CS2500: Problem Set 8

Due: Tuesday, March 16 at 11:59 PM

This assignment is to be completed with a new partner, not your partner from PS7.

Purpose

Assignment goal: To design a complex program from start to finish.

Problem

You should have two design documents from Problem Set 7: yours, and your new partner’s. You and your partner should consider both designs and must choose one of the two to implement. Please paste your design document in a #| |# comment at the end of your Scheme file. If the actual design in your code diverges from the design in your design document—and it will!—you will need to update the design document that you include in your submission to reflect the changes.

Your assignment is to implement the space shooter game that you saw in class. We have provided playable example games for Windows, Mac, and Linux. (We think that should cover everyone, but if not, please let us know.)

You may reuse any code that you have seen in lecture. However, if you do so, you must comment each function from lecture to tell us where you got it.

We don’t require you to implement every feature in our prototype. At minimum:

• The player should be able to control the player’s space ship. Either mouse or keyboard control is sufficient.
• The player should be able to shoot at approaching enemies. There must be some mechanism to limit shooting, either a bullet count as the prototype game uses, or an actual rate limitation.
• The game should keep score. If a shot hits an enemy, the enemy disappears and the player scores a point.
• So long as game play continues, enemies should continue to appear at the top of the screen in random locations.
• Enemies should move toward the bottom of the screen.
• If an enemy reaches the bottom of the screen, the player should be informed that the game is lost.
• No magic numbers: It should be easy to tweak fundamental quantities such as the world size.

You may implement enhancements as you wish, provided that they don’t significantly impair the game play as described above. For example:

• The enemies may move in more complex paths, take evasive action, or even shoot at the player.
• Enemies or the player may take multiple hits rather than one.
• You may have different kinds of enemies.
• The game may become progressively harder as the score increases, or you may add levels.
• You may implement better animation than ours.
• You may implement pausing, an opening screen, level selection, and such. Level selection as part of the game UI is better than level selection when calling the function to start the game.

What you do is not limited to the above. There may be a small amount of extra credit available for games that impress our graders; keep in mind, however, that extra features won’t make up for the basic game play being broken.

You must include, in a comment at the top of the file, instructions on how to start your game. This should involve something short, like (run GAME0), rather than something long involving big-bang. Grading will be done primarily by playing the game, so we recommend that you turn in code that runs and is somewhat playable.

Good luck and have fun!

Turn In

Please follow the electronic homework submissions instructions.

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Last updated 13 March 2010.