Our second project is yet untitled but is just as interesting. After years of repression by the Chair Max Levchin, The Purple Duck Theme, brewing in SigGraph heads has been brought to life in our new game production, a duck hunt simulation, but with a full-blown adventure plot and the ability to play across Wide Area Networks. The game is entirely client-server based. The user that joins the server becomes the hunter, and as the rest arrive they are assigned Duck roles. Their task is to fly away from the hunter's shots. So far the 3D-engine has been completed but the DDT - Duck Development Team is having hard time coming up with sample plots for the game.

Finally, being the diversely-oriented group we are working on a new project in a tangent to graphics area - waste management. We are developing a computer-guided waste collection software with visual recognition built into it, based on HP Power platform. Using the cheap cameras that come with Apollo stations we will be able to collect garbage automatically by analyzing video input and recognizing the garbage in real-time. Recently, we have been pushed back in development, when a buggy algorithm caused the system to incorrectly recognize and subsequently destroy the only computer containing the source code to the software using an attached office shredder.

We meet every Thursday night at 9pm in 1102 DCL working on these and similar projects. Drop by or email siggraph@uiuc.edu for more information!