1. Assignment guidance
You will produce, in C, a program which fits the following specification:
Maze Game
Usage: ./maze <mazefile path>
You are creating a basic game, where players navigate through a maze.
The maze will be loaded from a file, the filename for which is passed as a command line argument.
Mazes are made up of four characters:
Character Purpose
‘#’ A wall which the player cannot move across
‘ ‘ (a space) A path which the player can move across
‘S’ The place where the player starts the maze
‘E’ The place where the player exits the maze
A maze has a height and a width, with a maximum of 100 and a minimum of 5.
The height and width do not have to be equal – as long as both are within the accepted range.
Within a maze, each ‘row’ and ‘column’ should be the same length – the maze should be a
rectangle.
When the game loads, the player will start at the starting point ‘S’ and can move through the maze
using WASD movement:
Note: Each input will be separated with a newline character – this is not keypress triggered.
Key Direction
W/w Up
A/a Left
S/s Down
D/d Right
The player can move freely through path spaces (‘ ‘) but cannot move through walls or off the edge
of the map. Some helpful prompt should be provided if this is attempted.
The map should not be shown to the player every time they make a move, but they can enter ‘M’/’m’
to view an image of the map, with their current location shown by an ‘X’.
When the user reaches the exit point ‘E’, the game is over and will close. The player should be
given some message stating that they have won. There is no ‘lose’ condition.
Mazefile specification
A valid maze:
- Has a single starting point ‘S’
- Has a single exit point ‘E’
- Contains only the start and exit characters, spaces (‘ ‘), walls (‘#’) and newline (‘
’)
characters
- Has every row the same length
- Has every column the same height
- Has a maximum width and height of 100
- Has a minimum width and height of 5
- Does not require every row and column to start or end with a ‘#’
- May have a trailing newline at the end of the file (one empty row containing only ‘
’)
A selection of valid mazes are provided in your starting repository – you should ensure that your
code accepts all of these mazes.
Note that file extension is not important – there is no requirement for a mazefile to be stored as a .txt
file provided that the contents of the file are valid.
Standard Outputs
To allow some automatic testing of your functionality, we require some of your outputs to have a
specific format. To prevent you from being overly restricted, this will only be the final returned
value of your code rather than any print statements.
Return Codes
Scenario Value to be returned by your executable
Successful running 0
Argument error 1
File error 2
Invalid maze 3
Any other non-successful exit
Note: it is unlikely that you will need to use
this code
100
Maze Printing Function
The maze printing function (‘M’/’m’) must output the maze in the following way:
- No additional spaces added
- Newline before the first row is printed
- Newline after the final row
- If the player’s current position overlaps with the starting point, this should display ‘X’ rather
than ‘S’
The code required to do this is provided in the template as print_maze() and may be used without
referencing me.
Additional Challenge Task – Maze Generator
This is an optional additional task which will involve researching and developing a more
complex piece of code – you do not need to complete this section to achieve a good grade.
This task may take longer than the recommended time given above – I recommend only
attempting any part of it if you found the original task trivial to complete.
In addition to allowing users to solve mazes, you will create an additional program `mazegen`
which allows users to generate a valid and solvable maze with the specified width and height, to be
saved in ‘filename’.
For example:
./mazeGen maze4.txt 20 45
Will save a maze which is 20 x 45 into ‘maze4.txt’, creating that file if it does not already exist.
Valid maze means that it fits the rules given above, as well as being solvable (there is at least one
solution to the maze- it is possible to start at S and exit at E).
There are some existing algorithms which can create mazes, and you should experiment with using
these to produce ‘quality’ mazes which are not trivial to solve, and present some challenge to the
player. You should document your process of developing the maze creation algorithm, as this will
form a part of the assessment.
It is recommended that you keep a log including some maze files generated by each iteration, what
you intend to change for the next iteration based on these maze files, and just some general
comments about what you think was good or bad about this particular solution.
Some things to consider for each iteration are:
- Did the program produce a variety of designs of maze?
- Did the program produce only valid mazes?
- How did the program perform with larger dimensions (100 x 100 for example)
- What did the program do particularly well?
o Can you identify what part of the code caused this?
- What did the program do particularly poorly?
o Can you identify what part of the code caused this?
- What will you try next time?
For this task, you will present your maze generation program to a member of the module team
(either in person or through video) and discuss:
- How your program works
- How you iteratively developed it
- The limitations of your solution
- Any improvements you would like to make to it in future
A list of questions will be provided 1 week before presentations/videos are to be completed.
2. Assessment tasks
Produce the C code for a program which solves the tasks detailed above.
You should ensure that your code is:
- Structured sensibly
- Modular
- Well-documented
- Defensive
- Working as intended
You can use the code skeleton you produced in Assignment 1, or a basic skeleton is provided via
GitHub Classrooms.
You can use any number of additional header and C files, and a basic makefile has been provided
in the original repository to allow compilation – you may edit or replace this if preferred.
You may not use any non-standard C libraries except from unit testing libraries.
You should also use your test script and data from assignment 1 to help you to produce defensive
and robust code which fits the specification.
If you did not create a test script, or your test script does not work, then you can manually test your
code.
As the test script is not assessed for this work, you may also share your test script with others
although you must not share any of your c code.
Extension Task
Produce a program able to procedurally generate valid, solvable mazes.
3. General guidance and study support
You should refer to the previous lab exercises and lecture notes to support you. The resources from
COMP1711 Procedural Programming may also be useful as these cover the majority of the
programming content needed.
4. Assessment criteria and marking process
A full breakdown of the assessment criteria can be found in section 8.
Your code will be tested with a number of different maze files and user inputs containing errors- the
exact nature of these errors will not be told to you before marking, so ensure that you validate a
wide range of potential user errors. You should use the testscript which you developed for
Assignment 1 to check your code.
Your code will be manually checked for code quality.
If you complete the additional challenge task, you will submit your code for plagiarism checking but
will present your code to a member of module staff for assessment.
5. Presentation and referencing
If you need to reference any resources use a simple comment, for example:
// This test is adapted from an example provided on: https://byby.dev/bash-exit-codes
You should not be directly copying any code from external resources, even with a reference.
If you are referencing a Generative AI model, you must provide the full conversation.
In ChatGPT, you can generate a link to the full conversation:
And provide the reference as follows:
// Lines 1 – 7 were adapted from code provided by the following conversation
with chatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/share/c356221d-fb88-4970-b39e-d00c87ae1e0b
In Copilot, you will need to export the conversation as a text file:
Save this with a filename including the date and 2-3 word summary of what the conversation was
about (’11-03 inputs in C.txt’) and ensure this is submitted with your work.
You can reference this in your code:
// Lines 1 – 7 were adapted from code provided by the CoPilot conversation
recorded in ’11-03 inputs in C.txt’
If you are using a different Generative AI model, these instructions may differ – you must still
provide a link to or copy of the full conversation and reference in the same manner above.
Use of Generative AI in this Assessment
This assessment is rated ‘amber’ according to the university guidelines around generative AI. This
means that you can use genAI models such as ChatGPT or CoPilot to explain concepts which may
be useful in this assessment, but you must not ask it to write your code for you nor give it any
part of my specification.
The following link is an example of what I would consider ‘reasonable use’ of chatGPT for this
assessment:
https://chat.openai.com/share/c356221d-fb88-4970-b39e-d00c87ae1e0b
6. Submission requirements
Submit your source code via Gradescope. There is a separate submission point for the extension
work.
Ensure that:
- Any .c or .h files are not inside a subdirectory
- The makefile is not inside a subdirectory
- Your executables are named: maze and mazegen
- You have followed the return code instructions above
- Your code compiles on Linux
You will receive some instant feedback which should confirm that your upload is in the correct
format and is using the correct return values – please ensure you correct any failing tests.
Note: passing these tests is not a guarantee that your code will gain full marks from the
autograder – just that it is the correct format/returns for the grader to run.
7. Academic misconduct and plagiarism
Leeds students are part of an academic community that shares ideas and develops new ones.
You need to learn how to work with others, how to interpret and present other people's ideas, and how to
produce your own independent academic work. It is essential that you can distinguish between other
people's work and your own, and correctly acknowledge other people's work.
All students new to the University are expected to complete an online Academic Integrity tutorial and test,
and all Leeds students should ensure that they are aware of the principles of Academic integrity.
When you submit work for assessment it is expected that it will meet the University’s academic integrity
standards.
If you do not understand what these standards are, or how they apply to your work, then please ask the
module teaching staff for further guidance.
By submitting this assignment, you are confirming that the work is a true expression of your own work and
ideas and that you have given credit to others where their work has contributed to yours.
8. Assessment/ marking criteria grid
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