CMPS 160 -- Fall 2017 -- course overview

CMPS 160: Fall 2017
Course Overview

CMPS 160 Text

Interactive Computer Graphics: A top-down approach with WebGL, 7th edition
Angel and Shreiner

CMPS 160L Text

WebGL programming guide: interactive 3D graphics programming with WebGL
Kouichi Matsuda and Rodger Lea

Prerequisites:

Math 12 or 17 or 21 or 27 -- matrix manipulation, determinants, dot products, and cross products.

CMPS 101 -- good programming practices/documentation, data structures, algorithms, java/C/C++ programming. You will also need to pick up a new programming language (javascript) on your own.

Grading Policies:

For CMPS 160, your grade is based on 4 programming assignments (50%) and and 2 exams (50%). You need to pass all components in order to pass the course. The requirement above is in place primarily to handle cases of academic dishonesty (see below). If that does not apply to you, then this requirement does not apply.
Each programming assignment account for 12.5% of your grade. Programs turned in at least a full day early will earn 1% bonus credit. Late submissions are not accepted.
In addition to early bonus, there may be opportunities to earn bonus points e.g. extra features, or very nice user interface, etc. Do specify/describe any extra features that you have implemented in your documentation and alert the grader to look for these. The bonus credits (extra work and early bonus) may be accumulated up to a total of 50% toward total program credits. If you go over 50%, the contribution of your programming scores towards your overall course grade will be capped at 50% -- we will indicate that you've exceeded the maximum programming points in the narrative evaluation.
There will be two exams, each one worth 25% of your grade. The two exams are weigthed 60-40 in your favor. That is, the higher of the two will account for 30% of your course grade, and the lower one will be 20% of your course grade. There may be opportunities to earn extra points on your exams. Come prepared. Read up before you get to class. Points from surprise quizzes are treated as bonus points towards your exam score. The total for the exams is also capped at 50%. If you exceed this cap, it will also be noted in your narrative evaluation.
For CMPS 160L, your grade is based on 4 lab assignments (68%) and lab attendance (32%). You need to pass all components in order to pass the course. This requirement is in place primarily to handle cases of academic dishonesty (see below). If that does not apply to you, then this requirement does not apply.
Lab assignments are worth 17% each. Lab assignments turned in at least a full day early will earn 1% bonus credit. Late submissions are not accepted. There are a total of 20 lab sections this quarter. Lab attendance on the 10th week is optional. You are required to attend 16 of the remaining 18 lab sections. Each lab meeting is worth 2% of your CMPS 160L grade. That is, you have 2 "free passes" to miss lab section without point penalty (e.g. you're sick that day). However, you are still responsible for the materials covered in the section(s) that you missed.
You need to pass all components in order to pass the course!
You need to pass 160L in order to pass 160.
You need to pass 160 in order to pass 160L.
THERE WILL BE NO MAKE-UP EXAMS OR PROGRAMS.
THERE WILL BE NO INCOMPLETES GIVEN IN THE CLASS.

Attendance: Attendance in the labs is required. You are responsible for materials covered in the lecture and the labs. Quizzes and exams are held during lecture hours.

General Policies: All course work are intended as individual effort (unless explicitly mentioned otherwise) and are graded as such. It is okay to discuss general approaches and algorithms with other students, but this should be done without writing, looking, or sharing code. Cheating or plagiarism in any form will not be tolerated. What happens is that you will get a zero for the test or program, and the clause about having to "pass all components in order to pass the course" kicks in. Aside from academic sanctions, additional disciplinary sanctions may apply if this is not your first offense. Punishment will match severity of offense. You are responsible for protecting your solutions and programs from being copied by others. Refer to the Academic Misconduct Policy for Undergraduates. If anything is not clear, ask me.

Protecting your work: Because WebGL is run off a browser, it is important that you develop your code "offline" by pointing the browser to a local file as opposed to a url.

Before you submit your work: Make sure that your program runs on the browsers in the lab. If it does not, we cannot grade them.

Submitting your work: Each programming assignment should be placed in its own folder. The folder should contain at least 4 files:

features.html file,
driver.html file,
your javascript code, and
screen shot of your output.

The features.html file should contain your name, login ID, programming assignment number, date, etc. It should have a high-level description of your implementation including what was implemented, what was not, any special features, a user-guide if appropriate, etc. Finally, it should have at least one output image and a link to the driver.html file for the user (grader) to test your code. Your javascript code should have proper documentation including comment blocks for each function, and inline comments as appropriate. Code should be formatted so that it is easy for humans to read. All references in both html files should be local i.e. relative to your submit folder.

You can re-submit as often as you want. We will only grade the most recent submission.

Do not submit the Matsuda/Lea lib folder. Make sure that your driver.html file refer to this folder as ../lib. When we grade your submissions, there will be a lib folder that is at the same level as your submission folder.