Re: [simspark-devel] [Sserver-three-d] Documentation and wikis

[Joschka B. <jos...@am...>]

Hi Drew and all,

On Jun 14, 2010, at 11:47 PM, Drew Noakes wrote:

> 
> I'll get started in the next day or so.  

Excellent!

> No doubt I'll have many questions, so I'll add them to the wiki itself and ask people more knowledgeable than me to fill in the blanks.
> 

OK, sounds good.

> I saw somewhere a task along the lines of "update TeX files with TEXT_INSTEAD_OF_A_MANUAL".  Does this text file represent the most up-to-date information?  I will be sure to draw from all sources I can find, but if there are conflicts I'd like to know which source is more authoritative.
> 

The TEXT_INSTEAD_OF_A_MANUAL file was used as the basis for the user manual. However, not all of the information made it into the tex files (we planned a server developer's manual that was supposed to contain some of that information, see also below). So I guess in places where there is overlap, the manual should be more recent.  

> Also, does anyone have any documentation about the monitor protocol?  

Part of it is documented in the TEXT_INSTEAD_OF_A_MANUAL. In addition, about two years ago Carlos Bustamante was kind enough to document the monitor protocol further. Unfortunately, the information never made it into the manual (it was supposed to go into the developer's manual, but so far, we haven't gotten started on that one yet :-( ). You can find his draft at [1]. It might be incomplete, and possibly slightly out of date, but it's a good start.

> If not then I will reverse it from TrainerCommandParser.  I was going to ask the list whether it would be possible to add the ability to position the ball exactly for machine learning purposes, only to find mention of this interface in a changelog somewhere. It'd be great to have it detailed on the wiki.
> 

If I'm not mistaken, it is also described in the TEXT_INSTEAD_OF_A_MANUAL file.

We should also document that it is possible to run agents as plugins directly in the simulator process, with no network communication required (example is given in the soccerbotbehavior in rcssserver3d/plugin/soccer/agentintegration). This should also be interesting for machine learning and debugging purposes, and it might be another one of those useful but not very well known features of the simulator. I mention it in the overview paper I wrote for the SIMPAR 2008 workshop [2], but that might be its only mention I'm afraid.

Just as a general note, not directly concerning the documentation, I wanted to let people know that we have started development on the integration of the Bullet physics engine into the simulator as an alternative to ODE. My colleague Richard Keely has kindly taken on that task, and I'll try to assist.

Best regards,
Joschka

[1] http://jeap-res.ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp/~joschka/simspark/monitorprotocol.pdf
[2] http://monicareggiani.net/simpar2008/RoboCupSimulators/SIMPAR_simspark.pdf