COMP1921 School of Computing

School of Computing: Assessment brief 
Module title Programming Project 
Module code COMP1921 
Assignment title Resit Assessment 
Assignment type and 
description 
You will produce code to meet a given specification. 
Rationale This assessment gives you an opportunity to develop a small working 
game using professional techniques such a modularizing code and 
defensive design. You will work to create code which meets a client 
brief, whilst also ensuring that the code meets basic standards of 
structure, documentation and memory management. 
Word limit and 
guidance 
You should spend 20-25 hours working on this assessment. 
Weighting 100% 
Submission deadline 9
th
 August 2024 @ 23:59 
Late submission is not permitted. 
Submission method Gradescope 
Feedback provision Marked rubric, Autograder output & in-code comments via Gradescope. 
Learning outcomes 
assessed 
- apply professional programming practices to programming projects. 
- explain the importance of applying professional programming practices 
to programming projects. 
- design, implement, debug and test a modular programming solution to 
a real-world problem. 
Module lead Amy Brereton (@scsabr) 
 
 
 1. Assignment guidance 
You are tasked with creating a basic treasure hunt game in C, where players navigate a map to find 
hidden treasures using command-line inputs. 
You should design your code to be defensive and handle a range of errors in a graceful way, 
without crashing unexpectedly. Consider the full range of mistakes which a user could make when 
trying to run the program. 
Treasure Island Game 
The game loads a map file, which is provided on the command line in the format: 
./island <mapfilepath> <dimension> 
A map file can contain: 
And is always a square with the width and height dimension which is also provided on the 
command line. 
The game involves the player moving around the island looking for hidden treasure. The player can 
move using the WASD keys (w/W = up, a/A = left, s/S = down, d/D = right) or display a map using 
the m/M key. 
The locations of the hidden treasure and the starting point should not be shown by the map, these 
should be showed by blank spaces ‘ ‘. 
When the player finds the hidden treasure, they should receive some message telling them how 
many they have found such as ‘You have found 1 out of 3 hidden treasures’. 
When the player has found all 3 hidden treasures, they have won and the game ends successfully. 
There is no exit or quit option, so the only way to complete the game is to find all treasures. 
 
Symbol Meaning 
‘ ‘ (space) Land which the player can move across. 
‘w’ (lower case w) Water – this surrounds the island and the player cannot move through 
it. There must be only water in the first and last row and column. 
‘T’ (upper case t) Palm trees which block the player from moving on land. 
3 x ‘H’ (upper case h) Hidden treasures which the player is searching for. 
1 x ‘S’ (upper case s) The starting point, where your player will be placed when you start the 
game. Return codes and Outputs to the User 
Any outputs such as error messages can be any text you like, as the grader does not read them. 
However, there are certain return codes which you have to use: 
0 = success (the game was able to run correctly) 
1 = argument error (bad number of arguments, or bad dimension) 
2 = file error (the file cannot be read – doesn’t exist or no read permissions) 
3 = data error (the file is not a valid map) 
Where an error could fall into multiple categories, the autograder will accept either – or you can ask 
me via Teams. 
 
Map Files 
Map files are text files containing a ‘map’ for the game. They have some rules: 
- The map should always have a border of water (‘w’s) around the edges (i.e. every first and 
last character of a row and column should be a ‘w’). 
- A map is always a square (width and height equal), and should match the dimension given on 
the command line. 
- There is exactly one start point marked by ‘S’. 
- There are exactly 3 treasures marked by ‘H’. 
- The map only contains characters ‘w’,’T’,’ ‘, ‘H’ and ‘S’. 
- The size is a minimum of 5x5 and a maximum of 100x100. 
- They may end with a trailing newline character (a ‘\n’ as the final character). 
A selection of map files have been provided to help you test your code – note that these will not be 
the final files used to test your code, so it’s important for you to ensure that your code works on a 
variety of different files. 
These example files also do not contain every possible error – try and think of other ways in 
which a map file could be wrong, and make some of your own to test your code. 
You do not need to check whether there is a valid route between the start and the 3 treasures 
– you can assume there always is. Additional Task – Map Generator – 30 marks 
This task is optional and should not be attempted if you are sitting a capped resit – this is 
only for those with uncapped marks who are aiming for higher marks and may take 
significantly longer than the suggested time for this assignment. 
The developer wants to procedurally generate a range of different maps to build up a website of 
maps which people can download and use with the game. They would like you to create a script 
which is able to generate these maps. 
You may use C, Python, or Java for this extension. 
You will produce a program which can generate maps with a given filename and size. For example: 
./islandGenerator new_island.txt 40 
Would create a random, solvable 40x40 map and save it into new_island.txt. 
Note: as other languages are permitted, please provide running instructions in a readme.md 
file. 
Your islands need to be valid by the rules given in the ‘Map Files’ section above, and it is 
recommended that you try and ensure that around 60% of your map is covered by island (rather 
than having a lot of water around small islands) to make your islands more interesting and varied. 
Your islands must also be solvable – it must be possible to start at the starting point and reach all 3 
treasures. 
You will develop an algorithm to produce these more complex maps. You may use existing research 
to help you to do this, but you should also experiment with how changing existing algorithms affects 
the maps you produce. You should be writing all code yourself, and citing any research you use. 
Aim to create an algorithm which produces visually interesting and challenging maps, and which 
produces an interesting range of shapes and styles of island. 
You will produce a short report which explains how you developed your island-generating algorithm, 
focusing on how you iteratively developed and improved your code, justifying changes you made 
and explaining the impact of these. You can include screenshots, code snippets and images to 
demonstrate this 
You should also include a reflective conclusion discussing: 
- The limitations of your solution 
- What you found challenging in designing the algorithm 
- Future improvements you would like to make 
I recommend writing no more than 10 pages (including images and code snippets) but there is no 
page or word limit. 
You should ensure that you cite any sources using Leeds Harvard referencing. 
Please upload your report as a PDF. 
 2. Assessment tasks 
You should develop a C program to fulfil the brief given above. You will submit your source code, 
and if you attempt the map generator challenge task you will also submit a short report. 
Your code should be: 
- Defensively designed 
- Sensibly structured 
- Modular 
- Memory efficient 
And you should ensure that you test your code throughout development. On submission, you will 
receive feedback for some tests which should help you to ensure that you are meeting the 
requirements of the specification such as correct exit codes. 
If tests are failing and you are not sure why, you can contact me via Teams/email for 
additional feedback. 
 
3. General guidance and study support 
You should refer to the previous lab exercises and lecture notes to support you. Procedural 
Programming covered the basic C code needed so you should refer back to this module’s notes. 
 
4. Assessment criteria and marking process 
50 marks will be calculated by an autograder which runs your code through a number of scenarios 
testing invalid inputs, files, and some integration tests ensuring your code can navigate a full game. 
You will see the result of a small number of these tests on upload, but the majority are hidden. 
20 marks for code quality will be manually assessed by code inspection. 
30 marks for the extension task will be manually assessed from your report and running your code. 
A full breakdown is available in section 8. 
 
 5. Presentation and referencing 
In your report, you should use Leeds Harvard referencing which you can learn more about: 
https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/1402/referencing 
The quality of written English will be assessed in this work. As a minimum, you must ensure: 
- Paragraphs are used 
- There are links between and within paragraphs although these may be ineffective at times 
- There are (at least) attempts at referencing 
- Word choice and grammar do not seriously undermine the meaning and comprehensibility of 
the argument 
- Word choice and grammar are generally appropriate to an academic text 
Referencing of Code 
Two simple rules: 
1. You should not be directly copying any code from external resources, even with a reference. 
2. Use of generative AI needs to be referenced with a link/copy of the conversation. 
 
If any code is adapted from examples found online, provide a basic comment with the URL on the 
line above the adapted line/section: 
// This test is adapted from an example provided on: https://byby.dev/bash-exit-codes 
 
Generative AI 
In ChatGPT, you can generate a link to the full conversation: 
 
And provide the reference as follows: 
// Lines 1 – 7 were adapted from code provided by the following conversation 
with chatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/share/c356221d-fb88-4970-b39e-d00c87ae1e0b 
  
In Copilot, you will need to export the conversation as a text file: 
 
Save this with a filename including the date and 2-3 word summary of what the conversation was 
about (’11-03 inputs in C.txt’) and ensure this is submitted with your work. 
You can reference this in your code: 
// Lines 1 – 7 were adapted from code provided by the CoPilot conversation 
recorded in ’11-03 inputs in C.txt’ 
If you are using a different Generative AI model, these instructions may differ – you must still 
provide a link to or copy of the full conversation and reference in the same manner above. 
 
Use of Generative AI in this Assessment 
This assessment is rated ‘amber’ according to the university guidelines around generative AI. This 
means that you can use genAI models such as ChatGPT or CoPilot to explain concepts which may 
be useful in this assessment, but you must not use any code it generates or give it any part of 
this specification. 
Here are some examples of reasonable things to ask a generative AI model: 
- Explain how to use the fgets function to read a file in C 
- How do I create a struct in C? 
- How do I allocate a 2D array in C? 
 
These are asking for help with concepts, and not with the assignment itself and are therefore 
acceptable – although you must reference your use of generative AI with a full transcript of the 
conversation, as shown in the section above. 
 
If it is suspected that you have used generative AI without reference, the standard academic 
integrity process for plagiarism will be followed. 
 
 6. Submission requirements 
Submit via Gradescope. 
Main task: 
Submit your code and a makefile to Gradescope along with any referenced generative AI 
conversations. Your code should not be inside any subfolders, and must compile on Linux. 
This is an example of a correct upload – you can see that my files do not have a folder name before 
them, and there is a makefile provided. 
The autograder will show the result of 4 different tests, one from each section (arg errors, file 
errors, map errors and success tests). Use these to ensure your code is returning the correct value. 
 
Extension task: 
Submit your code, report, and any instructions for running your program to the ‘Resit – Extension’ 
assignment on Gradescope. 
 
 7. Academic misconduct and plagiarism 
Leeds students are part of an academic community that shares ideas and develops new ones. 
 You need to learn how to work with others, how to interpret and present other people's ideas, and 
how to produce your own independent academic work. It is essential that you can distinguish 
between other people's work and your own, and correctly acknowledge other people's work. 
 All students new to the University are expected to complete an online Academic Integrity tutorial 
and test, and all Leeds students should ensure that they are aware of the principles of Academic 
integrity.  
 When you submit work for assessment it is expected that it will meet the University’s academic 
integrity standards.  
 If you do not understand what these standards are, or how they apply to your work, then please ask 
the module teaching staff for further guidance. 
 By submitting this assignment, you are confirming that the work is a true expression of your 
own work and ideas and that you have given credit to others where their work has 
contributed to yours. 
 
 8. Assessment/ marking criteria grid