Verifying a student project authenticity

Hello there. I'm a university instructor. One of the senior project students presented a unity 3d project. I would like to know if this is authentic work or it was copied as is. We're having hard time with students copying their projects and claiming it's their work.
I only have some photos of the user interface. I was hoping somebody would recognize the game. I'm attaching them with this message.

 

Looks authentic to me.

 

Looks Authentic to me as well. I have not seen any unity project recently with that style gui. Though It might pay to flick through his programming and see if it is legitimately his and not a purchased FPS kit etc. You will know you student and his skill level of programming etc.

 

The trees and general terrain components (but from what I can tell, not the terrain itself) are from the Unity island demo. In the third screenshot, the words "Press Escape to Show Cursor" are present. This is present, in that exact font, in the Unity FPS tutorial. Also present in that screenshot are some barrels which are also from that tutorial.

In the first screenshot, you can see a recolored robot from that tutorial as well.

Everything else looks completely fine, but then again, if this kid sucks at programing and fails his assignments, then the red flags should go up.

If you have access to his project, you can post a web player, and I'll look at it further. Sometimes, general things like the "feel" of a game can indicate plagiarism.

Also, what level class is this boy taking? If an advanced level, that's on-par work based on that gun artwork, but it could've been purchased from elsewhere. Can't be the judge on coding just based on screenshots, though...

 

thx for the detailed response. that would help. I'll try to get a hand on his code. He's a mediocre students that's why I hav the doubts. I was working on the rifle. it's very well drawn. it might give a clue from where the gun was stolen. thx anyway.

 

the skills of the student do not match by far the artistic work of that rifle and the scenery. do u hav any web links that contains projects that resembles that one.

 

where can I get unity 3d Gun models with gun scope. I doubt the artistic work on that gun. it might provide a clue. I don't hav access to his code

 

Can we authenticate that you're really a University instructor? Somehow you don't strike me as one. For one, your spelling and punctuation is awful, even for a non-English University instructor.

In addition to that, the distrust you show towards your students is entirely unprofessional. If you really are a University instructor, you seem like an awful one.

My two cents.

 

Nice Spotting their, I did not think of that for one second. It actually makes complete sense the idea of a student posing as his teacher in order to try and make the project believable to the tutor as far as it being authentic.

You sly student.

Please do authenticate that you are a University instructor.

Peace,

 

Hey guys calm down please. I appreciate your seriousness. My name is Maroun Abou Jaoudeh and I teach at several universities in Lebanon. That's my email at one of them USEK: marounaboujaoude@usek.edu.lb. So, if you have any addition to my question you're most welcome. Maybe in your countries you don't have this issue. In here we might the case where only one student does the project and all the others copy it from him or the internet. And students are becoming more and more cunning in this endeavour. I'm trying to enforce a discipline. That's why I sought your help. And for Mr. Diviner, why are you taking the matter so personally. It's a real case we encounter every day in our universities. Many instructors have refrained from giving projects to their students because of the copying plague. I have the least of this problem, because I follow up the work of my students closely. It's not a matter of distrust. I think you got me wrong. Can you suggest another way to check whether a student copied his project or not. I would be glad to hear from you a positive suggestion. Anyway, thank you both for your participation.

 

As I said, it is difficult to tell just based upon the artwork you submitted. I stated I recognized several of the art assets from various Unity demos that are freely available. The enemies are from an FPS package which is no longer on the Unity website but is still find-able with a decent web search.

Why don't you have access to his code? If you're his instructor, you should be able to see his code and not only the final product.

 

From what we can spot is that he learned very basic scripting from Unity FPS tutorial and maybe a few tornado twin tutorials.

Most likely not all self written, more likely copied from other tutorials. Mix and mashed scripts.

The terrain work is very basic that anyone who picks up unity can do from day one. As far as the model and animations and the helicopter, I'm unsure. It could have been a ripped model or downloaded. But the texture looks of poor quality (Judging by the pictures.) So he could have made it.

The only way you can find out if script is copied would be seeing if their are any copyright signs in the script or commented code. Judging by this student being mediocre I would assume he would not comment his own code. Tutorial situations and code on the internet are usually commented to help teach people.

That is about all you can do. Unless you plan on throwing him on a lie detector haha.

Peace,

 

I shoud think that whether or not his project is acceptable to you depends on the parameters of the project. If the student is allowed to use elements from other sources to build his own game, then it might be fine, On the other hand, if everything must be original, including artwork, then clearly this project is lacking, as elements in it appear to come from existing tutorials.

In the end, it depends on the purpose of the project. I also teach programming and do not expect all of a student's work to be completely original, but do expect them to cite their sources (Where did assests come from? What code did you look at to get an idea about what to do? Whom did you ask for advice? What work is originally yours?, etc.) Documentation within the code is a big part of this.

The use of Unity itself indicates that students did not develop everything on their own. For example, collision detection and physics are built into Unity, so it would not make sense to expect students to try to build them on their own if they are using Unity. That's perfectly okay for some projects, but perhas not for others. So. in the end, the questions is not whether or not the project is original, but what parts of the project are original and where did the rest come from?

It might also be a good idea to require students to show that they had proper permission, where required, to use the elements they did in their project.

Here is a quote from Isaac Newton that captures the spirit:

"What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much in several ways...If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants [sic]." from TurnBull's The correspondence of Isaac Newton.

 

For cheating, it's Live and Learn -- you can't take it personally. Just fix the system for next time. For project classes, nice to get them to show you weekly builds, and work out the "sprint" for the next week. Knowing you'll bring out last week's notes for this week is a real motivator. At least have them present an Alpha midway.

Also, if they want to use anything for a portfolio piece, they need to know that just "I made this" is a horrible thing to say. You say you started with a Unity demo and added these 3 gun models, your diffuse+spec+glow maps, particle effects (fire, trail, hit, miss) and the ammo pick-up models. That proves to employers you know something about the business, and are probably honest.

Don't even think of it as catching cheaters. They need the skill and habit of documenting their work.

 

Sounds like your looking for a game, if this is a project from one of your students why would we recognize the game(Project). Which leads to this...

I completely agree, even with the "Teacher's or Instructor's" Response he still doesn't seem to be legit. To move forward...

Exactly, I'd expect a university instructor to know this about his class projects. You should also know your own students skill levels and determine if the work is his or not on your own. But if you are an Instructor, your students could do better to fine a new one. The work in the screens are Basic even for a beginner let alone for University(assuming College) work. But I'm curious how your the students Instructor and you don't have access to the source code? Seems odd. Oh well I've said all I'm going to say.

Have a nice day!

 

If you have a student, and can't tell if that student did his/her project, are you sure that you're his teacher?
I mean to make a project that has Minimap, Animator, FPS Controller, Environment, Post Process Effects, Bullet System, VFX, Particle Effects probably, NPC's etc. is enough work to check if he/she 's working on it or not. You can just ask "how did you make this minimap" for example, and you can see if he/she knows or not, assuming that you also know how to make one, cause if you don't then why are you his/her teacher in the first place?