Abstract:

In this project, a distributed economics game will be developed in which there will be several players playing on PDAs and a single central Oracle Database server. Economics games are very popular and have been around for many years [NPP91]. They help in understanding economics concepts and in simulating real world's market scenarios. In our game, each player is either producer or consumer and there is a central server which coordinates all the activities of these players. The central server assigns roles to each player. Properties of the game such as whether reusability of money is allowed or not, what the frequency of goods' production is, the initial sum of money the consumers possess are configurable at the central server. Experiments will be performed using this game and results drawn under various initial conditions. In particular, the hope is to be able to model market situations in which the communication between the members of the market is more fluid than in traditional economic games. The development of this game will involve developing three components - a PDA component, a central server component and an economics game framework component. The PDA component is for each actual player. The central server component is where all the centralized coordination occurs and where initial configuration is done. The economics game framework component involves the actual game with the payoffs for consumers and producers. The game will be developed using J2ME and XML. This game can be used to demonstrate the way in which the supply and demand determine the equilibrium market quantity and market price.

CS297 Results

• Designed and implemented a MIDlet to store the business card information into the Record Management System and later retrieve it.
• Implemented an application that enables the transfer of business card information wirelessly between two devices. This is done using Client Server architecture with JDBC support.
• Programmed the setting up of a connection between Pocket PC and HTTP Server.
• Implemented the setup of the connection between the HTTP Server and the Oracle XML Database.

Proposed Schedule

Key Deliverables:

• Software
  • Develop the PDA component for the game.
  • Develop the central server component.
  • Develop the economics game framework component.The framework will support via properties files: (a) The ability to adjust consumer and producer payoffs. (b) The ability to set up different kinds of pay-offs (not just imaginary dollars but other goods such as toys that might have associated graphics and features in the PDA component of the game). The purpose of this is to increase users desire to play the game. (c) Sufficient logging to be able to extract which PDAs could play with which at a given time. This is to allow modeling of localized economies -- One of the novel features of our project. Several small tests will be done to ensure the function of each component of the game. Then test of the game in a real world setting will be done with ``volunteers'' from Professor Pollett's PDA class.
  • Develop the GUI component for the enhancement of the game.
• Report
  • Description of the actual experiments conducted.
  • Description of the design and implementation of my project

Innovations and Challenges

• IMIDP's functionality is limited and the devices are slow
• se of PDAs to allow economics experiments where players are restricted to the ones who happens to be nearby is reasonably novel. (PDAs have been used in economics classes for real time games at the University of Virginia.)

References:

[SR02] Srikanth Raju (2002). XML and Java language programming for wireless devices: a tutorial. Retrieved May 21, 2003, from http://www.sun.com/developers/ evangcentral/totallytech/j2me.html

[SM0503] Sun Microsystems Inc. Programming strategies for small devices. Retrieved May 21, 2003, from http://wireless.java.sun.com/midp/chapters/j2megiguere/chap3.pdf

[SSKKVNT] Shanmugasundaram, Shekita, Kiernan, Krishnamurthy, Viglas, Naughton, and Tatarinov. A General Technique for Querying XML Documents using a Relational Database System.

[K02] Kim Topley (2002). J2ME in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference. (1st ed.). O'reilly Publications.

[J03] James Keogh (2003). J2ME: The Complete Reference.(1st Ed). Tata McGraw- Hill. [P02] Paul Tremblett (2002). Instant Wireless Java with J2ME.(1st Ed). McGraw-Hill.

[VM02] Victor Votsch, and Mark Walter. (March 02). http://otn.oracle.com/tech/xml/xmldb/pdf/xmldb_buswp.pdf. Retrieved Dec 01, 2003.

[K95] J. Kagel. Auctions: A survey of experimental research. In J. Kagel and A. Roth, editors, Handbook of Experimental Game Theory. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1995.

[NPP91] Nelson, Paul S. and Paul W. Grimes. "Supply and Demand Analysis: Using Markets Created in the Classroom." Journal of Education for Business, 66(6), July/August 1991, pp. 370-373.