Project 2: Word Games

Due Friday, March 15

Description

For this project, you will create a program for users to play a word game of your choice.

In particular, your project should be complex enough that it includes several of the following concepts we have discussed in class:

• Booleans
• Functions
• Conditional statements
• Loops
• Strings
• Lists
• File input/output

(It is not an absolute requirement for your program to contain every single one of the above elements; but if it does not need most of them, then your program is probably not interesting/complex enough.) The game can be for one person against a computer, or two players against each other.

Some examples include:

• Bulls and Cows (using words, not numbers) or Wordle
• Hangman
• Last Letter First Letter using countries, state names, foods, etc.
• Ghost
• Boggle
• Prolix
• a program to let a user solve a Cryptogram

Do not feel limited by the games on this list. Find a word game that interests you and implement it. If you choose something else, check with one of your instructors first, so we can advise you on the scope of your project.

Requirements

Your program should explain the game to the user, being clear exactly what input is expected and valid whenever requesting information from them.

The user must be able to

• choose a level of difficulty for the game,

• be offered the chance to play the game again when finished, and

• make mistakes in entry of information and be prompted to correct their input.

Your code must make good use of functions. Using functions will reduce the amount of code you need to write as well as make your program easier to debug. However, do not write spaghetti code, where functions call each other back and forth to continue execution of the program; let your functions naturally return values and use loops to repeat the game turns.

Warnings

• Get started early! Pick a game and run it by us. We are happy to help you think through the design of your program.
• If you are not confident with the use of functions to structure your code, we highly recommend first getting something very basic to work without using functions, then thinking about how to abstract parts of your code into functions. Then repeat the process, adding functionality incrementally.
• Historically, project 2 is the point in the semester where some students become tempted to cheat by copying others’ code. Do not succumb to this temptation! Review the Academic Integrity guidelines for CSCI. Get started early, come for help often. You can do this project!

What to Hand In

You must hand in all files necessary to run your code.

Grading Criteria

• A Level 1 project:
  • Explains the game to the user, making clear exactly what input is expected and valid whenever it requests information from them.
  • Enables the human player to play a word game to completion without any errors.
  • The word game is complex enough to employ at least three of the concepts from the list above.
• A Level 2 project meets the criteria for Level 1, and meets the following additional criteria:
  • The word game is complex enough to employ at least five of the concepts from the list above.
  • Has at least three levels of difficulty.
  • Offers the chance to play the game again when finished.
  • Enables the user to correct mistakes in the entry of information.
  • Makes good use of functions to structure the project.
    • Functions are relatively short and conceptually do a single job
    • Functions are used to hierarchically decompose the program