CSE3PSD/CSE5008 Programming Assignment 3A: Implement a Zork-style text adventure
CSE3PSD/CSE5008 Programming Assignment 3A
Implement a Zork-style text adventure
Assigned to students Monday 8 May 2023
Due Sunday 28 May 2023 @ 11.59pm
Worth 30% of your final marks
ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/
Zork: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork
Play Zork online: https://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/5zyoqrsugeopel3ffhz_vq/zork
You will substantially modify and extend the provided code in order to produce an object-oriented implementation of a text adventure a la Zork – ZOOrk, perhaps.
In order to do so, you may – and should – make use of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT or Github Copilot.
You will document this experience in a reflection, indicating how you made use of AI tools (including what tools and prompts you employed), how and where these tools were notably helpful or unhelpful, and what you learned from this process.
Part 1: The hero’s journey (50 marks)
For this part of the assessment, you will:
- Make a “map” containing at least 10 rooms (10 marks)
The provided code, purely as an example, has a map with three rooms. You may use those rooms as-is or delete them, but your final game should consist of a minimum of 10 rooms.
- Implement “look” functionality (10 marks)
In ZOOrkEngine.cpp, there is a method handleLookCommand(arguments) which, at this point, just prints out that the functionality is unsupported when a user attempts to look. Looking at an object should print its description; looking without a specific target should print the description of the current room.
- Implement take/drop and an inventory system (30 marks)
Also in ZOOrkEngine.cpp, there are methods handleTakeCommand(arguments) and handleDropCommand(arguments) that should enable a user to move an Item from the Room’s inventory to the Player’s inventory and vice versa. Implementing this functionality will also involve changes to, at a minimum, Player.h/Player.cpp and Room.h/Room.cpp.
Part 2: Choose your own adventure (30 marks)
For this part of the assessment, you will extend the functionality of ZOOrk to enable more interesting gameplay. You may choose to extend the game in any way you see fit – as long as you document it in your reflection document, see Part 3 below – but if you’re stuck for ideas you could try one or more of the following:
- Add one or more new commands to the ZOOrkEngine enabling the player to perform new and exciting actions.
- Add other types of Characters that the player can interact with (possibly through new ZOOrkEngine commands…).
- Add a class Door, deriving publicly from Passage, that requires the player to possess a specific Item to open it.
- Add a system of status effects/tags such that the user can only perform certain tasks or access certain locations when they possess a certain characteristic (i.e. “huge”, “tiny”, “flying”, etc.)
Part 3: There and back again (20 marks)
You will submit, in addition to a ZIP file containing your code files, a short reflection document. This document should comment upon:
- What AI tool or tools you employed,
- What prompts you provided to those tools,
- How and where those tools provided helpful suggestions,
- How and where those tools provided unhelpful suggestions,
- What, if anything, you implemented to satisfy Part 2, and
- What you learned from this process.
