Battleship

Total score: 129.5 / 100 (30 points extra credit possible)

This was a project for my Software Engineering class. The project was to create a text-based version of the game Battleship. The project was broken down into two versions. The first version was to create a text-based version of the game. The second version was to add new features to the game. The new features included new ship designs, and new moves, and the choice of an extra credit assignment. I chose to implement an AI opponent.

The original problem statment is pasted below.

Version 1

We are going to play battleship on a text interface with a $20$ high by $10$ wide grid (though see "extra credit" at the end for discussion of a graphical interface). Accordingly, we will have coordinates A0 through T9, like this:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9
A  | | | | | | | | |  A
B  | | | | | | | | |  B
C  | | | | | | | | |  C
D  | | | | | | | | |  D
E  | | | | | | | | |  E
F  | | | | | | | | |  F
G  | | | | | | | | |  G
H  | | | | | | | | |  H
I  | | | | | | | | |  I
J  | | | | | | | | |  J
K  | | | | | | | | |  K
L  | | | | | | | | |  L
M  | | | | | | | | |  M
N  | | | | | | | | |  N
O  | | | | | | | | |  O
P  | | | | | | | | |  P
Q  | | | | | | | | |  Q
R  | | | | | | | | |  R
S  | | | | | | | | |  S
T  | | | | | | | | |  T
  0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The game has two players, player A and player B. While it would be much nicer to have a networked game where player A and B are at two different computers, we are not going to make you do that (though see "extra credit" at the end).

• Each player has 10 ships as follows:
  • 2 "Submarines" ships that are 1x2
  • 3 "Destroyers" that are 1x3
  • 3 "Battleships" that are 1x4
  • 2 "Carriers" that are 1x6

The first phase of the game asks the players to place their ships. Player A places his ships first, while player B closes her eyes. The game should display a blank board (as above), and explain ship placement as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player A: you are going to place the following ships (which are all
rectangular). For each ship, type the coordinate of the upper left
side of the ship, followed by either H (for horizontal) or V (for
vertical).  For example M4H would place a ship horizontally starting
at M4 and going to the right.  You have

2 "Submarines" ships that are 1x2 
3 "Destroyers" that are 1x3
3 "Battleships" that are 1x4
2 "Carriers" that are 1x6
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The game should then prompt player A for each ship, e.g.,

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player A where do you want to place a Submarine?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

• If the location is invalid (collides with another ship, results in a ship going off the grid, etc), you should explain the problem to player, and ask them to place again.
  • Note that you should ignore case (so M4H m4h m4H M4h are all the same).
• If placement is successful, you should display the board with the ship on it.
  • Show an s, d, b, or c for submarines, destroyers, battleships and carriers respectively.
  • For example, after a submarine at M4H, another submarine at A0V and a destroyer at B2V, you would display:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current ocean:
  0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9
A s| | | | | | | | |  A
B s| |d| | | | | | |  B
C  | |d| | | | | | |  C
D  | |d| | | | | | |  D
E  | | | | | | | | |  E
F  | | | | | | | | |  F
G  | | | | | | | | |  G
H  | | | | | | | | |  H
I  | | | | | | | | |  I
J  | | | | | | | | |  J
K  | | | | | | | | |  K
L  | | | | | | | | |  L
M  | | | |s|s| | | |  M
N  | | | | | | | | |  N
O  | | | | | | | | |  O
P  | | | | | | | | |  P
Q  | | | | | | | | |  Q
R  | | | | | | | | |  R
S  | | | | | | | | |  S
T  | | | | | | | | |  T
  0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

• After displaying the board, prompt for the next ship. Repeat this until all ships are placed. You should display the board one more time after the last ship is placed (so with 10 ships, you will display the board 11 times if there are no errors in placement).

• After doing this for player A, repeat the process for player B (player A should close his eyes while player B places her ships). Note that player A's ships and player B's ships are different "oceans" so player B will start with a blank board, and can place her ships anywhere (e.g., even though Player A has a submarine at A0, player B can place a ship at A0 also, since they are "different" A0s).

• Next play begins. Turns alternate between each player, with player A going first. First, display the board to player A. You will display two things: player A's ships and what hits/misses player A has already made. In this display, you will use the same layout/symbols as above, but with * to indicate a hit portion of your own ship, and X to indicate a miss on an enemy ship.

• For example:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player A's turn:
     Your ocean                           Player B's ocean
  0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9                    0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9   
A s| | | | | | | |c|  A                A  | | | | | | | | |  A
B s| |d| | | | | |c|  B                B  | | | | | | | | |  B
C  | |*| | | | | |c|  C                C  | |X| | | | | | |  C
D  | |d| | | | | |c|  D                D  |X|d|d| | | | | |  D
E  | | | | | | | |c|  E                E  | |X| | | | | | |  E
F  | |d| | | | | |c|  F                F  | | | | | | | | |  F
G  | |d| | | |b| | |  G                G  | | | | | | | | |  G
H  | |d| | | |b| | |  H                H  | | | | | | | | |  H
I  | | | | | |b| | |  I                I  | | | | | | | | |  I
J  | | | | | |b| | |  J                J  | | |X| | | | | |  J
K c|c|c|c|c|c| | | |  K                K  | | | | | | | | |  K
L  | | | | | | | | |  L                L  | | | |X| | | | |  L
M  | | | |s|s| | | |  M                M  | | | | | | | | |  M
N  | | | | | | | | |  N                N  | | | | | | | | |  N
O  | | | | | |b| | |  O                O  | | | | |s|s| | |  O
P  | | | | | |b| | |  P                P  | | | | | | | | |  P
Q  | | | | | |b| | |  Q                Q  | | | | | | | | |  Q
R  | | | | | |b| | |  R                R  | | | | | | | | |  R
S  | | | | | | | | |  S                S  | | | | | | | | |  S
T d|d|d| | | | | | |  T                T  | | | | | | | | |  T
  0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9                    0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

• In the above example, player A has successfully hit player B's ships at four locations:

  • O5: a submarine
  • O6: a submarine
  • D2: a destroyer
  • D3: a destroyer

• and missed player B's ships at D1, C2, E2, J3, and L4 (meaning no ships are located there)

• Player A's own ships have been hit once, at C2.

• Player A is then prompted for the coordinate to fire at. If the coordinates are invalid, the game should prompt player A to enter a valid choice. The game will then report the result, such as

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You hit a carrier!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

or

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You missed!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Play then proceeds with Player B's turn. The boards are displayed for Player B (so Player B's state is shown on the left with all of B's ships known, and Player A's ocean is shown on the right with only hits/misses known).
• Play continues to alternate until one player has no more ships. When one player has no more ships, the other player wins. Your game should print a message stating who won, and then exit.

Before continuing...

• Before proceeding to Version 2, please check that...
  • You have met all requirements for Version 1
  • You have rigorously and thoroughly tested your code
  • You have commented your code well
  • You have made a git commit which contains your version 1 code (i.e. "delivered" version 1 to your client)

Version 2

• After completing version 1 of battleship, your customer changes the requirements slightly, and you now need to make version 2. There are three changes to the requirements:

Change #1 - Changes to ship design.

To spice the game up a bit, the customer decided that there should be some different ship shapes that are not just rectangular.

• In particular, each player now has the following ship types:

  • 2 "Submarines" that are 1x2 rectangles (represented by "s")
  • 3 "Destroyers" that are 1x3 rectangles (represented by "d")
  • 3 "Battleships" that are now shaped as shown below

   b     OR   b            bbb          b
  bbb         bb      OR    b     OR   bb
              b                         b
  
  Up          Right        Down      Left
  

  • 2 "Carriers" that are now shaped as shown below

  c                       c             
  c           cccc        cc         ccc
  cc   OR    ccc      OR  cc   OR  cccc     
  cc                       c         
   c                       c
  
  Up        Right        Down       Left
  

• Note that the submarines and Destroyers are unchanged, and still have horizontal (H) and vertical (V) orientations.

• Battleships and Carriers now have new shapes, and 4 orientations (as pictured above). These four orientations are now up (U), right (R), down (D), and left (L), with each diagram above having its orientation written below it.

• Accordingly, placing a Battleship or a Carrier requires coordinates that end with U,L,R, or D instead of H or V. Note that the coordinates still name the top left of the ship. With ships that are not rectangular, we define this top left corner to be the corner of the smallest rectangle which fully encloses the ship.

  • To clarify this last point, we re-draw each ship with the top-left corner indicated by
    • A capitalized letter when it is part of the ship
    • A star (*) when it is not part of the ship.
  • Battleships:

  *b     OR   B            Bbb         *b
  bbb         bb      OR    b     OR   bb
              b                         b
  
  Up          Right        Down      Left
  

  • Carriers:

  C                       C             
  c          *cccc        cc       * ccc
  cc   OR    ccc      OR  cc   OR  cccc     
  cc                       c         
   c                       c
  
  Up        Right        Down       Left
  

Change #2 - New moves.

• A player now has 2 new actions, each of which is limited to 3 uses per game. At the start of player's turn, the game should display the board, prompt for which action type the player wants to use, and then prompt for any information needed for that action type.
• For example:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Possible actions for Player A:

 F Fire at a square
 M Move a ship to another square (2 remaining)
 S Sonar scan (1 remaining)

Player A, what would you like to do?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Note: once a player is out of their 3 uses of a the new moves you MAY (but do not have to) omit that item from the menu entirely. You MAY also, if all 3 uses of both new actions are used up, go directly to the "fire" action as in version 1.

Move ship.

• When using this move type, a player selects one of his/her own ships (the game should prompt for which ship, and the player should be able to type any coordinate which is a part of the ship they want). The player then is prompted for a new placement (location + orientation, as in initial placement). The ship is then moved to that position. Any existing damage to the ship remains in the same relative position(s) of the ship.

• If the player selects an invalid location, the player is re-prompted for their actions (and might select move again, or might select a different action).

• Note that the other player's display does NOT gain any information that the ship moved. If they previously hit that ship, the hit markers remain. If they previously missed the new location, those markers also remain.

Sonar scan.

• When the player selects this move type, the game prompts for the center coordinates of a sonar scan. Any coordinate on the game board is valid, even if part of the scan will go off the edges of the board.

• The game then considers the following pattern around (and including) the center (C)

   *
  ***
 *****
***C***
 *****
  ***
   *

and reports on the number of squares occupied by each type of ship in that region.

• For example:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Submarines occupy 2 squares
Destroyers occupy 0 squares
Battleships occupy 5 squares
Carriers occupy 1 square
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Note that no information about the exact position of any ship in that region is report. There is also no information about how many of each ship --only how many squares are occupied. We do not know if 2 squares occupied by submarines is one submarine entirely inside the region, or 2 submarines with one square in the region and one square outside of the region.

Change #3 - Play against computer.

• When the game starts, it should prompt the user for whether each of Player A and/or Player B is a human player or to be played by the computer (Note that any combination is valid: human vs human, human vs computer, computer vs human, or computer vs computer).

• Your computer play does NOT need to be very smart --you are not expected to develop any sophisticated AI. Your computer player can just place all of its ships in pre-specified or random locations (as long as they are on the board) and can fire in a simple pattern (iterate through all squares in order) or randomly. However, if you want to make a fancier computer player see "extra credit" at the end of this document.

• When the computer plays its turn, no board state should be displayed and no prompts should be printed.
  The game should only print the outcome of the action (e.g., Player B hit your submarine at D4!).

• If the computer plays a special action, the game should state "Player B used a special action" but not state which one nor any details of where or its outcome. Your computer player is not required to use special actions, but may do so if it wants.

Extra Credit

• We note there are two distinct (and very different) extra credit opportunities on this homework. One is to do phase 1's goal on a schedule specified in that overview. The other (described here) is to add extra features, and is due much later in the semester.

• The above "game" is a nice activity in exploring changes to software requirements/design, but a pretty terrible game (trying to play battleship with two people using one computer, and trying not to accidentally see something you should not does not really work well).

Important

Note that the extra credit is NOT due with the assignment, but rather may be done after the deadline. You may turn in any extra credit by April 4/15
Please notify your project TA if/when you submit this extra credit

• We provide you with 3 opportunities for extra credit. You may do any combination of these (one, two, or three of them). These are rather open-ended, so the number of points gained will be decided based on the quality of the work.

  1. Graphical User Interface.
     • Replace the text-based interface with something graphical. A more polished, more intuitive UI will gain more points here.
     • Note that this may be any kind of UI: Desktop, Web, or Mobile.
  2. Networked game.
     • Make the game so that the two players can be on different computers.
     • You can explore a variety of features in this area from simply using game play, but across a network, to adding any number of features: user accounts/authentication, match making, etc.
  3. Intelligent computer play.
     • Instead of just having the computer fire randomly, write an intelligent AI.
     • This could be small/simple improvements (making use of special moves, using information from the outcome of each shot to inform your next decisions) for a few points, or it could be something very clever and sophisticated for many.

• For any of these, what you add, how you add it, and anything else you want to improve about the game is up to you!