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Homework 6 Ideas
Homework 6 asks you to extend the virtual world in some
interesting way. The only hard requirement is that you must add at
least one new class to the system. As I said, you will be graded on
the quality and scope of your extension, and to a much lesser extent
on originality. Thus, if you only slightly adapt an existing class
(e.g., implement a homework tracker that looks like a GPS tracker),
you will not score high on the scope axis. There are two approaches
that you can take: implement one big extension that has a large scope,
or many many small extensions that perhaps by themselves do not add a
lot on their own, but when put together add up to a lot of new
functionality.
In case you are stuck coming up with ideas, here are things that
people have implemented in the past, things that might be cool to
have, and things that I think lead to insights into how to program
games in general. They are annotated with how difficult I believe
the extension is to implement. (Of course, your mileage may vary, so
don't take that too seriously.) I will add more ideas when I think
of them.
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A teleporter, either fixed (as in a portal or a vortex or whatnot)
or portable [Easy].
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Add a description to places that gets printed out when you move into
a place or if you type "look" explicitly [Easy].
Have the description appear only the first time you enter a room (or
whenever you type "look" explicitly) [Medium].
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Add a description to things and a new verb "examine" that prints
that description [Medium].
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Implement a fighting system so you can defend yourself from trolls
and the likes [Medium to hard]. Can you make arbitrary autonomous persons fight trolls
too? [Medium to hard]
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Figure out a way to layer a plotline over the simulation, such as a
sequence of events that occur according to a preordained plot,
perhaps triggered by player actions. For instance, perhaps the
students organize a rebellion against the authorities of the
university, and the player can choose to participate in the
unfolding of events, events that will happen whether the player
decides to participate or not; the player's actions may affect the
development of events [Very hard].
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Implement a form of person that acts according to a script instead
of acting randomly. For instance, a guard to does a round of West
Village H according to a fixed pattern of visiting
rooms [Hard].
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Implement magical places that randomly moves around, connecting and
disconnecting from other rooms in the process [Medium].
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