Description
Your task for this assignment is to design, code (in C89 version of C) and test a program. In
summary, your program will:
• Retrieve map metadata from a text file provided in command line argument.
• Write a simple algorithm for a snake character to chase the player.
• Utilize a generic linkedlist to store movement log and use it to backtrack.
1 Code Design
You must comment your code sufficiently in a way that we understand the overall design of
your program. Remember that you cannot use “//” to comment since it is C99-specific syntax.
You can only use “/*………*/” syntax.
Your code should be structured in a way that each file has a clear scope and goal. For example,
“main.c” should only contain a main function, “game.c” should contain functions that handle
and control the game features, and so on. Basically, functions should be located on reasonably
appropriate files and you will link them when you write the makefile. DO NOT put everything
together into one single source code file. Make sure you use the header files and header guard
correctly. Never include .c files directly.
Make sure you free all the memories allocated by the malloc() function. Use valgrind to detect
any memory leak and fix them. Memory leaks might not break your program, but penalty will
still be applied if there is any. If you do not use malloc, you will lose marks.
Please be aware of our coding standard (can be found on Blackboard) Violation of the coding
standard will result in penalty on the assignment. Keep in mind that it is possible to lose
significant marks with a fully-working program that is written messily, has no clear structure,
full of memory leaks, and violates many of the coding standards. The purpose of this unit is to
teach you a good habit of programming.
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2 Academic Integrity
This is an assessable task, and as such there are strict rules. You must not ask for or accept
help from anyone else on completing the tasks. You must not show your work at any time to
another student enrolled in this unit who might gain unfair advantage from it. These things
are considered plagiarism or collusion. To be on the safe side, never ever release your code to
the public.
Do NOT just copy some C source codes from internet resources. If you get caught, it will be
considered plagiarism. If you put the reference, then that part of the code will not be marked
since it is not your work.
Staff can provide assistance in helping you understand the unit material in general, but nobody
is allowed to help you solve the specific problems posed in this specification. The purpose of
the assignment is for you to solve them on your own, so that you learn from it. Please see
Curtin’s Academic Integrity website for information on academic misconduct (which includes
plagiarism and collusion).
The unit coordinator may require you to attend quick interview to answer questions about any
piece of written work submitted in this unit. Your response(s) may be referred to as evidence in
an Academic Misconduct inquiry. In addition, your assignment submission may be analysed
by systems to detect plagiarism and/or collusion.
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3 Task Details
3.1 Quick Preview
First of all, please watch the supplementary videos on the Assignment link on Blackboard.
These videos demonstrates what we expect your program should do. You will expand the
basic functionalities of the maze program you did for assignment 1 (The ”limited visibility”
feature is not needed to complete assignment 2). Further details on the specification will be
explained on the oncoming sections.
3.2 Command Line Arguments
Please ensure that the executable is called “maze”. Your executable should accept one commandline parameters/arguments:
./maze is the textfile name that contains the metadata about the map. You have to
use the proper File I/O functionalities to retrieve the information. For more detail, please refer
to Section 3.3.
If the amount of the arguments are too many or too few, your program should print a message
on the terminal and end the program accordingly (do NOT use exit() function). If the file does
not exist, then you need to handle it with a proper error message.
Note: Remember, the name of the executable is stored in variable argv[0].
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3.3 File I/O and metadata
Please watch the supplementary video about the File I/O. Do you remember when you need to
retrieve the metadata from the getMetadata() function in assignment 1? Now, you will retrieve
the metadata from the textfile. This is one example:
Figure 1: Example of a text file containing the map metadata.
There are always 3 integers on every line. The first line always contains the ,
, and in that order. From the example of figure 1, the first line means
that there are 15 objects on the map of size 10 rows and 14 columns. The following lines are the
coordinates of the object with the pattern , , and .
The and are the zero-based index location of the objects (For example, of 2 refers to the third row of the map). Please pay special attention on
the since it is slightly different from assignment 1:
• 0 – is the player that you control.
• 1 – is the snake that will try to bite the player.
• 2 – is the goal you want to reach to win the game.
• 3 – is the wall. Player and snake cannot go through it.
Unlike assignment 1, there is NO guarantee that the player and the goal would be the first two
objects to be listed. It means that the coordinate of the player, snake, and the goal can be on any
line. Therefore, your implementation should be able to handle that. However, you can assume
that the amount of the objects matches the value, and there is exactly
one player, one snake, and one goal.
Note: Since the edge of the map will contain the impassable border, the playable area
size of the map is (-2) x (-2).
Note: Keep in mind that we will use our own map text file when we mark your assignment. So, please make sure your file I/O implementation works.
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3.4 Main Interface
Similar to assignment one, your program should clear the terminal screen and print the 2D
map:
Then the user can enter the command via key ’w’, ’a’, ’s’, and ’d’ to control the player. Every time
the user inputs the command, the program should update the map accordingly and refresh the
screen (clear the screen and reprint the map).
3.5 Undo feature with Generic Linked List
In addition to the command to move the player, you will add another command with key ’u’
that allows the player to undo the steps taken when the player moves. Your program should
utilise linked list to keep track all the steps taken since the beginning of the game. If the player
attempts to walk to the wall, that is also recorded in the linked list. Please watch the supplementary video on this topic.
Please make sure you have a decent understanding on linked list practical exercises before you
implement this feature. Implementing insertFirst() and removeFirst() function will be useful
for the undo feature. In order to get full mark on this feature, you need to implement the
generic linked list. If you implement the non-generic linked list, you still can receive decent
partial marks.
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3.6 Snake Movement and Losing condition
In this assignment, we introduce a new character ’∼’ (tilde character) to represent the snake on
the map. This snake will gradually go closer to bite the player. Once the player and the snake
is on the same location, the player loses the game. Please watch the supplementary video on
this topic.
The snake will attempt to move one step closer every time the user enters one movement command key (not including undo key). The snake cannot move in the diagonal direction. If the
player goes towards the wall, that also counts as a single movement and the snake will move
one step as well. The snake also cannot go through the wall. You are free to design the algorithm that makes the snake move. The snake does not have to be very ”smart” (can get stuck
on the wall), but it should be reasonable so that it attempts to get closer to the player every
time.
Note: When the snake bites the player, the player cannot use the undo feature anymore.
3.7 Makefile
You should manually write the makefile according to the format explained in the lecture and
practical. It should include the Make variables, appropriate flags, appropriate targets, correct
prerequisites, conditional compilation, and clean rule. We will compile your program through
the makefile. If the makefile is missing, we will assume the program cannot be compiled, and
you will lose marks. DO NOT use the makefile that is generated by the VScode. Write it yourself.
3.8 Assumptions
For simplification purpose, these are assumptions you can use for this assignments:
• The metadata amount will always match the amount of the objects.
• The coordinates of all objects provided in the text file are all valid. (NOT out of bound)
• There will be exactly one player, one snake, and one goal from the metadata. (but the
order in the text file is not guaranteed)
• The size of the map will be reasonable to be displayed on terminal. For example, we will
not test the map with gigantic size such as 300 x 500. It is the the same for the opposite
scenario, we will not test your program with the map size less than 5 x 5.
• When we mark your assignment with our own map text file, you can assume the path
from the player to the goal exist. So, it means the game is winnable. Similarly, you can
assume the snake will have a path to reach the player. (not isolated)
• You only need to handle lowercase inputs (’w’, ’s’, ’a’, ’d’, ’u’).
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4 Marking Criteria
The existing functionalities from assignment 1 will not be marked. Only the new functionalities
are marked. This is the marking distribution for your guidance:
• Contains any NON-C89 syntax. Compile with -ansi and -pedantic flags to prevent losing
marks on this. (-10 marks)
• Properly structured makefile according to the lecture and practical content (5 marks)
• Program can be compiled with the makefile and executed successfully without immediate crashing and showing reasonable output (5 marks)
• Usage of header guards and sufficient in-code commenting (2 marks)
• The whole program is readable and has reasonable framework. Multiple files are utilized
with reasonable category. If you only have one c file for the whole assignment, you will
get zero mark on this category. (3 marks)
• Avoiding bad coding standard. (5 marks) Please refer to the coding standard on Blackboard. Some of the most common mistakes are:
– Using global variables
– Calling exit() function to end the program abruptly
– Using “break’‘ not on the switch case statement
– Using “continue’‘
– Having multiple returns on a single function
– include the .c files directly, instead of the .h files
• No memory leaks (10 marks) Please use valgrind to check for any leaks. If your program
is very sparse OR does not use any malloc(), you will get zero mark on this category.
• FUNCTIONALITIES:
– Correct command line arguments verification with proper response (5 marks)
– Correctly handles the file I/O to open and read the provided text file to retrieve the
metadata. This includes being able to read the location of the player, snake, and the
goal correctly despite being located on random lines. (15 marks)
– Implement the generic linked list and store both the player and snake’s location
every time the player receives the command to move. (15 marks) (If not generic at
all, only 7.5 marks max)
– Able to ”undo” the player and snake location based on the information stored in
the linked list. By pressing ’u’ multiple times, it is possible to go back up to the
original map state. (10 marks).
– The snake is able to move towards the player on every player movement. (15 marks)
– Losing the game when the snake bites the player OR the player steps on the snake.
(both objects are on the same coordinate) (10 marks)
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Note: Remember, if your program fails to demonstrate that the functionality works, then
the mark for that functionality will be capped at 50%. If your program does not compile
at all OR just crashed immediately upon running it, then the mark for all the functionalities will be capped at 50% (For this assignment, it means maximum of 35 out of 70
marks on functionalities). You then need describe your code clearly on the short report
on the next section.
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5 Short Report
If your program is incomplete/imperfect, please write a comprehensive report explaining what
you have done on for each functionality. Inform us which function on which file that is related
to that functionality. This report is not marked, but it will help us a lot to mark your assignment. Poorly-written report will not help us to understand your code. Please ensure your
report reflects your work correctly (no exaggeration). Dishonest report could lead to academic
misconduct.
6 Final Check and Submission
After you complete your assignment, please make sure it can be compiled and run on our Linux
lab environment. If you do your assignment on other environments (e.g on Windows operating
system), then it is your responsibility to ensure that it works on the lab environment. In the
case of incompatibility, it will be considered “not working’‘ and some penalties will apply. You
have to submit a SINGLE zip file containing ALL the files in this list:
• Declaration of Originality Form – Please fill this form digitally and submit it. You will
get zero mark if you forget to submit this form.
• Your essential assignment files – Submit all the .c & .h files and your makefile. Please
do not submit the executable and object (.o) files, as we will re-compile them anyway.
• Brief Report (if applicable) – If you want to write the report about what you have done
on the assignment, please save it as a PDF or TXT file.
Note: Please compress all the necessary files in a SINGLE zip file. So, your submission
should only has one zip file. If it is not zipped, you will get zero marks.
The name of the zipped file should be in the format of:
___Assignment2.zip
Example: 12345678_Antoni-Liang_Nadith_Assignment2.zip
Please make sure your latest submission is complete and not corrupted. You can re-download
the submission and check if you can compile and run the program again. Corrupted submission will receive instant zero. Late submission will receive zero mark. You can submit it
multiple times, but only your latest submission will be marked. It means we will ignore the
previous submission attempts.
End of Assignment
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