The Project 3 specification document is posted.

Updates

• 2/20 3:45pm: Tha sample executables were corrected so that Vertical RageBots move vertically instead of horizontally.
• 2/18 1:40pm: There was a period of time before now when the spec said that the chracter m in a level data file represented a marble. That has been corrected to say the letter is b, which corresponds to what's actually in the level files we provide. (At some point after the files were prepared and Level.h was written, it was decided to call the items marbles, not, say, beads.)
• 2/17 1:00pm: Spec pp. 13, 14, and 21 were corrected to show that the method that returns the path to the assets directory is named assetPath(), not assetDirectory().

To see what the game looks like in action:

• Windows: Open the Windows sample executable zip file and drag the folder named MarbleMadness in it to your desktop. In that desktop folder, double-click on the MarbleMadness application. (If the program crashes after 1 to 30 seconds with a dialog box showing an error code 0xc0000022, try disabling your antivirus software. Unfortunately, we can't tell the SEASnet Windows Server to accept that there's no virus, so it may be impossible to run MarbleMadness on that server.)
• macOS: You'll need to have XQuartz installed to run the program.
  1. Install XQuartz:
     1. Click the download link, open the downloaded .pkg file, XQuartz.pkg, and follow the installation instructions.
     2. Log out and log back in again. (It's possible that you might not have to do this step, but we're not sure.)
     3. To verify the installation, open a Terminal window and run the command echo $DISPLAY. That should produce one line of output that ends with org.xquartz:0.
  2. Unzip the Mac sample executable zip file. In that zip file is a file named README.txt that tells you how to launch the program.
• Linux:
  1. Install OpenGL and freeGLUT (already installed on the SEASnet Linux servers cs32.seas.ucla.edu, lnxsrv06.seas.ucla.edu, lnxsrv07.seas.ucla.edu, and lnxsrv09.seas.ucla.edu):
     • Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install freeglut3 freeglut3-dev
     • Fedora: sudo yum install freeglut freeglut-devel
  2. Unzip the Linux sample executable zip file. Change into the MarbleMadness directory. In that directory there is a file named README that tells you how to launch the program. You won't hear any sound effects. The Linux version builds and tries to connect to an X11 server, so it should work if your DISPLAY environment variable is set correctly. When we have a chance, we may have a way to get sound effects working.

The only files you will modify are Actor.h, Actor.cpp, StudentWorld.h, and StudentWorld.cpp. Indeed, those will be the only code files you'll turn in, so in implementing your solution, you must not depend on any changes you make to code files other than those four.

At some point in Project 3, you may find the Stringstreams writeup helpful.

As a simple example of how a StudentWorld object and an actor object can interact, this demo zip file has the StudentWorld and Actor files for a simple demo that has one object appear that plays a sound whenever you hit the space key. That object never dies, so type q to end the demo. (Our framework intercepts the q to end the game.)

Notes for Visual C++ users:

• When you open the Windows skeleton zip file, make sure you drag the MarbleMadness folder to your desktop (or somewhere else) and in the folder there, double-click on the .sln solution file to open the project in Visual C++. It doesn't work if you try to work with the one embedded in the zip file.
• If the Windows skeleton doesn't build for you, you might need to ensure that your project is using Windows SDK Version 10.0.19041.0 or 10.18362.0 (or possibly 10.0.22000.0 or higher). To do this:
  1. Launch the Visual Studio Installer, find your version of Visual Studio, and select Modify. In the list on the right side, under Desktop development with C++, under Optional, make sure one of the Windows 11 SDK or Windows 10 SDK options numbered 10.0.18362.0 or higher is selected.
  2. After modifying your Visual Studio installation, open the project in Visual Studio and right-click on Solution 'MarbleMadness' above the list of source files. Select Retarget Solution from the menu and choose the newly installed version of the SDK if accepting "10.0 (latest installed version)" doesn't work for you.
  3. Build the project.
• Also, if the skeleton crashes after 1 to 30 seconds with a dialog box showing an error code 0xc0000022, try disabling your antivirus software and building the executable.

Notes for Xcode users:

• You might get a message at startup relating to the Assets directory. If you want to fix the issue just for this project, select File / Project Settings... and for Derived Data Location, select Project-relative Location. If instead you want to fix it for every project you create with Xcode, select Xcode / Preferences... and for the Derived Data, select Relative. Alternatively, you could simply change the assetDirectory string literal in main.cpp to be a full path name to wherever you choose to put the Assets directory.
• Your program may write a lot of log messages to the Xcode output window. Each message starts with the date and time; the first message is "Initializing libGL." You can ignore these messages. When your program finishes, though, the last line should be the "Program ended with exit code: 0" that Xcode writes, and above that you should see "No memory leaks were detected".