Final Project, CS351 S2001

Whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty by close application thereto, it is worse execute by two persons and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

- George Washington, 1732-1799

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.

- C. A. R. Hoare

I will contend that conceptual integrity is *the* most important consideration in system design.

- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month

Computing's core challenge is how not to make a mess of it.

- Edsger W. Dijkstra, EWD Manuscript 1243

Implement a multiplayer networked game, with graphics

• Programmed by teams of two or three.
• Fun to play.
• The game should involve two or more humans playing against each other. There do not need to be any ``computer'' players. Ie for a board game the computer will be an ``automatic board'' that simply enforces the rules.
• Appropriate documentation. (Either in ascii, formatted for 80-column, looking nice in emacs. Or in texinfo format, with rules in the Makefile to generate info, html, postscript formats.)
• Following GNU style guides, project appropriate for public release. Including especially a command line option for the network port, --help, and --verbose.
• style points for:
  • non-graphical player mode if appropriate
  • cleverness and panache of any sort
  • solving hard issues, eg variable number of players
• May use tcpconnect, gtk--.
• Submit via ~bap/bin/cs351-handin project
• Typing make in your project directory should create the game from scratch. A file README should briefly explain how to run and play it.

Schedule

Mon Apr 23, 2001

Brief description of proposed project and vague implementation plan.

Thu Apr 26, 2001

Fleshed out design and detailed implementation schedule.

Tue May 1, 2001

Progress report, updated design and schedule.

Sun May 6, 2001

Buggy but sort-of-working version with sketchy documentation.

Wed May 9, 2001

Final documented working beautiful completely debugged fun program.

Suggestions

• Chess
• Bughouse (chess with more than one game in which pieces removed by a play can be put into play by their teammate)
• Go
• Risk (more than two players = more fun + more points!)
• Snakes and ladders with fun graphics.
• An adventure game.
• A cooperative game, eg the players must work together to put blocks in place to build a structure in the face of occational obstacles like a wind storm blowing some blocks.
• Backgammon - computer rolls die, tracks doubling cube.
• Scrabble - computer handles challenges.

Warning