CS61B Project 3: BYOW

CS61B Project 3: BYOW

FAQ
Each assignment will have an FAQ linked at the top. You can also access it by adding “/faq” to the end of the URL. The FAQ for Project 3 is located here.

Introduction
In Project 3, you will create an engine for generating explorable worlds. This is a large design project that will require you and one partner to work through every stage of development from ideation to presentation. The goal of this project is to teach you how to handle a larger piece of code with little starter code in the hopes of emulating something like a product development cycle. In accordance with this, the grading of this project will be different from other projects. Since there is no notion of “the correct answer” when it comes to world design and implementation, you will be assessed much like a performance review you might receive at an internship or job in addition to a very general autograder. While this means you will be graded slightly subjectively, we promise to be pretty nice bosses and will respect you as any boss should respect their hardworking employees. Please talk to us if you feel the grading scheme feels unfair.

This project will require you a great deal of exploration and experimentation. Searching the web for answers (not solutions from past semesters) should be a regular activity throughout this process. Please know that there are no right and wrong answers, as this is a very open-ended project. However, there are some implementations and ideas that are better than others. It is ok and expected that you will go through several iterations before settling on something that you deem good. That is, this project is about software engineering.

You’re not required to use any of the fancy data structures or concepts from class (A*, MSTs, Disjoint Sets, etc.). This project is about software engineering, not about data structures or algorithms. The data structures and algorithms we’ve learned about in class will make your code significantly simpler and more efficient, but please don’t use things just because we learned about them in class. Only use these tools if you feel comfortable using them in your implementation.

A video playlist (from Spring 2018) discussing tips for working on this project can be found at this link. A walkthrough of the new skeleton code is also available here.

Please also note that since the structure of the project has been changed, Phase 1 will refer to part 3A of the project.

Deliverables
Project 3 is worth 125 points. There are several key deadlines for this assignment: