eNVyMyCar: a multiplayer car racing game for teaching computer graphics

The development of a computer game is widely used as a way of conveying concepts regarding Computer Science. There are several reasons for this: it stimulates creativity, it provides an immediate sense of achievement (when the code works), it typically covers all the aspects of an introductory course, and it is easy to find ideas just by looking around and finding stimulation from one's environment and from fellow students. In this paper we present eNVyMyCar, a framework for the collaborative/competitive development of a computer game, and report the experience of its use in two Computer Graphics courses held in 2007. We developed a multiplayer car racing game where the student's task is just to implement the rendering of the scene, while all the other aspects, communication and synchronization are implemented in the framework and are transparent to the developer. The innovative feature of our framework is that all on-line users can see the views produced by their fellow students. This motivates students to improve their work by comparing it with other students and picking up ideas from them. It also gives students an opportunity to show off to their classmates.