An architecture for distributed multiplayer RoboTable games: A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor Software and Information Technology with Honours

Abstract

Lego robotics has been introduced for teaching and learning as a learning tool. The RoboTable has been developed for Lego robotics as a tabletop learning environment. Learners can interact with the RoboTable using their Lego robot. Currently RoboTables are stand alone devices but if we can link RoboTables over a network, school children from different places could work together. This will create a better learning environment by letting school children learn from each other.

This project focuses on investigating a universal, platform independent way to simplify the creating the network communication between RoboTable games. The proposed plan is to develop a communication toolkit to help RoboTable game developers create communication between multiplayer RoboTable games easily. This toolkit has essential communication development functionality to create connections and send and receive messages. These functions allow RoboTable game developers to easily add communication and create multiplayer RoboTable games.

We implemented a prototype toolkit to support creating multiplayer RoboTable games as well as developed a central communication server for handling the communication between games. In addition we have created a sample game to test the toolkit and act as an example to help RoboTable game developers.

The toolkit approach was evaluated by doing testing using the sample game. The results showed that using the toolkit is an easy and useful approach to allow RoboTable game developers to create multiplayer RoboTable games with correct game state using minimal effort. More importantly, the central communication server application can work with any type of multiplayer RoboTable games which means developers do not have to develop a server for each RoboTable game. This approach significantly reduces the effort required for developing multiplayer RoboTable games