During the Apprentice Stage (practical exercises in weeks 3, 4, 6, & 7) most of the required classes were completed and tested. During the Master Stage, these classes will be integrated and new classes will be added to produce a fully automated computer simulation of a multiplayer game of Battleships.
Final Product: an object-oriented C++ program that implements a multiplayer computer simulation of Battleships as described below.
See image. See UML Diagram.
In the UML class diagram on the previous page, plain (white) classes are those that have already been implemented during the Apprentice stage; the green and gold classes will be completed during the Master stage as described below (gold represents the opportunity for a high distinction grade).
Classes shown in gray could be implemented during later practical exercises and are not part of the final product to be submitted for assessment; they are shown only for the purposes of comparison and contrast when discussing the design and functionality of the classes that are to be implemented.
Local is an abstract class that defines the responsibility of a local Battleships player. It is abstract because it does not define all of the pure virtual methods of the pure abstract Player base class. A Local player is either a Human with a direct interface to the computer (e.g. keyboard and mouse) or a Computer algorithm running on the computer that is managing the Game. By contrast, a Remote player represents a Player entity that interfaces with the computer that is managing the Game via the internet (or some other peer-to-peer communications protocol).
The Local player has a name, a board, and a fleet of ships. It also manages an array of boards for each of its opponents; on these boards, the results of all attacks are recorded (during the call to setResult). The array of boards is managed using the Standard Template Library map container. The Blackboard directory for the semester assignment includes an example program
example_map.cpp
that demonstrates the use of the map class.
The Local player also maintains a pointer to a PlaceFleet instance that defines how the fleet of Ships is placed on myBoard. In a full implementation of the Battleships game, a Human user may manually choose where the Ships are placed on the Board. This behaviour could be implemented by the ManualFleet class, which inherits the PlaceFleet abstract base class and implements the getPlace method. In contrast, the Computer player would always use the RandomFleet class that was implemented in Week 6. The encapsulation of the ship placement algorithm using a family of classes (with an abstract base class) is known as the “Strategy” or “Policy” design pattern.
For this assignment, only the RandomFleet strategy is required. The Local player takes ownership of the PlaceFleet instance and should destroy this resource when needed.
The methods of the Local player are used as follows:
Derived classes that inherit the Local class will implement the remainder of the Player methods.
The Novice class is a concrete class that represents a novice game-playing algorithm. It is concrete because it implements the last of the pure virtual methods of the pure abstract Player base class.
The getAttack method should simply return an Attack instance with the name of a randomly selected opponent and a valid board Coordinate.
The Expert class is a concrete class that represents an expert game-playing algorithm. It should implement the getAttack method using a strategy that is better than simply random.
You must write a program that demonstrates the proper initialization, execution, and completion of a game of Battleships by running a fully automated simulation that includes three Novice players, each with a 12x16 board. Your program should run the simulated game 1000 times and count the number of times that each of the three players loses (i.e. count the number of times each player’s fleet is destroyed). To confirm that each Novice player loses approximately 1 in 3 games, the number of losses should be reported at the end of the program; e.g.
Player A lost 318 times
Player B lost 340 times
Player C lost 342 times
(The numbers will be different each time the program is run.)
For a High Distinction grade, your program should also support the option to substitute one of the Novice players with an Expert. The simulation should clearly demonstrate that the Expert player loses significantly fewer games than the Novice opponents.