If you would like to work remotely and have a slow connection, you should look into installing the RoboCup 3D Soccer Server System on your local machine. We will be using rcssserver3d-0.6.4 and simspark 0.2.1 for this class. Note that if you'd like to install the server on your laptop or home machine, there are links to instructions on how to do this in the middle of the page at http://simspark.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page .

Get familiar with the 3D soccer simulator

1. Make sure nobody else is running the simulator on the machine you're on:

   	% ps aux | grep rcss
   

   If someone is on, you will see a line with the word "rcssserver3d" in it. (For future reference, there IS a way to run multiple servers on the same machine.)


2. If you are not running the server on the local machine, run the following command:

   	% xhost a.cs.utexas.edu 
   	    where 'a' is the name of the machine you are using.
   

3. In one shell, start the simulator:

           % rcsoccersim3d
   

   If the command rcsoccersim3d cannot be found, make sure that your PATH environment variable is set correctly (see the instructions above). You will likely see a lot of text including error messages being printed out as the simulator starts up but don't worry as you can ignore these.


4. In another shell, start a player.
   First copy a sample agent to any directory in your account.

           % cp -r /projects/cs344M.pstone/3d/nao-agent .
   

   Then start the agent running

           % cd nao-agent
           % ./agentspark --host=localhost --team myteam --unum 2 --paramsfile paramfiles/defaultParams.txt&
   	[instead of myteam, use your own name]
   

   The agent should appear in the center circle of the field.


5. Now try changing the viewpoint of the camera in the simulator. The following are controls for the camera:

           left_mouse_botton - look
           a, left_arrow - move left
           d, right_arrow - move right
           w, up_arrow - move forward
           s, down_arrow - move backward
           page_up - move camera up
           page_down - move camera down
           1-7 - jump to fixed viewpoint
   

   Additional camera controls and other simulator commands can be found on page 30 of the 3d simulator manual.
   
   Note: If the graphics are really slow and choppy there's a chance you're working on a machine that doesn't have direct rendering turned on. If direct rendering is not enabled you might want to move to a machine that does have this feature enabled (which should include the lab computers in ENS 1 and ENS 31NR).


6. Now type 'k' in the simulator to kickoff. You should see the time start running. The agent won't move however as it hasn't been told to take any actions.


7. Now lets quit the simulator by typing 'q'. After quitting the simulator it's likely that the agent will still be running which is bad as it will become a runaway process just eating up CPU. Check for the agent process with the following:

           % ps aux | grep agentspark
   

   If the agentspark process is still running go ahead and kill it by running the following:

           % sh kill.sh
   

   It's a good idea to run the kill.sh script everytime after quitting the simulator to clean up potential runaway agent processes.


8. Now lets go ahead and have the agent actually do something instead of just stand there after kickoff. Open startegy.cc and go to the selectSkill() method. You should see that it returns an eunmerated value type of SKILL_STAND. Change this return value to be SKILL_WALK_FRONT and save your changes to strategy.cc. Now recompile the agent with the make command:

           % make
   

   Then start the simulator and agent running again as before. After the agent appears in the center circle type 'k' to kickoff again. This time instead of just standing there the agent should start walking forward. Go ahead and quit the simulator and agent processes again as before.
   The selectSkill() method is called almost every cycle of the simulator and its return value determines what skill or action the agent will perform next. In addition to standing and walking the agent has many other skills which we have designed for it including kicking. Try having selectSkill() return SKILL_KICK_LONG_RIGHT_LEG to see it kick the ball. The following is a list of the enumerated values you can have selectSkill() return in order to perform different actions...feel free to try some of them out!

           SKILL_STAND - stand
           SKILL_WALK_FRONT - walk forward
           SKILL_WALK_BACK - walk backward
           SKILL_WALK_LEFT - walk sideways to the left
           SKILL_WALK_RIGHT - walk sideways to the right    
           SKILL_TURN_LEFT - turn to the left
           SKILL_TURN_RIGHT - turn to the right
           SKILL_WALK_FRONT_CURVED_LEFT - forward walk that curves left
           SKILL_WALK_FRONT_CURVED_RIGHT - forward walk that curves right
   	SKILL_KICK_LONG_LEFT_LEG - long kick left leg
           SKILL_KICK_LONG_RIGHT_LEG - long kick right leg
           SKILL_KICK_MED_LEFT_LEG - medium kick left leg
           SKILL_KICK_MED_RIGHT_LEG - medium kick right leg
           SKILL_DIVE_LEFT - goalie dive to the left
           SKILL_DIVE_RIGHT - goalie dive to the right
           SKILL_DIVE_CENTER - goalie dive to the center
   

9. Another thing we control is an agent's starting position at the beginning of the game. This is determined by the beam() method in strategy.cc which "beams" an agent to a particular position at the beginning of a match. In order to change this try changing the values set in beam() to the following:

           beamX = -1; //-0.2;
           beamY = 1; //0.05;
           beamAngle = 180; //0;
   

   Now if you recompile and run the simulator and agent you should see the agent start in a different postition with it facing toward its own goal.

Watch a game

        % cd /projects/cs344M.pstone/3d/logs
        % ls 

        % rcssmonitor3d --logfile  <game>  (e.g. "sparkmonitor.log") 

Create a game log

        $recordLogfile = true 

	% ls *.log

        % rcssmonitor3d --logfile <file>.log