CS 117: Final Project

Overview

Create a computer game. You can approach this with the goal of making the game fun to play, making the computer play well (even if it's not much fun for the user), or both.

Good games to implement include Bagels (see description at the bottom of this document for details), 3D Tic-Tac-Toe, Cribbage, Dots and Boxes, Battleship, Go Fish, ...

Let me know if you have questions about the rules or suitability of a particular game. I recommend that you send an email or talk to me about your choice of project to make sure that you haven't picked something too easy or too hard. In the past, the biggest trap that students have falled into this assignment is picking something too complex and not having the time to finish it. Consult with me.

Your project should incorporate some level of computer intelligence. In some sense, the computer should play against you or manage your game in some kind of intelligent way. You don't need to get the computer to be a world class player at your game, or even close, as that's what our Artificial Intelligence class is for... but I'd like to see some kind of effort here.

When your program is complete, it should be able to be run outside of BlueJ by typing "java classsname" inside a Linux terminal window. Make sure to indicate in program documentation which class contains your main method.

Thoughts on grading

I will grade the projects based on the following factors:

How cleanly the program runs... is it bug free? Does it crash?
Complexity... a chess program that will beat Garry Kasparov is clearly cooler than a program that flips a coin.
Style.

The first factor above is most important. A program that runs correctly, error-free, and achieves the above specifications will receive better grades than an incredibly smart chess program that crashes and provides unreadable output. Of course, given two programs side-by-side that run perfectly, the one that accomplishes more will receive the better grade.

To reiterate: It is most important to submit something that works. Set modest goals and achieve them first, then enhance your program later. Only work on getting computer intelligence working after you have the basic game working with human player(s).

On academic dishonesty: You must submit a program that you write yourself. You may obtain help from other students in getting ideas and in debugging your code, but you must write your own program. You may not use Java code for your game from the Internet or from other sources.

The final submission (due Monday 6/9, at 5 PM - no grace period!)

In addition to submitting your java files, you should submit the following items of documentation in the README.TXT file that is part of your BlueJ project. You may be brief.

A description of your program and its features.
A brief description and justification of how it is constructed (classes, arrays, etc.)
A discussion of the current status of your program, what works and what doesn't, etc.

Rules for Bagels

Bagels is a two person paper-and-pencil game that is similar to but simpler than Mastermind. One person thinks of a 3-digit number, and the other person tries to guess it. The 3-digit number may have no repeated digits, but it may begin with a zero (so 012, 987, and 361 are legal, but 112 and 303 are not).

The Guesser makes a 3-digit guess. The Responder compares the guess to the actual mystery number, and responds to the guess by some combination of the words "Pico," "Fermi," and "Bagels." The Guesser keeps guessing until the guess is the mystery number. Here are the response rules:

If the guess has no digits in common with the mystery number, the answer is "Bagels" or "B."
If the guess has a digit in common with the mystery number, and the common digit is in the same position in both numbers, the responder says "Fermi" or "F."
If the guess has a digit in common with the mystery number, but the common digit is not in the same position in both numbers, the responder says "Pico" or "P".

For example, suppose the mystery number is 395. Here are a few guesses and responses:

Note that if there are Picos and Fermis in the same response, all the Picos should be reported first. That is, you'd never say "PFP," thus suggesting that maybe the middle digit of the guess was the one in the correct position. Instead, you'd say "PPF," regardless of which digit was the Fermi, and which two were the Picos.

If you want more clarification of the rules of Bagels, let me know.

If you choose this project, you should write a program that will play Bagels with you, both as the Guesser and the Responder. Having the computer act as Responder is fairly straight-forward. Having it act as Guesser is trickier, but fun.