Group A: Chutes and Ladders
reviewed by Group Z
Summary:
After leading the group through our diagrams step by step, pointing out features and the process of the game, Group Z's main interest in our game was the Client/Server chat. Our goal for the chat feature of the game is to have a separate chat server which can easily echo the text entered into the chat from the server to all the clients rather than having the main server deal with handling both the chat and other messages sent from the client to the server. Our reviewers suggested the latter. This issue brings up the idea of multithreading on our group's behalf. We decided that a separate chat server would be optimal for our game but reserved the idea in case of failure to multithread. Another issue brought up from the reviewers was the spinner. They suggested to include an animated spinner that generates a random number. Our first thought on that idea was to create a basic spinner to conserve time and later revisit that issue if time permitted. Our group later realized that an animated spinner would bring more life to our program and decided to design it rather than the basic spinner. The data type in which to store the positions of the players was also brought up. Our design included a Hash Set to store player positions because its features seemed optimal for our game despite it being unknown territory for us. Group Z suggested that an array or linked list would be easier to code. However, our goal is to store our player positions in a Hash Set, and we decided as a backup plan to use a linked list. Lastly, the movement of pieces around the board was an issue brought up by the reviewers. Our group's initial goal was make the player representation easier to see and code by creating a grid on top of the game board and color in sections, one color designated for each player, in order to save time. Group Z suggested actual game pieces used as jpeg files to represent the players would bring a better visual aspect to our game. However this brought up a complication in whcih several players could be positioned on the same spot. An idea of shrinking the pictures to fit in the spot was discussed and our final decision on that topic is still pending.