Boggle Game SRS
Version 4.0
1. Introduction
1.1 Deliverables Overview
1. Boggle is a word game played with a 4x4 grid of lettered tiles. The tiles are randomly
arranged on the grid for each round of play. In each round, players have three minutes to
form as many words as possible from the grid. A word can be formed provided: (a)
successive letters are adjacent on the grid, and (b) no tile is used twice in the same word.
After each round, all players cross off any words found by more than one player. The
remaining (unique) words score points based on their length. The first player to get to a
target number of points wins the game.
2. An automated Boggle game is played on the computer and pits the computer against a
person.
3. The Boggle program will keep time, keep score, and play against the user.
4. The Boggle program will use a stored dictionary to find words, and it will also learn
words from the user during play.
1.2 Operating Environment
1. The Boggle program will run on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms.
2. The Boggle program will run using the Sun Java SDK 1.5 or higher.
2. Functional Requirements
2.1 Product Services
2.1.1 Games
1. Games are played between the program and the user (the players).
2. The user may start a new game at any time.
3. A game begins with the players each having 0 points.
4. A game ends when one or both players achieve the target score.
5. The user may set the target score to any value in the range 1 to 10,000.
6. The default target score is 100.
7. The target score may be changed at any time. When changed it will cause a new game
to begin.
8. The player with the highest total points when the game ends is the winner.
9. If the players are tied when the game ends, the game is a draw.
10. A new game begins when the program is started.
11. Games are played in a series of rounds of play.
2.1.2 Rounds of Play
1. When the program begins, or at the end of a game, beginning a round of play starts a
new game; otherwise beginning a round of play continues a game in progress.
2. A round of play begins when the user indicates it should by pressing a round-start
button.
3. The program will generate and display a new board as indicated below at the start of a
round of play.
4. The program will show a clock counting down from 3 minutes in one-second intervals.
5. The user will have until the clock runs out to type words into an editor window.
6. A space will separate words.
7. The case of letters will not be significant.
8. When the clock runs out, the program will beep and stop accepting words from the
user, ending the round.
2.1.3 End-Of-Round Scoring
1. When a round ends, the program will check the user's word list and generate its own
word list, displaying four lists of words:
• Words generated by both players;
• Words typed by the user that are not on the board;
• Words generated by the user alone;
• Words generated by the program alone.
2. Scores for the round are assigned as follows:
• Words generated by both players score 0;
• Words typed by the user that are not on the board score 0;
• Words generated by the user alone score points for the user;
• Words generated by the program alone score points for the computer.
3. Each unique word scores points, based on word length, as follows:
Length Score
4. The total points for the players will be computed at the end of each round.
5. The following scoring information will be displayed after each round:
• round number,
• scores for each player for the round,
• total scores for each player,
• if the game ends, the winner, or that the game was a draw.
2.1.4 Dictionaries
1. The program contains a dictionary of words that it will search the Boggle board for.
2. The dictionary will initially contain about 300 common, short words, read from a
dictionary file.
3. The program will add words typed by the user to its dictionary at the end of each
round. The dictionary will continue to grow throughout execution of the program and
will not be reset between games.
4. The program will have a difficulty level that the user may set in the range 1 to 10.
5. The default difficulty level is 5.
6. The difficulty level is divided by 10 to provide the probability that a word typed by the
user will be learned by the program (thus a difficulty level of 10 means that all words
typed by the user (and not rejected) are learned by the program).
7. The difficulty level may be reset at any time and it will take effect immediately with
regard to its effect on the probability that the computer will learn a new word.
8. When the program halts, it will choose about 300 words at random from its dictionary
and write them to the dictionary file for use the next time the program is run.
2.1.5 Rejecting Words
1. Any word typed by the user is assumed by the program to be a real word and may be
added to the dictionary.
2. After a round, the user may reject any word that the use generated, thus eliminating
mistyped words.
3. Rejected words are removed from the human’s word set only.
4. The score for the latest round (and hence the total score) is recomputed after words are
rejected; only non-rejected words are used to compute scores.
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2.1.5 The Board
1. The Boggle board will be a 4x4 grid of letters.
2. In each round of play, the letters on the board will be generated according to the
following probabilities of occurrence:
Probability Letter
1/96 J, K, Q, Y, Z
2/96 B, C, F, G, M, P, V
3/96 D, U, W, X
5/96 H, L, R
6/96 A, I, N, S, O
10/96 E, T
2.2 Error Handling
1. The program will not accept any input that is out of range for any parameter.
2. The program will accept any sequence of characters as word input.
2.3 User Interface Specifications
1. The user interface will be a graphical user interface.
2. An appendix illustrates a suggested screen layout for the user interface.
3. You can use the suggested screen layout or some version of it or you can design your
own. If you decide to design your own layout, you must ensure that you preserve all
functionality of the Boggle game as given in PA3 in additional to whatever new
functionality is added here. You must allow the user to start rounds, play multiple games,
choose difficulty levels and points needed to win, etc. You must display all of the word
lists required in PA3 as well. While you need not include all of the controls listed below,
you should enable all functionality that these require. In other words, if you design your
own layout, your program should be functionally equivalent to the items given in the
table below.
4. Should you base your solution on the suggested layout, your solution should contain the
following items:
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Item Mechanism
2.3.3.1 Start round
button
This button should be enabled between rounds and
disabled during a round. When pressed it starts a new
round, which includes displaying a new board, displaying
the new round number, starting the timer, setting the
round scores to 0, clearing various displays, and disabling
and enabling various controls.
2.3.3.2 Board display Must be a rectangular grid of letters. It may be displayed
in labels or buttons and may be done in special colors. It
must be updated at the start of a round.
2.3.3.3 Time left
display
May be a label or a progress bar. If it is a label, it must
display the time left in the format “m:ss” where m is the
minutes digit and ss is two seconds digits. If it is a
progress bar, it must display the time left in the center of
the bar in the format m:ss” where m is the minutes digit
and ss is two seconds digits. In either case the display
must change every second. It may be a special color.
When time is up, the round is ended. When the round
ends various displays are updated, various controls are
enabled or disabled, and possibly the end-of-game display
is shown.
2.3.3.4 Word entry
control
Must be a text entry area that supports simple editing,
such as backspacing and multiple lines of text. It should
be disabled between rounds and enabled during a round.
It must be scrollable as necessary.
2.3.3.5 Difficulty
control
May be a group of radio or push buttons, a spinner, a
slider, or a text entry area. It should only allow setting
difficulty values between 1 and 10. It is always enabled
and when set it changes the game’s difficulty level
immediately. The default should be displayed at program
start-up.
2.3.3.6 Target score
control
May be a spinner, a slider, or a text entry area. It should
only allow setting the target level between 1 and 10000. It
is always enabled but when set it causes the current game
to stop (even in the middle of a round) and a new game
(not a new round) to be initiated. The default should be
displayed at program start-up.
2.3.3.7 Game restart
button
This button is always enabled. When pressed, it causes
the current game to stop (even in the middle of a round)
and a new game to be initiated.
2.3.3.8 Quit button This button is always enabled. When pressed, it causes
the program to halt in an orderly manner (e.g. the
dictionary is saved).
2.3.3.9 Round label Displays the current round number.
2.3.3.10 Score
display
Must be a label or collection of labels. Displays the
current human round and total scores, and the current
computer round and total scores. The round scores must
be set to 0 at the start of a round. All scores are updated as
soon as a round ends. All scores are updated as words are
rejected.
2.3.3.11 Human only
words display
May be a list or a text input area. Either way, all the
words found by the human only in a round are displayed.
This display must be cleared at the start of a round and
updated immediately after a round and as words are
rejected. It must be scrollable as necessary.
2.3.3.12 Computer
only words display
May be a list or a text input area. Either way, all the
words found by the computer only in a round are
displayed. This display must be cleared at the start of a
round and updated immediately after a round and as
words are rejected. It must be scrollable as necessary.
2.3.3.13 Common
words display
May be a list or a text input area. Either way, all the
words found by both the human and the computer in a
round are displayed. This display must be cleared at the
start of a round and updated immediately after a round
and as words are rejected. It must be scrollable as
necessary.
2.3.3.14 Rejected
words control
May be a button or a text input field. When a word is
rejected the word lists and scores must be updated
immediately. This mechanism should be enabled between
rounds and disabled during a round.
2.3.3.15 Invalid word
display
May be a list or a text input area. Either way, all the
words produced by the human but not on the board are
displayed. This display must be cleared at the start of a
round, and updated immediately after a round. It must be
scrollable as necessary.
2.3.3.16 End-of-game
display
A label indicating that the game is over and who won.
Depending on the outcome, it should display one of the
messages:
“Game over¾you win!”
“Game over¾it’s a tie!”
“Game over¾the computer wins!”
5. These components shall be arranged so that related components appear together.
6. When a round ends and a player has a winning score, the game will end immediately,
even though the user will then not have a chance to reject words.
7. When the user dismisses the end-of-game message, a new game will be initiated.
8. All scores are set to 0, the round number is set to 0, and all lists are cleared when a new
game is initiated.
3. Non-Functional Requirements
3.1 Performance Requirements
1. The three-minute round timer will be accurate to within 2 seconds.
2. The program will be reliable enough to play games to 100 points.
3.2 Development Requirements
1. The user interface components of the program must be separated from the parts of the
program that implement the game itself—only strictly user interface computations should
occur in the user interface portion of the program. The remaining code will be in the
model classes from PA3 along with the FileIO class (which will remain unchanged) and
the Listener class that will respond the events generated by the graphical user interface.
2. The program will be written in Java.
3. All packages from PA3 should be maintained, although you will not need to use
BoggleTextIO. Depending on your implementation, you will likely not need to use
BoggleControl either (although you will need some of the code contained there). Your
GUI files should be placed in a package called view.gui. Your listener(s) should be in
the controller package.
3.3 Stylistic Requirements
1. The source code files must adhere to the style guide provided on the class web site.
Assignments missing the acknowledgments text specified in the Style Guide will receive
a 25% deduction. This must appear in the class header for each class in your project
that you wrote or modified (if you leave use a class from my PA3 solution, you do not
need to add an acknowledgement).
Summary
You may continue your development using your own code from the last assignment, the code
posted on the web site as a solution to the last assignment, or a mix of the two. You should find
that very little, if any, of the code from the last assignment needs to be changed¾most of your
work will be to replace the BoggleTextIO and BoggleControl classes with the GUI and
Listener classes.
Develop your interface a bit at a time, hooking game functionality in as you go. Start with the
quit button. After this works, add the board display and start round button. After this works, add
the time left display and word entry control. And so on. Concentrate on making things work
properly, and don’t worry much about component alignment, spacing, and so forth. You can play
with this once everything works, if you have time.
GUI programming is not hard but it is time-consuming. Do not wait until the last minute to start
on this project! See the attached file for some “Hints for Swing Programming.”
Important!!!!
Your code must follow the requirements laid out in the CS159 Style Guide (see the link on
Canvas). In particular, you MUST include the wording specified for the Acknowledgments
section of the class header for each class you wrote or modified. Failure to include this
acknowledgment with the wording specified in the Style Guide will result in an automatic
deduction of 25 points.