Laboratory in Software Engineering
Spring 2002
Final Project Overview: Antichess

Handout F1

Quick links:

Documenting a Software System

Contents:

Overview
Requirements
Grading and Schedule

Overview

This handout describes one of the two final project choices you have this term, Antichess. For information on Gizmoball, the other project, refer to handout F0.

Your final project is to design, document, build, and test a program that plays Antichess. Antichess is a variant of chess in which the goal is to lose all of your pieces (except your king) or force your opponent to checkmate you. Certain simplifications are made to the rules of chess, and players must capture a piece if they can. Your group's version of Antichess will be timed; each player will have a limit on the amount of total processing time used to decide all of its moves.

Any team which meets all of the requirements for its Antichess application will be permitted to enter the design contest and/or the single elimination AI Antichess tournament. The tournament and contest are optional, and will not affect your grade in any way. Nominal prizes will be given to the winners.

Requirements

Because this project is in part a design exercise, the assignment specifies what the user should be able to do and leaves it up to you to figure out what modules and interfaces are appropriate. This section gives an overview of Antichess. A detailed specification will be handed out later this week. To enable automated testing, your implementation must support a standard file format (details will be provided), in addition to the loosely-specified user interfaces.

Your application must provide for at least the following functionality:

Human - Human Game: Two players playing Antichess against one another on the same computer.
Human - Computer Game: One player playing Antichess against the computer.
Saving Games: The ability for a user to save games to and load games from disk.
User Interface: Users will have an option of playing Antichess in a terminal or through a graphical user interface.

Grading and Schedule

You will work in teams of three or four. All members of a team will receive the same grade, except in unusual circumstances.

Stage	Due date (subject to change)	% of project grade	Graded on
Preliminary design	Thu. 4/18	10%	Have you identified the issues?
Weekly meetings with TA	Mon. 4/08-Fri. 5/10	5%	Did all of the team members participate constructively?
Preliminary Release	Wed. 4/30	25%	Is it a good design? Is the required functionality present?
Design Critique	Mon. 5/13	25%	Are the tradeoffs & alternatives thoroughly analyzed?
Implementation & test	Mon. 5/13	35%	Does it work? Have you demonstrated that it works?

As you can see, 60% of your grade depends on design. Please realize that the most important aspect of any large software endeavor is design. A good, well documented design will make the rest of a group's work faster, easier and more enjoyable.

Notes

Another document will be released later this week to give a more complete description of what will be required by your team.
Please email your respective TAs with your team's final project preference, whether Antichess or Gizmoball, by the end of this week (April 6).

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