CAB201 Assignment 1b-Space Race Solution

INTRODUCTION TO PART B
Do not start on the GUI implementation if your Console implementation cannot play at least 1 game of Space Race correctly or at least appears to play the game correctly.
Both implementations of the game must work correctly for you to gain full marks. The GUI implementation will not involve making any changes to either the Game Logic Class or the Object Classes.
This specification and its associated documents are fairly detail and do not expect to understand or remember all that is contained in them in a single read .

THE TASK FOR PART B
Having implemented the Console version of the game, you will now implement the GUI version of the same game. It is required that you use Windows Form, rather than any other GUI technologies such as WPF, XNA, or web pages. This means that Visual Studio for Mac and MonoDevelop will likely be insufficient – you will need to ensure that you have access to Visual Studio for Windows to do this assignment.
You will implement the GUI version as part of the GUI Class within the same VS2017 solution as the Console version.
Remember you are not to develop a GUI of your own design. Though you are not expected to position the various controls in the location and size correct to the last pixel, your layout should look like the layout in the Fig 3 in the document Screenshots of GUI.





Building GUI Implementation
Open the Solution Explorer, and right-click on the GUI Class project and select Set as StartUp Project.
If you want to run the Console version again, then do the same to the Console Class project.
The GUI Class contains the form, SpaceRaceForm.cs, which is to be used to display GUI version of the game. The form is at an early stage, you can Start (run) the form to see a blank form apart from one button is the lower right-hand corner which can be clicked to close the form.
Details of the form: The form size is set to 900 x 700 pixels. This is a good size for using Design View to layout the form and shouldn’t be changed. The form’s precise size will be altered by program code that I’ve already written, so that each of the board’s squares is displayed with the same size.
The form contains two controls so far, see Fig 1 in Screenshots of GUI. Both controls are essential.
• A SplitContainer which divides the form into two panels: one on the left, for the board; and one on the right, for all the other controls. You can’t really see the SplitContainer, just its two panels. The SplitContainer is docked in its parent container, the form, so that its panels occupy the whole of the form, i.e. its Dock property = Fill. (This is the default behaviour when you add a SplitContainer to a form, so you shouldn’t have to do anything. But if you accidentally change this property, your form will look a mess.) This control is complete. Its position on the form is correct. Do not move it.
• The Exit button. It has an event-handler that terminates the game. This control is complete.

Now add a TableLayoutPanel to the left-hand panel. Refer to the document Creating a
TableLayoutPanel. When completed, your form should look like Fig 2 in Screenshots of GUI. Do not proceed further until you have placed the TableLayoutPanel correctly on your form.
Look at Fig 3, where there are now three Labels, a ComboBox, a DataGridView , three Buttons, a GroupBox containing two RadioButtons in the right-hand panel
• The two larger Labels, Space Race and Players, are 16pt. All three labels are bold.

• The additional two Buttons, Game Reset and Roll Dice, need to be given reasonable names, so that you can easily refer to them in your code later, rather than default names likes button1, etc. Suggest looking at the (Name) property of the Exit button.

• The ComboBox, beside the Number of Players Label, needs the following properties set:

o Size: 35, 21 is recommended
o Items: left click the value (Collection), left click the greyed box to the right which will open the String Editor. Enter the values 2, through to 6, one per line and click OK.
o Text: 6 (This will ensure that the ComboBox will initially display this value, otherwise it will be blank.)
o Now run your Form, only the controls that you have added in the right-hand panel will be visible and you should be able to select anyone of the five values from your ComboBox.

• From the Data group in the Toolbox, select DataGridView and place it roughly below the Players label, do not be concern if the control extends beyond the right-hand edge of the Form, that will be fixed later.

• Now refer to the document, Setting up a DataGridView, noting that the first two screenshots are from an older assignment so there will be some small difference from what you will see initially. When finished run your form and it will look like the last screenshot in the Setting up a DataGridView document.

• From the Container group, place a GroupBox below the DataGridView. Change its Text property to Single Step? and set its Enabled property to False and its BackColor to ControlDark.

• From the Toolbox now add two RadioButtons to the GroupBox, side-by-side with the text Yes and No respectively, as well as renaming each radio button.


• This GroupBox will be disabled until advised later in this specification. When completed, your form, in Design View, should look like Fig 3 in Screenshots of GUI.


Adding code to the Space Race Form
No code from any of the other classes should be copied in the Space Race Form.
Before writing any code in SpaceRaceForm.cs, search for the word “Uncomment”, which occurs in five places and follow the instruction that occur given there. In one place, the instruction in the code say to delete a line, as well as doing the uncommenting. Make sure that this class still compiles without error.
The constructor of SpaceRaceForm consists of a series of methods calls, currently each call is commented out. You can now uncomment the first three calls, Board.SetUpBoard(),
ResizeGUIGameBoard() and SetUpGUIGameBoard(). Compile (Build) the GUI Class and then run.
If successfully, the board will be displayed with all 56 squares coloured Slate Grey colour and a number in the bottom right-hand corner of each square, though the numbering will appear to be in some random pattern, Screenshots of GUI, Fig 4.
Trace the call to SetUpGUIGameBoard then through a number of method calls to the method MapSquareNumToScreenRowAndColumn which maps an individual square’s number to the correct row and column position on the TableLayoutPanel. The top left corner of the TableLayoutPanel is position (0,0) and the bottom right corner is (6, 7).
Whereas the board “Start” square is to be in the bottom left corner and the “Finish” square in the top right corner, with numbering going left-to right and then right-to-left on alternate rows. Implement code within the method to achieve this correct mapping. Do not proceed further until the board is displayed with squares in the correct sequence as per Screenshots of GUI, Fig 5.
The SquareControl class is used to display a square on the GUI game board. Each square on the board, has a Square object and its corresponding SquareControl object. A SquareControl object is a PictureBox object which will enable each square to contain a picture as well as displaying a player’s token when the player is on that square. It is not necessary that you fully understand this class. This class is complete.

Uncomment the last line on the constructor method in SquareControl class, recompile and the board should be displayed with appropriate images in each square as per Screenshots of GUI, Fig 6.
Now uncomment the calls to SetUpPlayersDataGridView() and DetermineNumberOfPlayers() in the constructor of SpaceRaceForm. The body of DetermineNumberOfPlayers() needs to be implemented. A suggested algorithm is provided.
One difference between the GUI implementation and the Console implementation is that for the GUI each player has a token colour (playersTokenColour). In SetUpPlayers in the Game Logic Class add a line to set each player’s playersTokenColour to the corresponding colour in the array playerTokensColours of SpaceRaceGame.
Now uncomment the call to SpaceRaceGame.SetUpPlayers(), recompile and run the form, the board will look like Fig 7 of Screenshots of GUI.
The method UpdatePlayersGuiLocations of SpaceRaceForm needs to be completed along with the method GetSquareNumberOfPlayer. Once done uncomment the call to PrepareToPlayGame().
The method PrepareToPlayGame() contains a single statement which is sufficient for completing the look of the GUI game board for the start of a game. Recompile and run the form. Do not proceed until your form looks like Fig 8 of Screenshots of GUI.
Create an event handler for the Roll dice button which will call a method to “play a round”.
Remember to call UpdatePlayersGuiLocations to “remove the players’ tokens” before calling
PlayOneRound of SpaceRaceGame and once the round is completed, call UpdatePlayersGuiLocations to “add the players’ tokens” and then calling
UpdatePlayersDataGridView() to ensure that the players’ information within the DataGridView is updated accordingly.
Once you have written “play a round” method, run your form and play one round of the game, noting the position of the six tokens and amount of fuel for each.
Now you should make the Console Class the “StartUp Project” and play one round to ensure that the code of GUI implementation has not affected the Console implementation and that the six tokens end at the same position and fuel after one round as in the GUI.

Finer details of the Space Race Controls
(a) The Reset button is disabled at the start of a game. It will be enabled at the end of any round including when the game is finished. This means at the end of any round, if the user clicks the Reset button the players’ tokens return to the Start square and a new game is ready to be played.

(b) The Exit button is enabled at the start of a game, disabled during any round and enabled at the start of any round.

(c) The Players DataGridView is enabled at the start of the game to allow the user to enter other values for the players’ names to replace the default names. As the other columns are read-only, the user is unable to change those values. The DataGridView
is disabled as soon as the Roll dice button is clicked to play the first round. It remains disabled until a new game is commenced.

(d) The ComboBox is enabled at the start of a game. If the user selects any number of players, the ComboBox is disabled and the correct number of tokens for the newly selected number of players appear on the Start square. If the user decides not to change the number of players, the ComboBox will be disabled as soon as the Roll dice button is clicked to play the first round. In either case the ComboBox will remain disabled until a new game is commenced.

Note that the Players DataGridView will still show all six players after the user selects a smaller number of players, but during the game only the values for the selected number of players will be updated. See Fig 11 & 12 of Screenshots of GUI

(e) The Roll dice button is enabled at the start of any round and disabled during a round of play as well as being disabled when the game is finished. It will be enabled after the Reset button is clicked.

(f) The user can resize the game by dragging on its borders. (Don’t worry if doing this causes some of the square numbers to display strangely.) To support this, most controls in the right-hand panel should have default set of values for their Anchor property, which is:
Anchor = Top, Left

So that the three buttons stay in the bottom right corner, each should have: Anchor = Bottom, Right

(g) When the game finishes, a MessageBox will show which players have finished the game, similar to Console version. There is no need to report the details of all players at the end of the game as this is provided by the DataGridView. See Fig 9 & 10 of Screenshots of GUI.

(h) You should now ensure that your GUI version can play multiple games according to the specification so far. Always checking that the Console version still plays correctly. Do not proceed if both implementations are not correct.

(i) At the start of the GUI version, now make the GroupBox enabled and the Roll dice button disabled. So, at the start of a game the user chooses between Single Step mode or not. In Single Step mode only one player’s token moves each time the Roll dice button is clicked, so six clicks would be required to complete a single round for a six-player game. If user selects the No radio button all tokens will move on a click of the Roll dice button. See Figs 13 – 16 of Screenshots of GUI for two rounds of Single Step mode.

(j) Do not use the default event handler for either radio button (CheckedChanged) but use Click instead.

(k) Once either radio button has been clicked, the GroupBox is disabled and the Roll dice button is enabled. At this stage the ComboBox and DataGridView controls are still enabled. The GroupBox will remain disabled until a new game is commenced.
This change in the specification will require you to add additional methods or substantial redesign one or more existing methods in both the SpaceRaceForm as well as in the SpaceRaceGame.
One example of an additional method is as follows: in SpaceRaceForm, do not change the method UpdatePlayersGuiLocations(…) but rather add another method like it which would “update a single player’s location”. This new method would need to be passed which player in addition to the TypeOfGuiUpdate to occur. This will enable the board to be updated after a token is moved in Single Step mode.
Ensure that any change made to the SpaceRaceGame does not adversely affect the Console Version from playing multiple games successfully.


Students are reminded of the following MOPP statement C/5.3.7 which I have paraphrased as follows:
Final Comment