buggy-race-server

This is the central repo in the Buggy Racing project.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS May 2023
We're currently running the Buggy Racing project (for the fourth year) at Royal Holloway, Department of Computer Science
We're aiming for a public release in June!

About the project

The project requires students to develop a Python Flask web app that lets them edit a racing buggy. It produces JSON data describing the buggy which they can upload to the central race server. Races are run offline and the results posted on the server; the results are irrelevant to the students' success — they are being assessed on the quality of the editor they have built.

We provide the skeleton of their editor (buggy-race-editor) and a set of tasks for them to complete. How thoroughly they complete the tasks is up to them, but the tasks are grouped in phases, and they must complete the phases in the given order. The final task (phase 6) is completely wild-carded (do anything), but in fact most of the tasks allow considerable variation in how thoroughly they are implemented. This approach accommodates students who are relatively new to programming as well as those who are already confident programmers.

If you're running a Buggy Race project, you will need to fork and customise the editor repo before sharing it with your students.

Structure of the project software

There are three repos:

• buggy-race-server (this repo)
  Contains a Flask web app that accepts students' racing buggy specifications as JSON data, manages login/setup, and provides information both on the server itself (racing specs) and supporting information/explanations (the "tech notes").

• buggy-race-editor
  Contains the skeleton Flask web app that runs the Buggy editor that every student is given, and which they must develop according to the tasks.

• buggy-race-about
  Contains full documentation both for the server software and how to run the project (currently in draft, so this is not available yet)

History

We first ran this project for the CS1999 (CompSci Foundation year at RHUL) in term 3, 2020. Now we're working on making it configurable and customisable for other institutions to use.