CS 177 Project 3 Summer 2015 Team Assignments

Cs 177 Project 3 Summer 2015project 3 Team Assignments Are Posted

This assignment involves enhancing and finalizing a cellular simulation program. The program models Crete and Laelaps cells that can consume food, with their movement affected by temperature. Students must implement functionalities to pause the simulation (saving its state), restart from a saved state, and add three creative modifications to the base simulation. The project is based on previous code from Project 2, which must be completed before proceeding.

The core requirements include:

• Starting with a completed or finished version of Project 2's simulation code.
• Adding pause and save functionality: When the user clicks 'Pause', the current simulation state—including cell positions, properties, food locations, speed, and temperature—must be saved into "simData.txt".
• On startup, if "simData.txt" is present, prompt the user to restart from saved data, reconstructing the previous state exactly.
• Implementing food consumption logic: When a cell contacts food, the cell's radius increases by 4 pixels; the food disappears after being consumed.
• Linking temperature to activity: higher temperatures increase Laelaps movement speed and decrease Crete speed; lower temperatures have the opposite effect. Temperature adjustments affect cell dx and dy values accordingly.
• Adding three unique features or modifications to the simulation, which should be thoroughly documented in a readme.txt or within code comments. These modifications should be functional and demonstrate creativity.

The project outline emphasizes clean, modular coding practices, including the use of functions to avoid code repetition, proper indentation with tabs, meaningful variable names, and descriptive comments. Proper adherence to coding standards impacts grading.

Paper For Above instruction

The development of a cellular simulation involving Crete and Laelaps cells presents a compelling intersection of biological modeling and computer programming. The objective of this project is to refine and extend an existing simulation framework, focusing on multi-faceted functionality such as environmental interactions, state management, and creative feature augmentation. This comprehensive approach not only enriches the simulation's realism but also enhances its educational and demonstrative value.

At its core, the project builds upon a previously implemented simulation, which models the behaviors and interactions of two cell types within a bounded field. The first critical enhancement involves enabling users to pause the simulation at any point, automatically capturing the full state—including all cell properties, positions, food items, speed, and temperature—into a file named "simData.txt". This feature facilitates continuity, allowing users to pause and resume the simulation seamlessly, thereby supporting detailed observation and analysis of cellular behaviors over time. When the program restarts, it reads from this save file and reconstructs the simulation environment precisely as it was left, enabling dynamic experimentation.

Food consumption mechanics are integrated to heighten the simulation's biological fidelity. When a cell contacts food, it expands its radius by 4 pixels, symbolizing feeding, and the food item is subsequently removed from the field. This necessitates implementing efficient collision detection between cells and food objects, updating cell states accordingly, and managing the visual refreshment of the simulation environment to reflect these changes.

Temperature is a pivotal environmental factor influencing cell mobility. The program should include controls to dynamically adjust the temperature within the simulation. Increasing the temperature should cause Laelaps cells to move faster while slowing down Crete cells; conversely, decreasing temperature should slow Laelaps and accelerate Crete. These effects are to be achieved by altering the cells' dx and dy movement vectors proportionally to the temperature setting. This dynamic linkage introduces an additional layer of realism, reflecting how biological organisms adapt their activity levels to environmental conditions.

A modular and structured code design is emphasized throughout. Functions should be used to implement repetitive tasks, such as drawing objects, updating positions, and collision detection, reducing redundancy and enhancing clarity. Proper indentation with tabs, meaningful variable and function names, and comprehensive comments are mandatory for readability and maintainability. Inline comments should describe the purpose of functions, the logic within loops, and the rationale behind conditionals, keeping the code approachable for future modifications or reviews.

In addition to fulfilling these baseline requirements, students are encouraged to exercise creativity by adding three original features or modifications to their simulation. These could include, for example, implementing predator-prey dynamics, visualizing cellular energy levels, or creating a user interface for parameter adjustments in real-time. Each modification should be thoughtfully designed, thoroughly documented—either in a readme.txt file or in code comments—and demonstrated to work within the simulation environment. Up to 75 points are allocated for these enhancements, awarded based on functionality, originality, and clarity of documentation.

The evaluation rubric prioritizes the accuracy of the simulation's core features, adherence to coding standards, and innovative additions. Ultimately, the project aims to provide an engaging, visually coherent simulation that accurately models cellular behaviors influenced by environmental factors, and demonstrates programming proficiency and inventiveness.

References

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