Final Project       CPS 004.1, 2 August 2002

• advertisement for your game, as you might find on the cover of the shrink wrapped box your software will come in
• directions of how to use your version of the game (e.g., what it takes to win (or lose), what happens when the player wins (or loses))
• an applet that allows a player to play the game until she wins (or loses), then the applet should display some informative message and simply stop

Choosing Your Project

• Konami's Frogger (max grade B+)
  The goal of this game is almost Zen-like: to get to the other side. But considerably less Zen were the many obstacles in your path: zooming cars, trucks and buses, snakes, alligators and unpredictable turtles. Your daredevil amphibian starts at the bottom of the screen, separated from his lily pad by a busy street. Using the keyboard to hop up, down, left and right, you guide your frog up and around the speeding vehicles, but if one hits the frog it becomes road-kill.
• Simulation of the Solar System (max grade B+)
  This simulation is supposed to display the movements of the planets and select moons in the most realistic way possible. This is sort of open-ended and the grade will depend on the degree of realism you achieve. You might consider having two programs or parts. One show the inner planets only, Mercury thru Mars, including our moon, possibly others. The other view would include the whole solar system, but it might not show the inner plants in any serious detail. (Definitely for someone with at least some interest in astronomy.)
• An electronic basketball scoreboard (max grade B+)
  Simulate a basketball scoreboard making it as practical and realistic as possible. The top area should be for display include score, timers, etc. The bottom of your applet should be a control area where clicking on certain shapes causes appropriate actions. Again, the degree or realism and practicality you achieve will determine your grade. At the minimum it should show the main clock, the shot clock, and the two scores. The trick is to make it easy to use and possibly add other bells and whistles such a fouls, time outs, etc.
• Milton Bradley's Simon Game (max grade B+)
  This popular children's memory game tests the player with a sequence of random colors, that the player must repeat in the same order to continue. Each time the player correctly repeats the sequence, another random color is added to the existing sequence until a maximum of sixteen colors have been played. If the player does not repeat the proper sequence, the game ends. Colors are chosen from four possibilities: red, yellow, blue, and green.
• Conway's Game of Life (max grade A)
  This simulates the life in the most simple terms using what is called a "cellular automation". The rules for life are: Everything exists in a grid (like a checkerboard). Each square either contains life or not. Everything proceeds in strict time steps and everything in the current time step is strictly determined by the state of things in the previous step. For each cell (or square): If it is currently empty but had exactly three live neighboring cells life is created. If a cell currently contains life but has any number of neighbors other than two or three, then it dies. A good user interface is important.
• Space Invaders (max grade A+)
  This game could roughly be divided into three components.
  • You and your spacecraft
  • Your protective shields
  • Aliens attacking you in their spacecrafts. The aliens of varying types and of varying abilities.
  The idea is to knock down as many aliens as you can without destroying your protective shields thereby extending your life. The aliens shoot missiles at you and you in turn try to shoot them down. The alien missiles can cause varying amount of harm to your spacecraft. So say for the smallest alien spaceships it may take 10 missile hits to destroy your aircraft but for the biggest one it would take just two.
• The Set Game (max grade A+)
  This is a variant of the card game set. For the exact details please go through the site. I would suggest starting off with the following simple configuration initially. The objective of the game is to get a set of like shapes ( same shape and same color) or a set of totally different objects ( different shapes and different colors) You can then build on this with more complicated objects (and build on your grade in the process).
• Alexey Pajitnov's Tetris (max grade A+)
  Possibly the most addictive PC game ever created, Tetris is a "peaceful game heralding a new era in the relationship between super-powers and their attitude toward world peace". Random pieces (each consisting of exactly four squares) fall until they hit the bottom or another piece that already fallen. As pieces stack up, rows of occupied squares spanning the board's entire width may form. When such a line is formed, it disappears and all the squares above it fall down one line to fill the newly empty squares. This process continues until a new piece appears and has no room to fall because it is already resting on a previously fallen piece.

Schedule

1. Friday, August 2
   • Choose your final project group and decide which game you want to work on.
   • Create a project web page advertising your choice and link it to your course web page.
2. Weekend, August 3, 4
   • Meet and create a one page written plan for how you intend to structure your game and link it to your project web page. You should describe the major classes and algorithms you expect to implement.
   • Do some experimenting and prototyping.
   • (Don't forget to study for Exam 3!)
3. Monday, August 5
   • Exam #3, and after that ...
   • There may be a few issues that arise while coding, but you should have a good idea about how you build your game and how you will break up the work among group members.
4. Tuesday, August 6
   • The course staff will meet with each group during class to review your written plan.
   • Implement at least a small but working part of your project and link it to your project web page. This is to verify that you are on the right track and will not have left all the work to be done at the end. For example, in Simon, you should have built a board and show that you can click on the colored buttons.
5. On or before Friday, August 9 (before noon!)
   • Complete the entire project.
   • Complete your project web page following the guidelines above.
   • Meet with the course staff as a group to demo your project and discuss its details. Plan on this demo taking approximately a half-hour --- everyone in the group must attend this demo.

Implementation Tip

Bells and Whistles

• score - display the score (or level, time remaining, number cleared, etc.) in the applet
• reset - allow the game to be started over once the player has lost
• levels - make the game get harder the longer, or more often, the player plays
• high score - keep track of the best scores made during this session
• more interesting graphics and sounds