Overview

For your final project, you’ll be working on a program of your own design with or without a partner. The goals of this assignment are to synthesize the knowledge about many different data structures learned in the class by 1) choosing the most appropriate data structure for an interesting task, 2) using the Java built-in versions of these data structures, and 3) using inheritance correctly and meaningfully.

Logistics

You have the option of working with a partner for the final project and choosing that partner. You are not required to hold to pair programming for this project (i.e. you are allowed to split up the project and work on parts separately).

You are able to get help from many sources as detailed in the collaboration policy.

The final project is a programming deliverable in the course, however there won’t be the same amount of time for revising after feedback. Because the project is large and open-ended, you will have several opportunities for feedback along the way:

  • Project proposal due Wednesday 2/28 at 10pm
  • Project peer review Wednesday 3/6 in class
  • Project initial submission Wednesday 3/6 at 10pm
  • Final submission due Wednesday 3/13 at 6pm (hard deadline!)

Requirements

The final project is purposefully open-ended so that you can implement software that is of interest to you. Your task is to implement a medium-sized (slightly larger than a homework) piece of software that does something interesting and substantial using inheritance and some of the other concepts we’ve learned about this term. Your project can be basically anything that incorporates the requirements below, but here are a couple of broad ideas to get you started:

  • A modified board game (not a full AI of course, but allowing for two users at the same computer to play the game, or even just single player!)
    • Examples: simplified chess, various card games (with AI players or different modes), battleship (with special ships), simplified monopoly, text-based RPG (but not too much text)
  • A simulation of some kind (my research software is an example, though yours wouldn’t have a GUI, here is an example assignment that does something similar, but you’d need to expand on it)
    • Examples: ecological simulation, societal simulation

Inheritance

If you took CS111, this may sound fairly familiar, so it is important to keep in mind that this needs to be an object-oriented project that uses classes and objects effectively. In particular, inheritance (using extends) is a major concept in this course that your project must use meaningfully.

Your project must incorporate at least one superclass with at least two meaningful subclasses. It would be great for you to have more, but you absolutely need to have at least two. This means using the extends keyword, NOT implements (which would be an interface, NOT inheritance).

Other class concepts

Your project must also correctly and efficiently use the Java built-in version (if there is one) of at least two of the concepts from this list:

  • HashMap
  • Stack or Queue using a Deque
  • Graph (doesn’t have a Java built-in so use the code from HW8)
  • Breadth-first search (see above)
  • Sorting (use Java built-in sort)
  • One of the various trees we’ve seen (there aren’t built-in Java ones)
  • PriorityQueue

Project Proposal

To make sure that you are poised for success, you must write a short proposal of what you plan to do. You will submit this through Gradescope (it’s a fill in the blank on Gradescope assignment, so you don’t need to create a separate document first, though you can). Your proposal is due by Wednesday Feb 28th, at 10pm, and will include the following components:

  • Who’s working on the project, and how you plan to divide the work.
  • The game or simulation you plan to implement for your final project. Include a brief description of the game and its rules (or, for a simulation, what you aim to model and a basic overview of how it will run).
  • How you will be using inheritance (i.e. what superclass and subclasses you will have) and what other two class concepts you will use
  • A brief development plan: what order will you implement classes and functionality and how will you test your project along the way to make sure the first things are working correctly
  • A description of your primary outcome(s) for the project. I’ll raise concerns if these outcomes seem too ambitious or not ambitious enough.
  • A description of your stretch goal(s) for the project. These are outcomes that you hope to achieve, but that you realize may be too difficult given the time frame and your current programming expertise.

After confirming the details and making sure you’re poised to succeed, I’ll officially sign off on your project, which means you’re free to start working on the project. Feel free to submit this early and I will be aiming to get feedback to you sooner than the due date.

README

As always, you should include a detailed README for this project. It should include a brief overview of your project, a short example of how to run your program and see its interesting behavior, and a more detailed section that has demonstration input or code/line numbers for each of the coding-related rubric items. Remember, you want to make it as easy as possible for the grader to see that your project does everything its supposed to!

Prompt

Your README should also have a clearly labeled section that answers the following questions:

  • What does your project do that is interesting and substantive?
  • Why is inheritance useful for your previously specified superclass and subclasses?
  • For each of the two additional previously-specified class concepts that you used, why is that concept the best to use in your project?

Your README may include additional information as appropriate, perhaps sample plots or output depending on the goals of your software, but you must make it clear where your answers to the above questions are.

Getting Help

Because of the open ended nature of this project, I strongly encourage you to check with me on your ideas early on. I will be providing class time to discuss ideas with me and your classmates and you are also welcome to email me, schedule a one on one meeting, or come to drop-in office hours.

Grading

Your project will be assessed on the following rubric:

Proficiency

To demonstrate proficiency, your project must:

  • Compile and run without error under normal conditions
  • Have at least one superclass and two subclasses
  • Use at least two other class concepts from the list
  • Be at least a medium-sized piece of software (slightly larger than a homework)
  • Be object-oriented
  • Have a README with an overview, examples, and prompt responses
  • Have JavaDocs documentation for all public methods
  • Be somewhat well-styled

Mastery

To demonstrate mastery, your project must:

  • Meet proficiency requirements
  • Efficiently and effectively use inheritance and object-oriented programming
  • Efficiently and effectively use at least two other class concepts
  • Use helper methods correctly and effectively
  • Be extremely well-styled and clear by choosing descriptive variable names and including only useful comments
  • Have a thorough, well-styled README
  • Have clear and thorough documentation