CIS 1951
Fall 2024

HW1: Text Adventure Game

Author: Anthony Li

Reviewers: Jordan Hochman, Yuying Fan

Please leave feedback by posting on Ed or contacting the course staff.

Required Software: macOS Ventura, Xcode 15

Deadline: Thursday, 9/19 @ 11:59 PM

Download Starter Code ↓ or clone from GitHub

Instructions

Write a text adventure game of your own design! We'll provide the UI -- you provide the story and gameplay.

What's a text adventure game?

In a text adventure game, you walk the player through an interactive story. Generally, you describe the scene and the plot, and the player types in commands to interact with the world, a bit like this (with player inputs bolded, italicized, and underlined):

A flash of light. You're awake. Dazed, you look around. You're in a dark cave, with an exit to the east. You have no idea how you got here. Only one thing is certain: you have to get out.

east

Still confused, you sprint towards the light. As you exit the cave, sunlight engulfs you. You're at the edge of a rural village. A villager rests at the side of the road.

talk

You approach the villager. "Hello, traveler," she says. "Do you know if it's possible to get from two arbitrary but particular locations via the road network? Let G be an arbitrary but particular graph representing the road network. All I know is that G is an undirected graph with no cycles, and has exactly one fewer road than the number of locations."

All of a sudden, it hits you.

You're trapped in a CIS 1600 homework assignment.

Text adventure games have been around for a while, with games like Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork available for decades. (You can even install zork on your computer using Homebrew.) Even more recent examples use AI to spice things up, like AI Dungeon. The possibilities are endless!

Specific Requirements

Your game should have:

  • At least 5 locations that must be traversed throughout the story
    • Locations must be reachable and appear in a playthrough
  • At least 2 possible endings
  • At least 1 item that can be picked up to affect gameplay
  • "north", "south", "east", and "west" commands to move between locations
  • A "help" command that lists all available commands

In addition, your code should contain:

  • At least 2 structs or enums to represent concepts such as locations or items
    • The adventure game struct itself does not count towards this requirement
  • At least 1 protocol that you define (see "Tips & Recipes" for examples)
    • One of your structs, classes, or enums must conform to the protocol
  • At least 1 non-trivial use of optionals
    • For "non-trivial", you should use optionals when the nil case is meaningful and can occur in a live playthrough. For example, parsing a number from a string would be "non-trivial", as the string may not be a valid number. However, using Array.first or similar on an array guaranteed to be non-empty would not be "non-trivial".
  • At least 1 use of arrays or dictionaries

You should also fill in the README with:

  • Answers to the questions in the README
  • Series of commands that lead to each ending
  • If you used a beta version, which version of Xcode you used

All state should be stored in the adventure game struct itself, and not in a global variable. To test this, try clicking the "Reset" button. Everything in the struct should be reset to its initial state.

Be sure to follow the code style guidelines - we won't be grading on style too harshly, but unreadable or messy code may be reflected in the style grade.

Don't feel the need to go overboard with your game in terms of creativity or complexity - we're more interested in how you'll apply the concepts we've learned in class. If you're stuck for ideas, you can always implement a classic like Colossal Cave Adventure or Zork.

Getting Started

Note: This assignment is very design-heavy. You may find it helpful to sketch out your game's map and architecture on paper before you start coding.

To get started, download and unzip the starter code, and open up hw1.playground. We've included a skeleton implementation to get you started. Feel free to rename the struct or add additional methods/properties as you see fit. You may notice some files in the "Sources" folder - those are used to implement the UI, and you shouldn't modify them.

You'll implement your game as a struct conforming to the AdventureGame protocol, which is defined as follows:

/// A type that represents an Adventure game's state, behavior, and gameplay.
public protocol AdventureGame {
    /// Creates a new game.
    init()

    /// Title to be displayed at the top of the game.
    var title: String { get }

    /// Runs at the start of every game.
    /// - Parameter context: The object you use to write output and end the game.
    mutating func start(context: AdventureGameContext)

    /// Runs when the user enters a line of input.
    /// - Parameters:
    ///   - input: The line the user typed.
    ///   - context: The object you use to write output and end the game.
    mutating func handle(input: String, context: AdventureGameContext)
}

We'll pass in an AdventureGameContext object which implements these 3 methods:

  • AdventureGameContext.write(_ attributedString: AttributedString): Adds the given line of rich text to the output.
  • AdventureGameContext.write(_ string: String): Adds the given line to the output, without rich text formatting.
  • AdventureGameContext.endGame(): Ends the game immediately.

Implement your game's logic in the start and handle methods, and keep track of its state through the struct's properties.

You can use these methods to write output to the game's UI. For example, you can write a line of text like this:

context.write("The forest beckons, dark and foreboding.")

To end the game, you can call context.endGame():

context.write("Game Over")
context.endGame()

Do not use print - your output will not appear in the correct place.

To run your game, run the entirety of the playground. You'll see your game running on the right side of the screen. If you don't see it, go to the menu bar and make sure Editor > Live View is checked.

Tips & Recipes

Structs & Protocols

In general, any game object would make a good candidate for a struct or protocol. For example:

  • Locations could have a name, description, list of exits, and associated contents like items or characters
  • Items could have a name, description, and associated actions like "use"
  • Characters could have a name, description, and dialogue

Parsing Input

let arguments = input.split(separator: " ")
if arguments.isEmpty {
    context.write("Please enter a command.")
    return
}

switch arguments[0] {
    case "help":
        helpCommand(context: context)
    case "north":
        // ...
    case "south":
        // ...
    case "east":
        // ...
    case "west":
        // ...
    default:
        context.write("Invalid command.")
}

Rich Text

var attributedString = AttributedString("The forest beckons, dark and foreboding.")
attributedString.swiftUI.foregroundColor = .green
context.write(attributedString)

Note that setting attributedString.foregroundColor (or similar properties) directly will not work - you must use the swiftUI property.

Grading

We will grade your homework based on the following rubric, out of 100 points:

  • Correctness (45 points)
    • 10 points: All locations present
    • 10 points: All endings present
    • 5 points: Item is implemented
    • 10 points: All required commands implemented
    • 10 points: All state is stored inside the game struct
  • Use of Language Constructs (40 points)
    • 10 points: Uses 2 structs
    • 10 points: Design decisions make sense for the assignment (e.g. structs are thoughtfully used instead of randomly created)
    • 5 points: Defines a protocol
    • 5 points: At least one struct, class, or enum conforms to the protocol
    • 5 points: Uses optionals
    • 5 points: Use of arrays or dictionaries
  • Style (15 points)
    • 5 points: Code is readable (i.e. indentation and naming of symbols is reasonable)
    • 5 points: README suitably answers questions about the game and requirements
    • 5 points: README contains series of commands that lead to each ending
  • Deductions
    • -20 points: Code doesn't compile

Extra Credit

+5 points: Add rich text to your game in a way that makes the formatting noticeably different (such as by changing the text color, font, or font size). For guidance, consult the Rich Text section above.

Submission

To submit your homework, zip (or tar.gz) both your playground and README and upload it. Make sure that you've given the requirements a quick read before you do so.

Submit on Gradescope →
Dates and times are displayed in EST.