IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 Assignment 1, Part A: “Not Connect Four” (20%, due 11:59pm Sunday, April 12th, end of Week 7) Overview This is the first part of a two-part assignment. This part is worth 20% of your final grade for IFB104. Part B will be worth a further 5%. Part B is intended as a last-minute extension to the assignment, thereby testing the maintainability of your code, and the instructions for completing it will not be released until Week 7. Whether or not you complete Part B you will submit only one file, and receive only one assessment, for the whole 25% assignment. Motivation One of the basic functions of any IT system is to process a given data set to produce some form of human-readable output. This assignment requires you to produce a visual image by following instructions stored in a list. It tests your abilities to: • Process lists of data values; • Produce maintainable, reusable code; • Design a general solution to a non-trivial computational problem; and • Display information in an attractive visual form. In particular, you will need to think carefully about how to design reusable code segments, via well-planned function definitions and the use of repetition, to make the resulting program as concise as possible and easy to understand and maintain. Goal Connect Four (also known as Connect-4 and by many other names) is a popular children’s game in which players take turns dropping coloured tokens into a vertical game board. The first player to complete a vertical, horizontal or diagonal row of four tokens is the winner. IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 In this assignment you will visually simulate a similar game, but with a number of differ- ences. Our “Not Connect Four” game has: four players instead of two; random choices of which player gets to drop the next token; illustrated square tokens instead of plain round ones; and a different way of choosing the winner, which will be revealed only in Part B of the assignment. To draw the game you must follow a set of instructions, provided as a list of moves, to place the tokens in various cells of the playing board. The tokens must be stacked in columns as in the real game. Most importantly, the sequence of moves to be followed is generated ran- domly, so your solution must be sufficiently general that it can work correctly for any pos- sible sequence of moves. Resources provided A template Python 3 program, not_connect_4.py, is provided with these instructions. When run it creates a drawing canvas and displays a simple image of the playing board on which you will draw specific types of tokens in specific columns. You have a free choice in the design of the four token types, but they must all be related by a common theme. The de- fault image drawn by running the provided Python template appears as shown below. It con- sists of a numbered grid representing the playing board, with spaces on either side for de- scriptions of the tokens you have designed. For convenience, the “home” coordinate (0, 0) is marked by a dot. The board is a 7 × 6 grid of square cells. Each of the board’s cells measures 100 × 100 pixels. The spaces to the left and right are where the descriptions of each of your token types will be drawn. This is coordinate (0, 0) IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 Your task is to extend this template file so that it can draw games of “Not Connect Four” by following a provided list of moves. To do so you must design four entirely distinct tokens, each of which can be drawn in any square on the board. Your code will consist of a function called play_game and any auxiliary functions you define to support it. This function takes a single argument, which is a list of moves specifying in which column to place each type of token. The moves are created by a provided function called random_game which randomly generates the sequence of moves, so your code must work correctly for any possible game that could be played! Designing the tokens To complete this assignment you must design four entirely distinct types of game tokens. Each token must fit exactly into a 100 × 100 pixel square. Each token must contain a single image, different from the other tokens, and which fills its whole area. They must be drawn using Turtle graphics primitives only, must be easily recognisable, must be of a reasonable degree of complexity involving multiple shapes, and must all be part of some common theme. (Simply drawing the same image in different colours or with some other trivial difference is not considered acceptable.) You have a free choice of theme and are encouraged to be imaginative! Some possible themes you may consider are: • Geographical sites (cities, countries or tourist attractions) • Vehicles (cars, boats, planes, etc) • Household objects • Cartoon or comic characters • TV or movie characters • Sporting teams • Businesses (banks, restaurants, IT companies, etc) • Computer or board games (e.g., Monopoly tokens) • Internet or cloud service providers • Or anything else suitable for creating four distinct, related and easily-identifiable to- kens Data format The random_game function used to assess your solution returns a list of moves each repre- senting the action of a player dropping one of their tokens into the board. Each of the moves is expressed as a pair of values with the following general form. [column, token_type] The column values are letters ranging from ‘a’ to ‘g’ and the token types are integers ranging from 1 to 4. For instance, ['c', 2] IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 tells us to draw a token of type 2 in column ‘c’. Note, however, that we are not told in which row to draw the token! As in the real Connect Four game, this depends on how many tokens have already been dropped into this column, if any. Tokens cannot be drawn on top of one another. For instance, if there have already been two tokens placed in column ‘c’ then this new token must be drawn in row 3. The random_game function generates a list of anywhere between zero and 42 (i.e., 7 × 6) moves. When choosing which player makes the next move, no attempt is made by the func- tion to be “fair”. The next player is chosen at random; we assume some other mechanism, such as rolling a die, is used to choose who moves next. However, the game generated will always be a valid one within the rules of “Not Connect Four”. In particular, the moves gen- erated will never overfill a column. In addition to the random_game function, the template file also contains a number of “fixed” data sets. These are provided to help you develop your code, so that you can work with a known sequence of moves, rather than a random one, while debugging your code. However, these “fixed” patterns will not be used for assessing your solution. Your play_game function must work correctly for any sequence of moves randomly generated by function random_game. Illustrative example To illustrate the requirements we developed a solution whose four tokens follow the theme “Apollo 11”, in recognition of last year’s 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. (Don’t copy our example! Come up with your own idea!) We wrote Turtle graphics code that can draw the following four tokens, each representing an aspect of the historic mission. Each token is exactly 100 pixels wide and high, so they all fit perfectly into one of the game board’s cells. All of these images were drawn using basic Turtle graphics drawing steps; no separate image files are used to display the tokens. Your images do not need to be as compli- cated as these examples, but they must still be recognisable and non-trivial. The first requirement for the assignment is to clearly identify your four tokens and their common theme. To do so you must put an appropriate title on the drawing window and a de- scription of each token in the spaces indicated to the left and right of the game board. Our sample solution is shown overleaf. IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 The next requirement is for your implementation of the random_game function to draw these tokens in appropriate places on the game board, as per the moves in the list provided as its parameter. To do so you need to take into account the column and token type specified in each move, as well as the number of tokens already placed in that column. For instance, consider the following list of 13 moves returned by function random_game. The first move requires us to drop a token of type 4 into column ‘d’, so our random_game function draws the Lunar Module token in row 1 of this column. The next move is a token of type 2 in column ‘e’, so we draw the Apollo 11 mission patch in row 1 of that column. However, the third move requires us to put another token of the same type in the same col- umn. Since there is already a token in column ‘e’ we draw the next Lunar Module in row 2. The fourth move is token type 3 in column ‘f’. There are no other tokens in this column so IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 we draw the Command Module in row 1. The fifth move is another token 2 in column ‘a’, and again this is the first token to appear in that column. The sixth move is token 2 in col- umn ‘f’ and because this is the second token to appear in that column we draw the mission patch in row 2. This process continues for all the moves in the list, taking care to stack to- kens placed in the same column on top of one another. The resulting image, showing all the tokens drawn in this case, is as follows. Each time we call function random_game it produces a different list of drawing instruc- tions. As another example, consider the following longer list returned by the function. In this case we begin with token 3 in column ‘f’, followed by tokens of type 1 and 4, both in column ‘e’, and so on. The resulting image once all 29 moves have been drawn appears be- low. Notice in the data set above that the only token ever placed in column ‘b’ is of type 4, which is why we see only Lunar Module tokens in that column. IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 As an even longer example, consider the following data set of 35 moves. The first move is a token of type 2 in column ‘f’, then two tokens of type 4 in column ‘c’, and so on, ending with a type 4 token in column ‘g’. The complete game is shown below. IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 Notice that to produce a nice looking image you can stop the Python template writing “Put your token descriptions here” on the canvas by changing one of the arguments to function create_drawing_canvas in the main program. You can also change the background colour and the colour of the lines marking the board in the same way. Requirements and marking guide To complete this part of the assignment you are required to extend the provided not_connect_4.py Python file by completing function play_game so that it can draw a game as specified by the data sets generated by the random_game function. Your play_game function must work correctly for all possible lists of moves that can be returned by the random_game function. Your submitted solution will consist of a single Python 3 file, and must satisfy the following criteria. Percentage marks available are as shown. 1. Drawing four entirely distinct tokens within a common theme (5%). Your pro- gram must be able to draw four clearly distinct tokens, each containing a single image different from the other tokens, and each fitting exactly into a 100 × 100 pixel square. Each token’s image must be clearly recognisable, must be of a reasonable degree of complexity, involving multiple shapes, and must entirely fill the square but without going outside the borders. When drawn on the game board it must be easy to distin- guish each token from those adjacent to it through the use of distinct colours and/or borders. 2. Identifying the theme and tokens (3%). When executed your code must draw a de- scription of the tokens on the left and right sides of the canvas which clearly indicates the meaning/identity of each of the four tokens. The descriptions must include a visual copy of each token and text describing it. You must also put a title at the top of the Turtle drawing canvas describing your theme and token types. 3. Placing tokens on the board as per any given list of moves (8%). Your code must be capable of drawing tokens of the appropriate type in the appropriate columns, ex- actly as dictated by any valid list of moves provided to function play_game. The tokens must be positioned precisely within the cells of the game board. The drawings must preserve their integrity no matter where they are drawn, with no spurious addi- tional or missing lines. Most importantly, tokens must not be drawn on top of one another, but instead must be stacked above any tokens already in the column, if any. Your solution for drawing the tokens must work correctly for any lists that can be re- turned by the random_game function. 4. Code quality and presentation (4%). Your program code, for both Parts A and B of the assignment, must be presented in a professional manner. See the coding guide- lines in the IFB104 Code Presentation Guide (on Blackboard under Assessment) for suggestions on how to achieve this. In particular, given the obscure and repetitive na- ture of the code needed to draw complex images using Turtle graphics, each signifi- cant code block must be clearly commented to say what it does. Similarly, the names of your functions, parameters and variables should be indicative of their purpose, not just “i”, “j”, etc. Also, you should use function definitions and loops to avoid un- necessary duplication of similar or identical code segments. To get full marks for this IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 criterion you must provide a significant amount of code to assess; a few lines of well- presented code will not be considered sufficient. 5. Extra feature (5%). Part B of this assignment will require you to make a last-minute change to your solution. The instructions for Part B will not be released until shortly before the final deadline for Assignment 1. You must complete the assignment using basic Turtle graphics, random number and maths functions only. You may not import any additional modules or files into your program other than those already included in the given not_connect_4.py template. In particular, you may not import any image files for use in creating your drawings. Finally, you are not required to copy the example shown in this document. Instead you are strongly encouraged to be creative in the design of your solution. Surprise us! Development hints • Before creating code to draw the individual tokens give careful thought to how you can write the code so that they can be drawn in any place on the canvas. In particular, you need to avoid “hardwiring” your drawing to fixed coordinates. • The easiest part of this assignment is the description of the tokens and the theme, be- cause these elements never change, so you may want to complete this part first. • The columns are labelled using letters instead of numbers in this game, so it can be awkward to convert them into coordinates on the Turtle graphics canvas. An elegant solution can be achieved by noting that each letter of the alphabet is actually repre- sented by an “ordinal” number in your computer. In Python you can convert from numbers to letters using the built-in function chr, and from letters to numbers using built-in function ord. For instance, chr(78) returns character 'N', whereas ord('A') returns integer 65 and ord('Z') returns 90. Thus, although you don’t need to use it to complete the assignment, the ord function can be helpful when con- verting the column letters into y-axis coordinates expressed in pixels. • If you are unable to complete the whole task, just submit whatever you can get work- ing. You will receive partial marks for incomplete solutions. • To help you debug your code we have provided some “fixed” patterns. Feel free to use these when developing your program, and add additional ones if you like, but keep in mind that these data sets will not be used for assessing your solution. Your play_game function must work for any list that can be returned by function ran- dom_game. • Part B of this assignment will require you to change your solution in a short space of time. You are therefore encouraged to keep code maintainability in mind while de- veloping your solution to Part A. Make sure your code is neat and well-commented so that you will find it easy to modify when the instructions for Part B are released. Artistic merit – The Hall of Fame! You will not be assessed on the artistic merit of your solution, however, a “Hall of Fame” containing the solutions considered the most attractive or ambitious by the assignment mark- IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 ers will be created on Blackboard. (Sadly, additional marks will not be given to the winners. The only reward is the envy of your peers.) Portability An important aspect of software development is to ensure that your solution will work cor- rectly on all computing platforms (or at least as many as possible). For this reason you must complete the assignment using standard Turtle graphics, random number and maths functions only. You may not import any additional modules or files into your program other than those already imported by the given template file. In particular, you may not import any image files to help create your drawings or use non-standard image processing modules such as Pillow. Security warning and plagiarism notice This is an individual assessment item. All files submitted will be subjected to software pla- giarism analysis using the MoSS system (http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/). Serious violations of the university’s policies regarding plagiarism will be forwarded to the Science and Engineering Faculty’s Academic Misconduct Committee for formal prosecution. As per QUT rules, you are not permitted to copy or share solutions to individual assessment items. In serious plagiarism cases SEF’s Academic Misconduct Committee prosecutes both the copier and the original author equally. It is your responsibility to keep your solution se- cure. In particular, you must not make your solution visible online via cloud-based code development platforms such as GitHub. Note that free accounts for such platforms are usually public and are thus unsafe. If you wish to use such a resource, do so only if you are certain you have a private repository that cannot be seen by anyone else. For instance, uni- versity students can apply for a free private repository in GitHub to keep their assignments secure (https://education.github.com/pack). However, we recommend that the best way to avoid being prosecuted for plagiarism is to keep your work well away from both the Internet and your fellow students! Deliverable You must develop your solution by completing and submitting the provided Python 3 file not_connect_4.py as follows. 1. Complete the “statement” at the beginning of the Python file to confirm that this is your own individual work by inserting your name and student number in the places indicated. We will assume that submissions without a completed statement are not your own work! 2. Complete your solution by developing Python code to replace the dummy play_game function. You must complete your solution using only the standard Py- thon 3 modules already imported by the provided template. In particular, you must not use any Python modules that must be downloaded and installed separately because the markers will not have access to these modules. Furthermore, you may not import any image files into your solution; the entire game must be drawn using Turtle graph- ics drawing primitives only, as we did in our sample solution. 3. Submit a single Python file containing your solution for marking. Do not submit multiple files. Only a single file will be accepted, so you cannot accompany your so- IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 lution with other files or pre-defined images. Do not submit any other files! Sub- mit only a single Python 3 file! Apart from working correctly your program code must be well-presented and easy to under- stand, thanks to (sparse) commenting that explains the purpose of significant code segments and helpful choices of variable, parameter and function names. Professional presentation of your code will be taken into account when marking this assignment. If you are unable to solve the whole problem, submit whatever parts you can get working. You will receive partial marks for incomplete solutions. How to submit your solution A link is available on the IFB104 Blackboard site under Assessment for uploading your solu- tion file before the deadline (11:59pm Sunday, April 12th, end of Week 7). You can submit as many drafts of your solution as you like. You are strongly encouraged to submit draft so- lutions before the deadline as insurance against computer or network problems near the dead- line. If you are unsure whether or not you have successfully uploaded your file, upload it again! Students who encounter problems uploading their Python files to Blackboard should contact HiQ’s Technology Services (http://qut.to/ithelp;
[email protected]; 3138 2000) for assist- ance and advice. Teaching staff will not be available to answer email queries on the weekend the assignment is due, and Technology Services offers limited support outside of business hours, so ensure that you have successfully uploaded at least one solution by close-of- business on Thursday, April 9th. IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 Appendix: Some standard Turtle graphics colours To help you draw your images, below are some commonly-used Turtle graphics colours. The named colours available can vary depending on the computing platform. Those below are commonly cited on the Internet, but these names may not all be supported on all platforms. IFB104 Building IT Systems Semester 1, 2020 Source: www.discoveryplayground.com/computer-programming-for-kids/rgb-colors/
