CS 395-22 Homework Assignments

 

Homework 1: Assigned 4/4/02, due 4/11/02

  1. Add yourself to the c95-gd@cs.nwu.edu list.  This is a majordomo list, which can be accessed by sending email to majordomo@cs.nwu.edu
  2. Please tell us the following things about yourself
  1. Choose one of the works of interactive fiction from the 2001 Interactive Fiction competition and play it until you have either finished the game or two hours are up.  (The contest rules say that ratings must be based on the first two hours of gameplay, so there is a tendency to keep entries short.  We have mirrored all of the entries here, with interpreters for Windows and Macs.  If you prefer Linux, Pocket PC's, or Palm Pilots, you may prefer to stick with Inform/Infocom style games and download a version of Frotz.)  Describe what you liked and didn't like about the game, and how you would do it differently. 

Homework 2: Assigned 4/11/02, due 4/18/02

The purpose of this assignment is to start writing an interactive fiction short story, which you will finish in the next assignment and will be tested by others in the assignment after that.  Like the SPAG contest entries, your story should be playable in under two hours by other students in the class.  Here is what we want you to turn in at this point:

  1. Your story bible.  It must include a description of the setting and any associated lore, the plot structure, a map, and a list of objects and NPC's that you expect to need.  Word documents or self-contained zip archive with HTML and all necessary graphics recommended.
  2. Inform source code implementing at least half of the locations, objects, and NPCs that your story needs.  The implementations may be incomplete at this stage, but the code must compile and execute in Frotz.
  3. The .Z5 file produced by the Inform compiler based on your Inform source code.

 We expect of course that your story bible and code will evolve as you finish the game, so what you turn in next Thursday is a snapshot, not the final version.  But as with any complex project, setting up and hitting intermediate milestones is one of the secrets of success.  This is one of the kinds of milestones used in game development.

Homework 3: Assigned 4/23/02, due 4/30/02

The purpose of this assignment is to finish your interactive fiction short story.  Please remember that your story will be played by your classmates, and consequently it has to be turned in on-time and it has to work.  What you will need to turn in is:

1. A Z-code executable (.z5 or similar, playable via Frotz)
2. The Inform source code for your game that was used to create the executable.
3. A walkthrough of your game.  This should include at least a/the "winning" path, but can include others at your discretion.  (Hint: If you use the transcript facility of Frotz, you can easily create a transcript of the interaction that can edited down to produce a walk-through.  You don't want the game's responses to show in the walk-through, since that would be even more of a spoiler.)

Turn in your work in the form of a Zip archive, where the three files above are stored in a subdirectory based on your first initial and last name.  For instance, the directory for something I turned in would be k_forbus.  This will help us keep track of your work more easily.  

Homework 4: Assigned 4/30/02, due 5/9/02

This assignment has two parts. 

Part 1

You will be assigned two works of interactive fiction written by your classmates.  Your job is to play them and, based on your experience, review them.  The rules are the same as the Interactive Fiction Contest -- you only have to play it for at most two hours.  (If you want to keep playing after two hours that's fine, but please base your review on the first two hours of play, for fairness.)  

What your reviews should look like:  Your reviews must have three parts:

1. The title and author of the story the review is about.

2. Text of the review.  This must contain three parts, each between one and three paragraphs:

3. Ratings.  The scale here ranges from one to five stars (if it was good) and from one to five onions (if it was bad).  You must rate the games along the following dimensions:

Please turn in your reviews as a Microsoft Word document.

Part 2

While you are enjoying each other's work, it is time to start pinning down your term project.   At this point we want you to:

Please remember that you will be showing off your creation at the Game Design Course Party, June 7st, 4pm -- 9pm, instead of a final exam.  The CS department will be invited, so it should be great fun.  But, given this hard "ship date", you'll need to plan more carefully than you may be used to.  That is what this part of the homework assignment is about.  

Good planning is an important ingredient in any successful project.   Given the short timeframe you are working in and the other constraints on your time, creating a workable plan is even more important.  Consequently, what we want from you (i.e., each team) this week are the following things:

A Prospectus of somewhere between three and ten pages, describing your proposed project.  You need to state who will be involved, what the project is, why it is interesting, what you will do, and what you will learn from it.  Please turn in this prospectus as a self-contained document, emailed as usual.

A Gantt chart for your project. A Gantt chart identifies the tasks necessary to complete a project and the relationships that hold between them.  To learn how to lay out a Gantt chart, you will use Microsoft Project, which is installed in the CS Lab.  The tutorial material it contains provides all the information you need about Gantt charts.  Your Gantt chart needs to include the following information:

Please turn in the .mpp file you create with Project.

Homework 5: Assigned 5/9/02, due 5/16/02

As we discussed in class today, AI is a make-or-break issue in creating enjoyable strategy games.  In this assignment, you are going to modify the strategy AI in Age of Kings to produce two new computer opponents with distinctive personalities:

In producing these AIs, you will not be starting from scratch.  Your goal is to start with the standard Age of Kings AI, analyze how they work, and based on that analysis make the minimal necessary changes to implement these personalities.  To help you get you started, we have created sets of files for Fang and Peacenik by copying the Age of Kings AI files and changing the file names appropriately.  Since you are starting with Ensemble Studio's work, please make sure you cite them appropriately in the comments of your code.  

You will need to turn in:

Some hints:

Homework 6: Assigned 5/16/02, due 5/30/02

Using the Edith editor and the Transmogrifier, create a new object for The Sims by starting with an existing object, and significantly changing its behaviors and advertisements. Turn in your new object, along with a description of what your object does and why you chose to do it, what behaviors and advertisements it has, and how you tuned it to achieve the effect you desired.  

In case you are not feeling inspired, here are some suggestions for objects:

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Last edited 5/16/02, by KDF.
Please send suggestions to forbus@northwestern.edu.