CSE 160 -- Final Project Guidelines

Important Dates:

April 24, 2015, noon -- Preliminary project proposal due.
May 8, 2015, noon -- Final project proposal due.
May 22, 2015, 9 am (couple of class meetings) -- Project checkpoint.
June 9, 2015, 4-7 pm -- Project demo and writeup.

NOTE: There will be a 2% LATE PENALTY for EACH item that is late. The 2% is based on your course grade, not just the project grade! June 9, 12 noon is the final deadline. Nothing will be accepted beyond that date. Don't expect to get immediate response to your proposals if you submit at the last minute!

Final Project:

This is an individual or a pair-project meant to be completed in about 4-5 weeks. You get to decide what project you want to do -- after we review it. The main considerations are:

it's beyond the requirements of the assigned programs,
it should have sufficient graphics content,
it's a reasonable size project that can be completed within the given time,
there's enough variation from other projects.

Projects are first come, first serve. It's to your advantage to get your project approved early. You'll also get a head start and have more time to do a better project.

Preliminary Project Proposal:

Submit 3 project ideas that you would like to work on. Rank them in the order of your preference. Provide enough detail to explain each of your idea.

There's 3 outcomes from this stage of the proposal:

your ``ownership'' of a project: since students should work on different project topics, those getting the proposals in early and finalized get 1st pick on their topic.
a difficulty rating of your project -- more will be expected from pair-project for the same level of difficulty.
priority in the order in which you do your project presentations -- people who submit early will have more choice on the order of their presentation.

To submit your proposal, post it on piazza under the "project" tab. It's important that you put: Prelim proposal: your name(s) as the title of your post.

I will comment on each post with respect to what perceived difficulty level, clarification questions, and/or approval of your proposal based on your preference ranking.

If you can't think of a project idea, you can look at other proposal posts and use someone else's project idea. But, they have priority in which they want to do for their final project.

Don't wait till the last minute to submit your proposals since it may take more than 1 iteration to get your proposal approved.

Final Project Proposal:

This is a 1-2 page writeup describing your final project in more detail. It also serves as your 1st draft of the Project Report. Include your project goals (list of different project components/features) and a time line on when you plan to complete different pieces of the project. Also include a list of references that you have read about your project (if applicable). You should set up your report as an html file -- name it "index.html".

Examples of these can be found by clicking on the titles under the Topic column.

Final Proposal Submission.

Create and submit a folder called "proposal". Include your "index.html" file and any "assets" e.g. images, that are used by this file. Use submit from unix.ic.

submit cmps160-ap.s15 proposal proposal.zip

Project Checkpoint:

This is an oral presentation about your project. Here are the parameters for preparing your presentation:

It should be in one of the following format: html file, powerpoint file, or pdf file.
Includes your name(s), project title, brief project description.
Status of the project up to that point. Include any pictures, partial results, etc.

Each project will have about 5 minutes of presentation time -- very brief. We will need a couple of class meetings to do the project checkpoint, depending on how many students there are and how closely each one follows the time limit. The purpose of this is twofold: (1) for you to show us where you're at with your project and, (2) to get feedback from the class and instructor. You need to submit your presentation materials as well (by 9 am of May 22, 2015). Put your materials in a folder called checkpoint , and submit using one of the following:

submit cmps160-ap.s15 checkpoint checkpoint.zip

Project Requirements:

Project Demonstration. Each project will have 5-10 minutes to present their final project to the class (depends on total number of projects to be presented). Be sure to allow your window to be resized to the entire screen so folks can see your output.
Project Report -- this is in the form of a web page and should contain the following information.
- description of your project,
- a mini user's guide,
- sample output i.e. images and short animation clips
In short, a good project report should have elements of:
- What is it about?
- What are the cool things it can do?
- How do I use it?
- How do I reproduce it?
We will be moving your submitted material from the UCSC web server over to the SOE web server. All the links should be RELATIVE to the root of your submit folder. Otherwise, links may break during the move, or over time if you include a link to anything outside of your submit folder.
Project Submission. Create and submit a subdirectory called "proj". Use submit from unix.ic.
- To submit use: submit cmps160-ap.s15 proj proj.zip
Include the following:
- README file for information on platform, compilation, etc.,
- at least two favorite screen grabs , "xv" or "snapshot" can be used on the suns; on the macs, < shift >< apple ><3> keys held down together will produce a .pict image file of the whole screen, crop this with your favorite image tool; on windows, try < shift >< printscreen >. These will be used as thumbnails for your project in the class project page.
- a "report" folder with the project report i.e. index.html page and all accompanying image and animation files. Everything must be self-contained. Do not include links to anything other than what you include in your submit folder. Include a a short movie clip of your program in action , say about 5-10 seconds, and not to exceed 2 mb. Save movie as quicktime or mpeg.
- a "code" folder containing source code, makefile, etc. to compile your code,
- a "data" folder containin any *new* data sets, if any.
Project Grading.
- There will be no early bonus points, nor will late programs be accepted.
- During the project proposal phase, your project will be rated as either: Easy, Medium, Difficult. Successfully completed Easy projects get a maximum score of 90, Medium is 100, and Difficult is 110.
- Breakdown of points (in percentage of maximum points):
  - Project Report requirements -- 10% A well written report will obviously get more points than a haphazardly written one.
  - Project Demonstration requirements -- 10% You need to demo your project as a requirement for passing this course. Without one, it will be assumed that you dropped the course at the last day of the quarter.
  - Project Functionality (meets the proposal goals) -- 80%
  Note: Project reports with non-functional links will get docked at least 5%

CONTEST!

As an added incentive, we'll be running a competition among your projects. Winners get a chance to select from some goodies. Here's a sample voting/entry form .