The aim of this project is to improve the scalability of the Opencraft server. The Opencraft server is based on an open-source implementation of the vanilla Minecraft server. This thesis focuses on improving the messaging system of the Opencraft server. The existing implementation of the messaging system is very basic. It went through all online players and promptly generated all messages and send them afterwards, this limits performance and scalability. We decided to replace the system with an implementation of the topic-based variant of the publish/subscribe design pattern. However, we evaluated other options as well. We also decided to implement certain features that were deemed necessary for verification purposes. The server often varied in behaviour compared to the vanilla Minecraft server. This made message verification harder since it was not possible to compare both servers side to side. This lead to the implementation of collision, physics, and water flow, which allows anyone to verify the behaviour of the Opencraft server is correct. The implementation of the messaging system provides a variety of components that can each be configured. All different configurations were tested to find the optimal configuration for the Opencraft server. ... Read more

Working with pneumatics can be done using a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), which commands the individual actuators. To start, the movements of each component are described in a displacement diagram. From this diagram, ladder logic can be extracted, which is a set of conditions with corresponding actions. These actions are executed when the conditions hold. This ladder logic is the programming language of PLCs and makes it possible to control pneumatics. De Techniekschool provides courses on these techniques and pneumatics.

This report describes the research, design and implementation of a software application to aid students in their education of pneumatics. The main goal is to allow users to create a displacement diagram and then generate the corresponding ladder logic based on this diagram. This will allow users to understand how this conversion works and help them in understanding PLC programming.

In the research phase, various designs were evaluated. The implementation of the compiler was thought out and possible designs for the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for creating the diagram were explored. In the case of the GUI, the final implementation differs from the initial chosen design. This is because, during the project, it was discovered that the design did not work as well as intended, thus the switch was made. To guarantee the correct behaviour of the product, each individual component was tested on its own with unit tests.

Besides a compiler and the ability to draw displacement diagrams, features of Stepladder include the option to save and open work, and the option to undo and redo actions. It is also possible to show the signals which the PLC will receive and send. These signals already play a vital role in the conversion from displacement diagram to ladder logic and the generated signals can help to understand this conversion.

Desirable features which are not yet implemented are the support for multiple languages and improvements to the accessibility of the application. Also, a more advanced compiler is desired, because the current compiler does create ladder logic according to a valid technique, but it is not the optimal solution. For learning purposes, an optimal conversion may be desired. Proper user testing is also desired to verify the design and whether the application is easy to use.

To conclude, the final product allows the user to create displacement diagrams and generate ladder logic. This can be used to study the conversion needed in PLC programming. The final product meets the design goals set in the design process. Besides the design goals, the product also satisfies the initial requirements. There are some features the client could implement but these are not required. ... Read more

Raccoon Serious Games develops and hosts educational activities such as escape room events and serious games. They create both physically- and digitally-based escape rooms across many different scales. These events consist of a variety of puzzles and tasks the player(s) have to solve in order to finish or `escape' the event. For their digitally hosted events, the Massive Online Reactive Serious Escape 2.0 (MORSE) system is used for creation and configuration of the needed underlying rules of the event. The system uses the `If This Then That' (IFTTT) principle for creating rules, where a trigger activated by the player/game can initiate a check about the state of the game which then results in an action by the game. In MORSE the user (usually the game host) can choose from the multiple types of triggers, conditions, and actions to create logical statements in the IFTTT format. These statements together form the rules of the game. This system, although a good improvement over the previously hard-coded procedure, has proven unintuitive to program for most of the employees at Raccoon Serious Games. The IFTTT format used is unwieldy to work with for the designers, who have little to no programming background. Furthermore this existing system provides no overview of the rules system making it challenging to visualise the whole game and its dynamics. To solve the unintuitive nature of MORSE, our team designed and developed Feather: A graph-based visual editing tool that is integrated into MORSE. It can generate rule and ruleset logic needed for the client's escape events. It uses visual components and presents the user with a graph of the whole game during the design process. The editor can be used together with all other, earlier existing, features for creating rulesets of the MORSE system. This tool has most of the functionality the current system has, with the possibility of easily extending it with new components. The product was built as an addition to MORSE over the course of 10 weeks. In the initial part of the project a thorough research was performed on the needs of the client as well as useful resources or libraries and design practices for domain specific visual languages. The second part of the project was devoted to the design and implementation of the tool. Throughout the duration of the project a number of user tests were conducted with the employees at Raccoon Serious Games to assess the understanding and usability of the product. ... Read more

The M.O.R.S.E. system is a tool for creating and managing large escape events, mainly used for local escape events. The tool is designed for only a limited range of puzzle types and styling options because most of the puzzles require physical items in order to solve a puzzle and only the answers have to be entered in M.O.R.S.E. Because of this design, it is really difficult to create online escape experiences, especially rich and immersive ones. It also requires a lot of programming outside of the M.O.R.S.E. system to do so. Raccoon Serious Games , the client, does not have many employees with programming experience and, therefore, it is not feasible for them to create the rich and immersive online escape experiences they want. To be able to create such immersive experiences, we are extending M.O.R.S.E. with editable domains and web pages. Game designers can add domains and web pages to the existing event schedule and then puzzles can be created for web pages. Players can view one or multiple of these domains and for each domain, the active web page will be served. Web pages can be created and stored in the domains, but the actual contents of the web pages still have to be made. Because making web pages is often a programming intensive task, a page builder has been created in M.O.R.S.E. This page builder allows the user to load and save web pages created in the M.O.R.S.E.
system. It uses a drag-and-drop system to place building-block elements inside the web pages and allows for directly visible styling of those elements. Because of this, the user does not need programming knowledge of the underlying implementation of the web pages. It also facilitates the linking between M.O.R.S.E. features and the domains such as puzzles and triggers for buttons. Using the import and export functionality, users can easily copy previous web pages created with the page builder. This is not only limited to internal web pages but can also be used to import external code from outside the page builder. With user-friendly features such as the ability to undo and redo changes, the page builder tries to make creating web pages as easy as possible. An important aspect of the escape games hosted by Raccoon Serious Games is team building. We extend upon this notion by adding roles and a leaderboard screen to M.O.R.S.E., both of which increase the need and opportunity for interaction between players. The addition of roles allows game designers to enforce cooperation in their escape events, by restricting the access to resources required for solving a puzzle to only a subset of the players in a team. This way they have to cooperate and combine their information and resources to solve all puzzles. The addition of leaderboards is also an extra incentive for a player in a team to work together efficiently because this will positively impact their score and, therefore, ranking on the leaderboard. ... Read more

Items being misplaced in warehouses easily get lost. To combat this, warehouses have to send people in scanning all barcodes in the warehouse. This is highly inefficient, which is why Eonics wants to build a drone handling this. There are options out there to scan barcodes, but none of them match the requirements laid out by Eonics. Among these requirements are a lightweight camera, such as a GoPro, and a recording distance of 1.5-2 metres. This report will look and see if these requirements are feasible. Techniques used in this report are Mathematical Morphology, Maximally Stable Extremal Regions, Convolutional Neural Networks, Gradiental Difference and Direction Estimation with Region Extraction. The report concludes in stating that interpreting the barcodes is not possible with mere software under these requirements. The maximal distance we were able to interpret barcodes from, based on a 4K image, was around 1 metre. Continuing the trend, we would need at least an 8K camera to detect from a distance of 1.5 metres. Detection however, is less difficult and is feasible from a distance of 1.5-2 metres. The report also derives an function to use to calculate the maximum distance a barcode can be interpreted from, based on the details of the barcode and camera. Finally, research is done regarding using hardware solutions, such as a zoom-lens, which has promising results. ... Read more