Curtin University — Computing Discipline
UNIX and C Programming (COMP1000)
Semester 1, 2020
Assignment
Due: Friday 11:59PM 22/05/2020
Weight: To Be Determined
1 Introduction
Your task for this assignment is to design, code (in C89), test and debug a modified battleships
game.
In short, your assignment will:
• Extract the game settings and values needed from a file
• Interface with the user via a Terminal based menu
• Play an adapted game of battleships (single player)
• Be able to do conditional compilation
• Generate new input files.
2 Code Design
You must thoroughly document your code using C comments (/* ... */). For each function
you define and each datatype you declare (e.g. using struct or typedef), place a comment
immediately above it explaining its purpose, how it works, and how it relates to other functions
and types. Collectively, these comments should explain your design. (They are worth substantial
marks - see Section 8)
Your code should also be separated logically into multiple c and h files that overall have a single
purpose. Marks will be deducted if monolithic functions and/or files are used.
3 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 to another student
enrolled in this unit who might gain unfair advantage from it. These things are considered
plagiarism or collusion.
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 document. The purpose of
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UCP Assignment Semester 1, 2020
the assignment is for you to solve them on your own. Please see Curtin’s Academic Integrity
website for information on academic misconduct (which includes plagiarism and collusion).
The unit coordinator may require you to provide an oral justification of, or 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.
4 Task Details
4.1 Input Files
Your program should accept two (2) command-line parameters that will be the filenames of
the input files. For example:
[user@pc]$ ./battleships board.txt missiles.txt
Error checking is required on both files and in the case that either of the files is deemed to be
invalid the program is to safely exit. Your program should not continue in the case of an error
being detected but should print out a meaningful error to the user on stderr.
More details on each file are explained below.
4.1.1 Board File
The 1st filename is the name of the settings file for the game board. This file details the size of
the board and the location of the ships. The first line is the size of the board and each proceeding
line is a ship that belongs on the board. The format is as follows:
,
...
Details on each field:
Width + Height :
What is it? : The size of the board in width and height
Restrictions : Has to be a positive Integer between 1 and 12 (inclusive)
Location :
What is it? : This is the location of the front (head) of the ship
Restrictions : Has to be within the board size
Direction :
What is it? : The direction that the ship is facing. All proceeding blocks will be placed
behind it
Restrictions : Can only be the values N,S,E,W and n,s,e,w (case insensitive)
Length :
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UCP Assignment Semester 1, 2020
What is it? : The amount of Blocks (including the head) that the ship takes up.
Restrictions : Has to be a positive number. Has to fit within the board.
Ships Name :
What is it? : The name of the ship.
Restrictions : Can be any sequence of characters (as long as it has at least 1 character)
A full example of the board file and the expected game board:
5,4
D4 E 3 NullByte Sub
A1 N 3 SSASR Popoto
C2 W 2 CPN "Rogers" Steve
:) || A | B | C | D | E |
---++===+===+===+===+===+
1 || 0 | | | | |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
2 || 0 | | 0 | 0 | |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
3 || 0 | | | | |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
4 || | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
The layout of the board is the same as normal Battleships game. On the ’X’ axis we have the
values from A,B... and on the ’Y’ axis the values from 1,2... (More details further down)
4.1.2 Missile File
The 2nd file that is to be read is the missiles file. This file will contain the list of missiles that are
available to use for that game. While in a normal game of battleships you only having a missile
that hits a single tile, this one is slightly different as we now have missiles that are special. In
this game there are 4 types of missiles:
single : Hits a single tile
v-line : Hits an entire column (Vertical Line)
h-line : Hits an entire row (Horizontal Line)
splash : Hits a 3x3 square (centered on the selected tile)
These missiles are to be read from the file and put into a generic linked list.
Example:
single
splash
single
V-Line
h-line
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UCP Assignment Semester 1, 2020
Single
The missile can be in any order and are case-insensitive. If a line consists of anything but one
of the above 4 then assume the file is invalid.
4.1.3 Mandatory Function Pointer
To demonstrate your understandings of function pointers, one is required to be used on the
missiles. The goal is that a function pointer is assigned to each missile when it is read from the
file and when it comes to playing the game the assigned function pointer can be used instead
of having to check the missile type again.
4.2 Menu
After the 2 input files have been read and appropriately stored in memory it is time to have a
menu for the user. This menu is to have the following options initially and is to be controlled
via integer input:
1 Play the Game
2 List all missiles
0 Exit
4.3 Playing the Game
Now that the files have been read its time to play the game. The game will consist of a number
of rounds and will finish when there are either no missiles left or all ships have been destroyed.
For each turn you must display the following:
• The board showing all shots (hits and misses) made. (Similar to above)
• The amount of missiles left (Not including the current one)
• The name of the currently loaded missile (for example “v-line”)
• A prompt for the user to input the next coordinate to target
This part has many components and as such as been broken down to make it simplier.
4.3.1 Displaying the Board
# Tile that hasnt been shot yet
X Tile that has been shot but nothing there
0 Tile that has been shot and contains a ship
Note: For the time being, for debugging purposes, you might want to print a tile that
contains a ship that hasnt been shot with a different character
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UCP Assignment Semester 1, 2020
Example: of a board (same file as above)
:) || A | B | C | D | E |
---++===+===+===+===+===+
1 || # | X | # | # | # |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
2 || # | # | 0 | 0 | # |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
3 || 0 | X | X | X | X |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
4 || # | # | # | # | # |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
Missiles Left: 2
Current Missile: v-line
Enter Next Target:
Your board doesn’t have to look exactly like this, however you must have the axis on both sides
(top and left) and be able to differentiate between each cells.
Note: We will be adding colour later to make it look better
4.3.2 Entering Coordinates
The input that is expected from a user is in the following format “” eg ”B4”
To make it easier you can assume that the user always inputs a character followed by an integer,
however you must still do some error checking on it.
• Check that you are within the correct range (row and column)
• Allow the use of lower case character eg ’b4’
4.3.3 Ships Destroyed
When a ship is completely destroyed (all tiles have been hit) you are to print a message to the
user saying that a ship has been destroyed followed by the name of the ship.
4.3.4 Game Ending
As said before a game ends when the player runs out of missiles or when all ships are destroyed.
When a game ends you are to go back to the main menu and allow the use to play the game
again (Same board and missiles)
4.4 Add Some Colour
To make the board look nicer were going to print the tiles in different colours depending on
what their status is.
For an example board:
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UCP Assignment Semester 1, 2020
:) || A | B | C | D | E |
---++===+===+===+===+===+
1 || # | X | # | # | # |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
2 || # | # | 0 | 0 | # |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
3 || 0 | X | X | X | X |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
4 || # | # | # | # | # |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
In order to print colour youre going to need the following macros:
RED “\033[0;31m”
GREEN “\033[0;32m”
BLUE “\033[1;34m”
RESET “\033[0m””
To use them you wrap your wrap your printf string with the colour you want to print followed
by the RESET colour (turns the colours back to normal)
char ch = 'X'
printf("%s%c%s", RED, ch, RESET);
--- OR ---
printf(RED "%c" RESET, ch);
Heres another example if you want to add more colours to your program: Click here
4.5 Remove Some Colour (Conditional Compilation 1)
Now that we have colour lets create a way to disable it.
Your goal is to add a condition compilation called “MONO” that when compiled with your
program no longer prints any colours.
4.6 Find Your Ships (Conditional Compilation 2)
Lets add another conditional compilation to help us find our ships.
Add another conditional compilation called “DEBUG”. With this one defined your board is to
now print the ‘#’ in a magenta colour if a ship is there and hasnt been shot yet. For example:
MAGENTA “\033[1;35m”
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UCP Assignment Semester 1, 2020
:) || A | B | C | D | E |
---++===+===+===+===+===+
1 || # | # | # | # | # |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
2 || # | # | # | # | # |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
3 || # | # | # | # | # |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
4 || # | # | # | # | # |
---++---+---+---+---+---+
4.7 Need Help?
So by now you should be able to shoot missiles at the board and the tiles will change character
and colour depending on what was there. However what if a player didnt know how to play
the game.
The challenge with this part is to allow the user to type in “help” when they are prompted to
enter a coordinate to shoot at. When entered you are to print a description of what that missile
does. Remember though that you cant do any checks outside of FileIO on which missile it is.
4.8 Creating Files
Add another 2 options to your Menu
3 Create Board File
4 Create Missile File
The goal of these options is to allow the user to create new input files for the program. As such
they must save to the same format as above. These functions should ask the user for all the
required information and save them in a file that is named by the user.
How you decide to setup these function and get user input is completely up to you. And to test
that your function works, just use the newly created file as the next input file.
5 Report
You must prepare a report that outlines your design and testing. Specifically:
1 For each file that you have, write a paragraph explaining the overall purpose of it. (Hint:
If you cant explain in 1 simple paragraph then its doing to much)
2 Describe (in 1-2 paragraphs) how you implement the storing and using of the ships on
the board and the board. Talk about any complications that you can into while designing
this component.
3 Demonstrate that your program works and how to use it (only need to show valid input
files), including:
• The contents of the input files
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UCP Assignment Semester 1, 2020
• The command-line used to execute your program
• The output of the board as shown on the screen
• The input the user uses to interact with the menu.
• The input the user used to play the game.
Note: Demonstrating your program is very important as it shows us if your code is meant
to be working or not.
Your report should be professionally presented, with appropriate headings, page numbers and
a contents page. You will loose marks for poorly written/badly formatted reports!
6 Submission
Once complete you are to submit your entire assignment electronically, via Blackboard, before
the submission deadline.
Your submission is to be a single .tar.gz file containing:
A declaration of originality – A complete declaration of originality is to be filled out and submitted
as a PDF file.
Your implementation – including all your source code (.c files, .h files, makefile, etc…). Note
that all pre-compiled code will be removed before marking.
Your report – A single PDF file containing everything mentioned in Section 5
You are responsible for ensuring that your submission is correct and not corrupted. You may
make multiple submissions, but only your latest submission will be marked.
No extensions will be granted. If exceptional circumstances prevent you from submitting an
assignment on time, contact the Unit Coordinator ASAP with relevant documentation. After
the due date and time is too late.
Late submission policy, as per the Unit Outline, will be applied.
Warning: Ensure that the filetype of all submission are correct. If your report is a docx
or txt file it will be treated as a non-submission. Same applies for your submission. If
you submit a .zip, .7z, .rar, etc…, then you will receive zero (0) for the whole assignment.
7 Demonstration
You will be required to demonstrate your assignment to a tutor the week after the submission
date during your practical time. Due to the current unforeseen circumstances that are currently
on though, how we do demonstrations may change.
During the demonstration, you will just be asked to show us your code working and talk to us
about what you did. The idea is to help us staff with using your assignment.
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UCP Assignment Semester 1, 2020
8 Mark Allocations
To Be Determined
End of Assignment