Capstone Snake Game

The original project had a fully functional Snake game implemented. A Snake game has a keyboard controlled snake that's constantly moving. When it eats a food (by running over it), it grows in length by one block while still moving. The original implementation infinitely runs until the snake runs into itself.

Original implementation:

• A main function handling creating objects of the three main steps of the game loop (Controller, Game, Renderer). The Game::Game constructor creates a Snake object, while Game::Run starts the game loop.
• A Game::Update method that takes care of snake movement, handling the snake eating food, basic movement in response to user input.
• Score updated regularly.
• The Snake stores float coordinates of the head, and a vector of points (int cell coordinates) as the body. The head has float coordinates to suggest speed as a gradient, versus blockily moving from point to point. Location updates based on the snake's speed are all handled. The Snake::Update method both handles updating the head and the body.
• Most of the SDL usage is already written.

The project spec asked to create features to the original game which used concepts discussed through the course.

Added features:

• Create a GUI with speed (frames per second) toggling, leaderboard option, original mode, obstacle mode, computer snake mode. Used Nuklear to do so.
• Leaderboard is read and written from a *.txt file. The text file is encrypted using a symmetric key. I kept the key up on GitHub, so it's not like it's actually a security improvement. I just felt very uncomfortable leaving a plaintext file with data public. I could've left an optional parameter to toggle encryption, but decided to make it a mandatory design feature.
• New Obstacle class with inheritance (fixed, moving).
• New snake controlled by A* algorithm, which will lead to a loss if run into it or automatic win/rankings multiplier boost if eat the snake by hitting the last box of it.
• Gave the A* algorithm snake a handicap where it can't use the wraparound to go across the screen.
• End print message with score, size, and leaderboard ranking (two leaderboards - respective mode and the general leaderboard).

How to Run

1. Download build/SnakeGame and run using ./SnakeGame from Unix command line in same directory.

Or:

1. Create own executable by cloning repo.
2. If no build directory, create one mkdir build.
3. Compile cd build && cmake .. && make.
4. Run ./SnakeGame

Notes

• Figured out how to make flashing colored items! Have two SDL_SetRenderDrawColors next to each other and it will effectively be a strobe light!

• Renderer and Controller don't own any of the class representations e.g. Snake, Obstacle. They just take in references or copies and either draw out a renderering from a const object or mutate values within the object. The food is implemented as an SDL_Point and not a class, which is perfect, but for some reason it's being passed in as a reference to the Renderer instead of another deep copy. I am not sure why the original project creators decided to introduce that inconsistency. I may change it later.

• Renderer contains no game logic and takes in only const values to render a snapshot of all logic representations.

• Speed mode is 100% solved without deeply touching classes (handled completely in main.cpp).

Dependencies for Running Locally

• cmake >= 3.7
  • All OSes: click here for installation instructions
• make >= 4.1 (Linux, Mac), 3.81 (Windows)
  • Linux: make is installed by default on most Linux distros
  • Mac: install Xcode command line tools to get make
  • Windows: Click here for installation instructions
• SDL2 >= 2.0
  • All installation instructions can be found here

  Note that for Linux, an apt or apt-get installation is preferred to building from source.

• gcc/g++ >= 5.4
  • Linux: gcc / g++ is installed by default on most Linux distros
  • Mac: same deal as make - install Xcode command line tools
  • Windows: recommend using MinGW

Credits

Udacity team credited this excellent StackOverflow thread.

Links

https://dexp.in/articles/nuklear-intro/ https://cpp.hotexamples.com/examples/-/-/nk_option_label/cpp-nk_option_label-function-examples.html https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/encrypt-and-decrypt-text-file-using-cpp/

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