b.Executive Summary

The Executive Summary:

The objective of the Software Design Project was to develop games with the use of MATLAB programming skills we have learned so far, problem-solving strategies, and our creative minds to design the games. This would be the introduction to Computer Science Engineering, in which programmers use these different sets of skills to develop something for the real-world programming.

To begin programming,  our team went through the list of games that were suggested to us because we wanted to choose a game we understood in order to translate it into code. We also wanted to choose a game in which other players will be able to understand how to play it without an explanation, a universal game. We settled on Connect Four and Hangman as our choice of games, with Connect Four being our extra credit opportunity. Our team wanted to see if we will be able to successfully incorporate Artificial Intelligence to make the game even more tough than a level 1 difficulty. We also ran into an issue of developing the game itself because we were unsure of how to let the computer know where a chip has been placed. As a team, we spent a lot of time figuring out how to go about developing the code of this game because we were unsure of how to incorporate the computer’s brain as well. Then we decided the best option was to have a hidden code that operates at the Artificial Intelligence. We also decided that Connect Four’s coding will consists of many loops. Before we did the official final testing of Connect Four, we made some last minute changes to the coding to the game to see if we could make the Artificial Intelligence more difficult. We were not conscious that if we made these changes, it may create an error and will not run the program. This is exactly what happened during the final testing and so we decided to use the coding of before the additional changes.

The coding of Hangman took less time to figure out as it did not need Artificial Intelligence or different levels of difficulty. We decided that the best option for the coding of this game as well would be a set of loops and if statements. Another issue we did run into with this game is if we should include the spaces between the words of choice. We soon figured out that we will include spacing between words, but we will not count those spaces towards the final points of the player. We decided to display the words as dashes on the screen when the player is guessing, with the spaces already filled out for the player so they do not have to worry about it getting a strike for something that is not their fault.

Our team decided that for extra credit, we would develop Artificial Intelligence for the fourth and last level of difficulty for the game Connect Four. The reason why we did this was to challenge our skills and to use our creative minds to figure out how to make an ever smarter Artificial Intelligence.