for anglers who want to view materials on their mobile device while on the move. The capability for anglers to store their own fly patterns to the database further sets this tool apart from similar applications and helps others in the community save time and money.
Sitting down at a restaurant to eat should be a relatively quick and easy process. However, that is not always the case. Inspired by excessive wait times and crowded entrances, the Android mobile application “Why Wait?” was designed to enable users to enter a restaurant's wait queue from any location. Working with local restaurants, “Why Wait?” estimates the current wait time based on the number of customers are already in the queue and the average wait time of the five most recent guests. Restaurants are able view their current wait times and de-queue people as they are seated. “Why Wait?” allows restaurants to expand their seating and reservation service, providing a more pleasurable experience for guests and thus increasing the chance of a repeat customer. In this presentation, we examine the issues of design, implementation, and testing of this application.
Almost everyone has struggled to find a specific item even in stores they feel comfortable with. What’s worse is attempting to shop in a store the consumer is unfamiliar with. This can prevent them from trying new and better stores due to intimidation, the amount of work needed, or a lack of time to learn the layout of the store. Our android application solves these problems by providing a straightforward way to navigate stores confidently, no matter what level of familiarity you have with them. It is fast, easy to use, and intuitive while also allowing the consumer to update it with any changes to their current store, or even create a way to navigate new ones by manually inputting store dimensions and item locations. Once this basic information is collected, the application accepts a shopping list and creates a downloadable image file detailing the fastest route from the entrance to the exit of the store while confidently navigating the store and collecting each item on the list. Once the map has been created the information file can be downloaded and used by any person with the application on their phone. The speedy shopper accomplishes this by creating nodes placed at a stores intersection and the locations of items on a customer’s shopping list. Our application calculates the shortest distance for each possible combination of shopping list item nodes before choosing the combination which results in the smallest space traveled. In this presentation we will go into greater detail on the functionality of the application as well as a live demo using an Asheville based retail store as an example.
Virtual reality captured the public’s interest in the 1980’s and 90’s with the release of several early VR devices and increased media attention on the technology. At the same time, the new Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) protocol was growing in popularity as a means to bridge the analog and digital realms of music production. Both technologies have come a long way, but the interfacing of the two is relatively untrodden territory. Combining the utility of MIDI with the visually and physically engaging nature of VR will allow users to interact with their music in wholly new ways. Using Unity 5 and the HTC Vive headset and controllers, this application functions as a virtual reality MIDI controller in the form of a theremin. By converting locational data to MIDI events and sending them over a UDP connection to a virtual MIDI input, users are able to communicate MIDI messages from VR to their favorite audio plugin host application. The application was developed using Unity 5, Visual Studio, C#, and Tobias Erichsen’s teVirtualMIDI driver library.
Climate Change has fundamentally altered how local governments approach disaster preparedness. A shifting climate exposes a greater variety of vital infrastructure to possible damage, which could have a cascading effect in an area’s ability to shelter and aid its citizens. As new disaster models are being developed it is necessary to evaluate the level of trauma buildings could be exposed to and the structures’ capacity to sustain that damage; a measurement known as adaptive capacity. Determining adaptive capacity at scale has proven to be difficult due to the historical difference in how buildings were constructed and when those regulations have been changed. Through the use of machine learning algorithms and neural networks, we have created a data pipeline to analyze legal corpus to determine its relevance in calculating the adaptive capacity of a series of land parcels. By utilizing Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) models we are able to break a legal corpus down into its constituent topics and use network analysis to determine the relative difference between known relevant legal data. This data is then used in a feed-through neural network to further break down legal sentences into a vector space, using semantic analysis to determine the discrete values which determine the adaptive capacity of a land parcel. In this presentation we will visualize, compare and discuss the machine learning algorithms implementation in this data pipeline, the success rate in determining the relevant information, and future plans for incorporating other forms of disaster preparedness into the data pipeline.
Radio propagation is the science of how effectively radio waves travel across different mediums to go from source to destination. Radio propagation is often difficult to understand and predict. It can be very spontaneous and localized. Variables such as solar indexes and geomagnetic fields can help provide a base-line idea, but often fail to provide detailed, location-specific propagation data. Introducing D-WARP: D-WARP, or Detailed WSPR Analysis of Radio Propagation is a computer controlled radio receiving system that utilizes Software Defined Radio to continuously capture, log, and analyze traffic from the WSPR system of digital radio beacons in order to provide a more detailed and localized picture of radio propagation trends. In this presentation, we will discuss how the D-WARP system works, and how it can help aid in the understanding of radio propagation through its data analysis algorithms.
In this work we produced a light-based artwork that translates live space weather data into a visually pleasing format. Much of the raw data is represented in a format that would be meaningless to a viewer unfamiliar with the study of space weather. In presenting this data as an artistic piece, we increase the time the audience will dedicate to thoroughly and critically examining the data. Through this work, we allow the viewer to engage with the data in a way that they can understand without previous familiarity. We achieved this by using Arduino hardware and software to scrape data from the NOAA livestream and translate it into a more visual experience.
Competitive gaming is a massive industry, with enormous prize pots, tournament attendance numbers, stream viewerships, and sponsorships. As popular games evolve players rely increasingly on video analysis of their matches in order to improve their strategies and study their opponents. This is easy for top players because their matches are broadcast on the tournament’s stream and uploaded to YouTube. For lesser-known players there is no guarantee that they will be recorded, removing a valuable tool for low and mid-level players. For these players, there are currently two ways to record their matches: end up on the tournament’s stream by happenstance or record the match on a phone camera. These are both poor solutions as one is unreliable and the other produces low-quality videos subject to blurring, crowd interference, and shaky camera operation. Twitch.tv, the streaming service where most gaming streams are broadcast has a “Clip” feature which allows viewers to download segments of streams in real time. The Clipper is a real-world analog to this Clip feature in the form of a portable device that records HD video directly from HDMI and component signals. The goal of this project is to facilitate self-reliance for players who want high-quality recordings of their matches, as well as to help players improve and share their matches with other players. The Clipper is operated by connecting the input source, checking the status screen for the go-ahead, and pressing the start and stop buttons to create recordings which will be stored on a removable USB drive. The device is built with a raspberry-pi, a video capture card, an SD card, a USB drive, and software to create and store video files directly from a gaming setup.
Gungi is a fictional, two-player strategy board game that is played by the citizens of East Gorteau and other major characters in Hunter x Hunter—a Japanese comic and animated series written by Yoshihiro Togashi. Despite the popularity of the series and the existence of Gungi for nearly a decade, Yoshihiro Togashi has yet to release an official ruleset let alone a physical adaptation of the board game. This project introduces a Windows application of Gungi that remains as true to the source material as possible—both graphically and functionally —while striking a balance between accessibility and competitiveness. Like the game presented in the fictional series, this application is a strategy board game for two players, similar to chess or shogi, with a unique use of the third-dimension. This mechanic allows players to stack their pieces on any other pieces (including the opposing player’s) and form towers. The added dimensionality along with other uncommon features, such as player-decided starting placements and placing pieces into play mid-match, provides players with a multitude of strategies to checkmate the opposing Marshall (King) or defend their own. To appeal to a broad audience—especially those outside of the series’ fanbase—this application provides an interactive tutorial to demonstrate the rules and general strategy of the game. The application also integrates hover boxes and tooltips into the user interface to assist the player in their decision-making process. The final product aims to exemplify a nonintrusive and intuitive environment and the standard platform for playing Gungi.
Every living thing is composed of complex interlocking systems. These systems determine how tall a tree grows, how bright a firefly is, and how an immune system fights diseases. Systems are composed of a variety of biochemical compounds that interacting in complex ways, creating or breaking into new compounds in response to the environment around them. Quantifying and observing the behavior of these systems requires us to abstract the behavior of these interactions, but even this simplification can be difficult to understand and quantify mathematically. Software libraries exist to assist researchers in this field, but many are so complex in operation that require an in-depth understanding of computer science to utilize or they do not offer specific capabilities that the system of inquiry requires. We present GillesPy2, a software library intended to solve the needs of many scientists; from the result seeking wet-lab biologist to the performance seeking bioinformatician. GillesPy2 is a next-generation of the original GillesPy library, an open source cross-platform Python library used for creating statistically correct trajectories for biochemical ordinary differential equations. GillesPy2 has been designed with a focus on providing both ease of use and clarity to the end user, using a unique modular solver system that allows the end user to specify the algorithm to solve their system of inquiry. This granularity is coupled with high-level functionality allowing the researcher to communicate and export their findings seamlessly.
This project uses techniques from artificial intelligence (AI) to create a program that can play a full game of chess versus a human player. It implements machine learning (ML) to better understand the game of chess and its skill level increases as it gains more experience from its game playing. The personal motivation for this project comes from the enjoyment found while playing chess and the curiosity that blooms when seeing how machines can learn to play such a complex game with success against humans. Furthermore, creating this program offers a better understanding to the mathematical functions and algorithms that allow such a program to make informed game decisions quickly. This work extends previous Javascript chess framework. A web server that runs Ubuntu, Apache, and MySQL hosts the finished project online. Each game’s data in a Portable Game Notation (PGN) file is stored on the server as well. This will allow people to easily access and play against the AI from anywhere with internet access.
While artificial intelligence is primarily a branch of computer science, its application in robotics remains heavily focused only in the engineering discipline. With intelligent systems being so prevalent in our current society and the future at large, we as computer scientists are potential robotics developers capable of contributing to this new paradigm. This project seeks to blend the two studies and explore some challenges faced in programming for robotics. We will do so by attempting to solve how a robotic arm would play an optimal game of Jenga. In this case, we define the optimal state to be a tower with only one block at each level, and if another piece is to be drawn, the tower would fall. The decision model for the game-play environment uses the basics of Markov Decision Process (MDP) with the addition of reinforcement learning to estimate the missing transition probability function. We implemented the temporal difference (TD) algorithm of reinforcement learning in order for the arm to teach itself the optimal path through a series of simulated test runs aiming for reward maximization. Analysis of results will demonstrate successful learning through the progression of total rewards achieved after each run. Once the learning is optimized in the simulation, integration with the physical robot arm would follow. The scripts are written in Python (3.0) and the simulation uses the open source Robot Operating System (ROS) framework and Gazebo simulator. This platform AI program will be used as a baseline for Dr. Kenneth Bogert’s undergraduate research and as part of a demo running behind glass for the UNC-Asheville Computer Science department. The presentation will discuss the MDP model and effects of TD-learning through a simulated demo.
This software development project implements a board game, King of Tokyo, using Object Oriented (OO) abstractions and MVC (Model View Controller) architecture. Undergraduate computer science curricula often lack group software development, so this project teaches team skills as well as software design skills and good coding practices. This project combines OO development methodologies with Unity’s standard component-based game design. The software’s MVC architecture provides a separation between the game state (model) and the graphical representation of the game (view), which allows the team to work on both modules simultaneously and easily make design changes. Unity game objects implement this view by displaying graphics and notifying the controller of user inputs. The OO features of C#, such as interfaces, facilitate this logical separation between the model and the view. This semester we have focused on implementing a variety of art into our game. This includes 2D card art, UI elements, 3D models, and game music and sound effects. Part of our focus this semester is finding the best way to create and import the artwork as to streamline the process of implementing and updating it as we proceed.
Currently the schedule creating tools given to students do not include a schedule suggestion engine. Without any explicit, personalized guidelines, students are forced to spend hours reading descriptions, looking up offer dates, and checking prerequisites before their advising meetings. This lack of guidance leads to students being ill prepared for their advising meetings, which forces a fifteen-minute meeting to become an hour-long slog through possible classes. An engine that automatically suggests schedules based on past student performance will greatly ease this process for both students and their advisors. Students that are proactive will, with greater ease, be able to whittle down all the available classes to a few that the student could visualize registering for and eventually attending. Advisors would also be able to shorten meeting with unprepared students. While it may be easy to suggest courses from the professor’s home department, it is more of a challenge to suggest classes that fulfill LAC requirements. This project creates a tool for selecting appropriate courses and a schedule for a specific student based on their academic history. It is coded in Java for ease of understanding, future enhancement, and portability.
