IS660Z – Programming Games Using Visual Basic Required session 3 June 16, 2004

Agenda Last minute corrections and fixes to Cannonball and posting of assignment Discussion questions from Blackboard Overview of Minesweeper, Tic Tac Toe Suggestions for other games

Lecture begins soon … Students can finish up Cannonball and post to digital drop box Students missing project 2 presentation will present

Discussion questions Managing enhancements Keeping cannon length constant Finding the formulas to solve this problem Angles vs. radians

Structures in code Functions – return a value that answers a question or solves a problem Sub-routines – carry out a task but do not return a value Event handler – responds to an event captured by OS

Final project Final project presentation next Wednesday Your choice: Enhanced Cannonball Minesweeper Tic Tac Toe Your own game?

Final week wrap up Second exam last hour of class Conducted online Same kinds of questions as midterm Open books, open notes, but no electronic resources (Internet) Week 4 discussion postings due by 9 am Saturday, June 26th Post-course anonymous survey due by 9 am Saturday, June 26th

Enhancements to Cannonball Scoring Move the target as well as the cannon (requires multiple timers) More realistic rendering of cannon, target, scene Other ideas?

Minesweeper Control array of label objects represents the minefield Mines are randomly scattered throughout the minefield and hidden from player Sophisticated mouse actions determine player’s move

Minesweeper Design Issues 3 parallel data structures Actual minefield visible to player Hidden location of mines Location (state) of player’s markings, i.e. what cells have been uncovered or flagged

Minesweeper cont. Visible minefield – control array of label objects Two internal arrays Two dimensional array of Boolean values (True, False) One array records hidden location of mines, other status of each cell Similar to spreadsheet

2 dimensional arrays Declaration: Dim blnMinesOn (1 to conSize, _ 1 to conSize) As Boolean Access individual element with 2 subscripts: blnMinesOn(i,j) = True Processing requires nested loops: For i = 1 to conSize For j = 1 to conSize blnMinesOn(i,j) = False Next j Next i

Tic Tac Toe Simple child’s game is last chapter in the book! Requires two dimensional array to represent board Implement strategies for computer’s choice of move (AI) The Cat wins in case of a tie

Tic Tac Toe Design Issues How to recognize a win? (p. 183) Drawing a winning line Cascading events (p. 182) Implementing levels of play for the computer (p. 185)

VB Exercise Pre-minesweeper – introduces algorithm for recognizing mouse combination clicks Left click Right click Left click with right button down

Last week! See you online