CS170: Programming for the World Around Us - Interactive Story Telling (100 Points)
Assignment Goals
The goals of this assignment are:- To use dictionary data structure to tell a choose-your-own adventure style story
The Assignment
What to Do
In this lab, you will use HashMaps to tell a dynamic story.
The Story
Create a dict called story that define the different places you can go in your story.
Each key in the story dictionary should be a place, like a room in your story. The value should be another dictionary, for example:
story = {}
story['start'] = {} # the starting room is also a dictionary! it will contain the story narrative and your reader's choices. do this for all the places you can go
Within this dictionary, have a key called story whose value is a narration of your story upon entering that location:
story['start']['narrative'] = "It was a dark and stormy night..."
Now, add another key to story['start'] called next that is a list. In this list, add the names of the rooms you can go to next.
Telling the Story
Set the starting room to start. Print story[room]['narrative'] to the screen, as well as story[room]['next'] so that the user knows where they can go next. Input the next room until it is equal to one of the choices in story[room]['next'], and repeat until the story is done! You can check if the choice the user entered is in the dictionary using this if statement: if nextroom in story[room]['next'], where nextroom is what the user inputs as part of the loop to ask for the next destination.
Here is an example dictionary value:
| room | narrative | moves |
|---|---|---|
| start | This is the starting room! | “classroom”, “courtyard” |
| classroom | I am in a classroom! | “start”, “courtyard”, “end” |
| courtyard | Welcome to the courtyard! | “start”, “classroom”, “end” |
| end | The end! |
You should have at least 5 possible rooms, and at least 3 of those rooms should have a choice of at least 2 possible next locations.
Ending the Story
You can decide how to end the story. One idea is to add another key to the story dictionary called end which is True if this ends the story and False otherwise. Another way is to have moves be an empty list for ending rooms, and check if the length of the list is 0 to end the loop. You get to decide!
What happens if you call story[room] with a room that doesn’t exist in your program? How can you ensure that the user keeps entering a room until they enter a valid one? Hint: you can check if a string is in a list by asking if `newroom in story[room][‘moves’] - and loop while this is false!
In your README, include a graph (either a drawing or in text is fine!) that shows the progression of your rooms from one to the next.
Multiple Endings
You’ll want each room in your story to have a unique key (i.e., don’t have two places called forest - call them forest1 and forest2 instead). But, you might have multiple endings by having places called end1, end2, and end3. You could have your while loop terminate when the room begins with the word end. To do this, your while loop might look like this:
while !room.startswith("end"):
Getting Started Template
Here is a template to help you begin:
story = {}
story['start'] = {}
story['start']['narrative'] = "It was a dark and stormy night..."
story['start']['next'] = ['forest', 'diner']
room = 'start'
print(story[room]['narrative'])
print("Where to next? {}".format(story[room]['next']))
Once you put this into a loop, you’ll notice that your last room doesn’t print out. That’s because the loop terminates when your room equals the ending room (without printing the story for that room in the loop!). Copy your print statement to just below the loop so that it executes one last time on the last room of your story.
Extra Credit (Up to 15%): Best Story Competition
Creativity is encouraged, but not required for a grade! Let me know in your documentation if you’d like to demo your story to the class - I hope you do! You will receive 7.5% extra credit for entering your submission, and the class will vote on their favorite story (the winner will receive an additional 7.5% extra credit).
Extra Credit (10%): Conditional Rooms
Modify your program to have conditionals, in which your rooms print certain things depending on whether other conditions have been met. For example, if you reach one room after visiting another, print something different in your story.
What to Turn In
When you’re done, write a README for your project, and save all your files, before exporting your project to ZIP. In your README, answer any bolded questions presented on this page. In addition, write a few paragraphs describing what you did, how you did it, and how to use your program. If your program requires the user to type something in, describe that here. If you wrote functions to help solve your problem, what are they, and what do they do? Imagine that you are giving your program to another student in the class, and you want to explain to them how to use it. What would you tell them? Imagine also that another student had given you the functions that you wrote for your program: what would you have wished that you knew about how to call those functions?
Submission
In your submission, please include answers to any questions asked on the assignment page, as well as the questions listed below, in your README file. If you wrote code as part of this assignment, please describe your design, approach, and implementation in a separate document prepared using a word processor or typesetting program such as LaTeX. This document should include specific instructions on how to build and run your code, and a description of each code module or function that you created suitable for re-use by a colleague. In your README, please include answers to the following questions:- Describe what you did, how you did it, what challenges you encountered, and how you solved them.
- Please answer any questions found throughout the narrative of this assignment.
- If collaboration with a buddy was permitted, did you work with a buddy on this assignment? If so, who? If not, do you certify that this submission represents your own original work?
- Please identify any and all portions of your submission that were not originally written by you (for example, code originally written by your buddy, or anything taken or adapted from a non-classroom resource). It is always OK to use your textbook and instructor notes; however, you are certifying that any portions not designated as coming from an outside person or source are your own original work.
- Approximately how many hours it took you to finish this assignment (I will not judge you for this at all...I am simply using it to gauge if the assignments are too easy or hard)?
- Your overall impression of the assignment. Did you love it, hate it, or were you neutral? One word answers are fine, but if you have any suggestions for the future let me know.
- Using the grading specifications on this page, discuss briefly the grade you would give yourself and why. Discuss each item in the grading specification.
- Any other concerns that you have. For instance, if you have a bug that you were unable to solve but you made progress, write that here. The more you articulate the problem the more partial credit you will receive (it is fine to leave this blank).
Assignment Rubric
| Description | Pre-Emerging (< 50%) | Beginning (50%) | Progressing (85%) | Proficient (100%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Algorithm Implementation (60%) | The algorithm fails on the test inputs due to major issues, or the program fails to compile and/or run | The algorithm fails on the test inputs due to one or more minor issues | The algorithm is implemented to solve the problem correctly according to given test inputs, but would fail if executed in a general case due to a minor issue or omission in the algorithm design or implementation | A reasonable algorithm is implemented to solve the problem which correctly solves the problem according to the given test inputs, and would be reasonably expected to solve the problem in the general case |
| Code Quality and Documentation (30%) | Code commenting and structure are absent, or code structure departs significantly from best practice, and/or the code departs significantly from the style guide | Code commenting and structure is limited in ways that reduce the readability of the program, and/or there are minor departures from the style guide | Code documentation is present that re-states the explicit code definitions, and/or code is written that mostly adheres to the style guide | Code is documented at non-trivial points in a manner that enhances the readability of the program, and code is written according to the style guide |
| Writeup and Submission (10%) | An incomplete submission is provided, or the README file submitted is blank | The program is submitted, but not according to the directions in one or more ways (for example, because it is lacking a readme writeup or missing answers to written questions) | The program is submitted according to the directions with a minor omission or correction needed, including a readme writeup describing the solution and answering nearly all questions posed in the instructions | The program is submitted according to the directions, including a readme writeup describing the solution and answering all questions posed in the instructions |
Please refer to the Style Guide for code quality examples and guidelines.