CSCI 1321 (Principles of Algorithm Design II), Fall 2002:
Homework 2

Due:

Design due September 19, 2002, at 5pm; code due September 25, 2002, at 5pm (revised -- was September 24).

Credit:

Design 20 points; code 40 points.

What you are to do

First review Dr. Lewis's Project Description, including the short description of Assignment 2. Then read the specific instructions for Assignment 2. In this assignment you are to design the screen classes (classes implementing the Screen interface) and block classes (classes implementing the Block interface) needed for your game. Most games will need only one screen class but more than one block class. To find out what methods you must provide to implement these two interfaces, read Dr. Lewis's Javadoc documentation. Part of the goal of this assignment is for you to learn to implement an interface, so you are not allowed to simply create subclasses of BasicScreen and BasicBlock.

Completing the design step

You should already have set up a Together project for your game (as part of Homework 1). You can add to this project for Homework 2, but it might be better to create a new project in a new directory and copy into it your Java source file (for your main class) from Homework 1. Whichever approach you use, do the following:

• Make sure the source code for your main class contains Javadoc comments describing your game.

• Create source files for the classes for this assignment (i.e., a screen class and at least one block class). Make sure each one contains Javadoc comments describing the class, its role in your game, and the class's methods, at least ``stub'' versions of all of the required methods (i.e., versions that have the correct names, parameters, and return types, but that don't really do anything). (For an example of Javadoc comments, see the code for my sample programs.)

• Use Together to generate HTML documentation for your classes.

Completing the code step

For this step, finish writing the code for the classes you designed in the design step, and make any required changes to the provided GameSetup class. As before, compile and test your code. You should also try running Dr. Lewis's screen editor program. It uses methods not used by the game itself, so by running it you can check that those methods also work correctly.

Notice that Dr. Lewis is supplying a new JAR file and source code for the GameSetup class (which you will download and modify) and the BasicBlock class (which you may use as a source of example code for a block class).

What to turn in

Design

Put your Together-generated HTML documentation on the Web and e-mail me its URL. (As mentioned in the description of Homework 1, if you put the documentation in a subdirectory of your Local/HTML-Documents directory on Sol, it will be viewable from the Web. For example, if user jsmith puts the documentation in Local/HTML-Documents/MyGame, it can be viewed using URL http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~jsmith/MyGame.)

Code

E-mail all your source code (.java files) to me at bmassing@cs.trinity.edu. You may use either of the following methods:

• Use your favorite mail program and attach each .java file as an attachment.

• From Linux/Unix, make and send a ``shell archive'' file by typing the following command:

  shar -m sourcefiles | mail -s "subject" bmassing@cs.trinity.edu -c yourmailaddress

  where

  • sourcefiles is a list of files containing your source code (names separated by spaces). Here, you could just write *.java to send all Java source code files.
  • subject is a subject header, e.g., ``cs1321 hw 2''.
  • yourmailaddress is your e-mail address (e.g., jsmith@trinity.edu).

  (What this does is use the shar program to combine your sourcefiles into a single file and then pass that to the mail program, which mails it to me. It also sends a copy of the e-mail message to yourmailaddress, as a safety check that you really sent what you thought you sent. The body of the e-mail message should include slightly garbled-looking copies of all the source code files you sent.)

  Example: To submit all the .java files in the current directory, using subject header ``cs1321 hw 2'' and send a copy to jsmith@trinity.edu, type (all on one line):

  shar -m *.java | mail -s "cs1321 hw 2" bmassing@cs.trinity.edu -c jsmith@trinity.edu

  Normal output of this combination of commands is a line for each of your sourcefiles, for example:

  shar: Saving MyGame.java (text)
  shar: Saving MyBlock.java (text)

  If you see radically different output -- e.g., the whole source of your classes scrolling by -- you have probably done something wrong; check that you typed the command as described, include the | (vertical bar) character.