The goal of this assignment is to give you the opportunity to use all the concepts we have learned in the design and implementation of a small project. The project will involve user interactions, but the core is the design of the functionality, following the design recipes, building abstractions, and using the existing libraries. Good design and a simple user interaction part is much more valuable than a flashy user interactions with poor design of the program that drives it.
You should finish the design and most of the implementation of your project by the morning of Tuesday, April 17th. The project presentation will be done during the regular lab times on Tuesday, April 17th (from 9:00 am till 4:10 pm) and during the regular lecture times on Wednesday, April 18th (i.e. 9:15 am - 10:20 am and 1:35 pm - 2:40 pm). All presentations will be done in the lab in 212 WVH.
You can then use the rest of the time on Tuesday and Wednesday to finish the project, incorporate the suggestions given during the project review, and check your final version into your pair's SVN repository by the due date, which is WEDNESDAY 4/18/2012 at 11:59pm.
The names of the project and some of the project files must be exactly the same as specified in the assignment. Failure to do so makes it impossible for the graders to run your submission and results in immediate loss of at least 50% of the homework credit.
Every file you submit must have a header that identifies you and the problem it solves.
// Assignment 13 Final Project // Partner Name1 // partner1username // Partner Name2 // partner2username // 18 April 2012
Submit your Design Document and your User's Guide as a .doc, .docx or a .pdf file. Open source equivalent of .docx is also acceptable. Name these files DesignDoc.xxx and UsersGuide.xxx
Name the class that contains the tests and the main
method that runs your tests and the project
ExamplesProject.java
To design this project you should use the impsoundworld library that supports the design of interactive games using imperative style (instead of creating a new world after each tick, key event, or a mouse click, the state of the world changes). Additionally, the tunes library allows you to create musical background music, or simple sound effects. The web pages for these libraries provide the documentation, explanation of how the library can be used, and several sample programs you can use as guides.
Here are the links to some of these resources.
Choose one of the three options for the project. Choose the option you feel most competent to tackle, and that interests you the most.
Here is a brief overview of the three options:
Design an interactive frogger game with sound effects, using the impsoundworld library.
A frog is trying to cross the road with several lines of cars moving in both directions, then cross the stream by hopping onto lily pads floating in the river, making sure not to fall into the raging stream to get to its home on the other bank. You may give the frog several chances to try to reach its home. Play a background music, add sound effects when bad or good things happen to the frog.
Design an interactive mario game with sound effects, using the impsoundworld library.
Marion is a little guy (or a little girl) walking along from left to right. Or it seems so. Because while Marion is always at the same horizontal distance from the left, obstacles she has to avoid or use to jump from move from right to left. She needs to jump over obstacles (the player uses keys to prod her along), may get a boost when jumping from some special ones, have several lives, count the distance traveled, etc. Play a background music, add sound effects when bad or good things happen to Marion.
Design a travel advisor that will show the user how to find a route from one US state to another - with animated graphical displays as well as written directions. A framework for this project is already in place. Your job is to implement the three graph traversal algorithms (the Breadth First Search or BFS, the Depth First Search or DFS, and the Shortest Path or SP algorithm), to display the progress of the algorithm, and to provide the directions for each leg of the journey as text (e.g. go 130 miles West from Boston to Albany). The only sound effects you need to add would be a ping as each edge changes color to indicate that the algorithm looked at it and took some actions. Of course, you can use any of the Java Collection Framework classes to manage your data.
The details for this project with a number of starter files can be found here.
The project grade will cover the following:
Of course, the design of appropriate tests is an integral part of the design of any program (just in case you have not yet realized this).
One part of the credit for this assignment will be given for a design document that describes the data, the organization of the program, the key program components, and the design of tests. Imagine you want someone to keep improving your program --- provide a road map that explains what your program does and how does it do it. This document should complement the Javadoc generated web pages. A separate document will give you a more detailed guidelines for what we expect.
One part of the credit for this assignment is for the model part: the design of the behavior of the program apart from the user interfaces.
The user of your program needs to know the rules of the game, how to run the algorithm animation, or what are the features of your musical exploration program. You need to create a user's guide that will explain concisely what to expect of your program and how to interact with it.
You will also get credit is for the user interactions (view) --- grading both the design of the user views and the design of the program that drives it. A small bonus may be earned for exceptionally well designed display or interactions. It is better if the user interaction is simple, but is well designed and documented, than if a fancy GUI display is driven by a code that another programmer cannot understand and maintain.
You will present your project (both partners together) during the lecture on Thursday. Each partner should be able to describe any part of the code in the project, regardless of who wrote it, as we expect that both partners work on the project together. More information about the presentations will be provided shortly.
The design part of each project typically takes the greatest amount of time. the more time you spend thinking things through, the easier it is to actually write the code.
Make sure you think the whole framework through before you start programming. Spend some time researching the Java libraries to see what tasks can be done using the existing tools. Write sample adapters to see how the existing class can be used in your setting.
Then design the key component by specifying their interfaces --- the method headers, the interfaces that various classes must implement or use to get information from others.
For now, you have not learned about various tools and techniques to support such design process --- other than class diagrams. Any description that you find helpful in clarifying the roles of the different classes and interfaces in your program is acceptable.
The design document you produce should include a brief user's guide, give a general overview of the project organization as well as describe all data definitions and the key methods. The Javadocs supplement this with detailed information about the actual implementation.