Project 1: snek

Deadline: Thursday, September 12, 11:59:59 PM PT

Welcome to the first project of 61C! In this project, you'll get some practice with C coding by creating a playable snake game. If you're not familiar with snake, you can try out a demo at this link.

General testing and debugging tips can be found later in Compilation, Testing, and Debugging and on our common errors page.

Setup

This assignment can be done alone or with a partner.

If there are extenuating circumstances that require a partner switch (e.g. your partner drops the class, your partner is unresponsive), please reach out to us privately.

1. Visit Gradar. Log in and register your Project 1 group (and add your partner, if you have one), then create a GitHub repo for you or your group. If you have a partner, one partner should create a group and invite the other partner to that repo. The other partner should accept the invite without creating their own group.

2. Clone the repository on a hive machine.

   git clone git@github.com:61c-student/fa24-proj1-USERNAME.git 61c-proj1
   

(replace fa24-proj1-USERNAME with the name of your GitHub repo)

3. Navigate to your repository:

   cd 61c-proj1
   

4. Add the starter repository as a remote:

   git remote add starter https://github.com/61c-teach/fa24-proj1-starter.git
   

5. Pull from the starter repo:

   git pull starter main
   

Conceptual Overview

Snakes

A snake game can be represented by a grid of characters. The grid contains walls, fruits, and one or more snakes. An example of a game is shown below:

##############
#            #
#    dv      #
#     v   #  #
#     v   #  #
#   s >>D #  #
#   v     #  #
# *A<  *  #  #
#            #
##############

The grid has the following special characters:

• # denotes a wall.
• (space character) denotes an empty space.
• * denotes a fruit.
• wasd denotes the tail of a snake.
• ^<v> denotes the body of a snake.
• WASD denotes the head of a snake.
• x denotes the head of a snake that has died.

Each character of the snake tells you what direction the snake is currently heading in:

• w, W, or ^ denotes up
• a, A, or < denotes left
• s, S, or v denotes down
• d, D, or > denotes right

At each time step, each snakes moves according to the following rules:

• Each snake moves one step in the direction of its head.
• If the head crashes into the body of a snake or a wall, the snake dies and stops moving. When a snake dies, the head is replaced with an x.
• If the head moves into a fruit, the snake eats the fruit and grows by 1 unit in length. Each time fruit is consumed, a new fruit is generated on the board.

In the example above, after one time step, the board will look like this:

##############
#         *  #
#     s      #
#     v   #  #
#     v   #  #
#   s >>>D#  #
#   v     #  #
# A<<  *  #  #
#            #
##############

After one more time step, the board will look like this:

##############
#         *  #
#     s      #
#     v   #  #
#     v   #  #
#     >>>x#  #
#   s     #  #
#A<<<  *  #  #
#            #
##############

Snakes are guaranteed to be at least three units long.

Numbering snakes

Each snake on the board is numbered depending on the position of its tail, in the order that the tails appear in the file (going from top-to-bottom, then left-to-right). For example, consider the following board with four snakes:

#############
#  s  d>>D  #
#  v   A<a  #
#  S    W   #
#       ^   #
#       w   #
#############

Snake 0 is the snake with tail s, snake 1 has tail d, snake 2 has tail a, and snake 3 has tail w.

Once the snakes are numbered from their initial positions, the numbering of the snakes does not change throughout the game.

Game board

A game board is a grid of characters, not necessarily rectangular. Here's an example of a non-rectangular board:

##############
#            #######
#####             ##
#   #             ##
#####             ######
#                 ##   #
#                 ######
#                 ##
#                  #
#      #####       #
########   #########

Note that each row can have a different number of characters, but will start and end with a wall (#). You can also assume that the board is an enclosed space, so snakes can't travel infinitely far in any direction.

The game_state_t struct

A snake game is stored in memory in a game_state_t struct, which is defined in state.h. The struct contains the following fields:

• unsigned int num_rows: The number of rows in the game board.
• char** board: The game board in memory. Each element of the board array is a char* pointer to a character array containing a row of the board. Each row must be terminated by a new line character and must be a valid string.
• unsigned int num_snakes: The number of snakes on the board.
• snake_t* snakes: An array of snake_t structs.

The snake_t struct

Also defined in state.h, each snake_t struct contains the following fields:

• unsigned int tail_row: The row of the snake's tail.
• unsigned int tail_col: The column of the snake's tail.
• unsigned int head_row: The row of the snake's head.
• unsigned int head_col: The column of the snake's head.
• bool live: true if the snake is alive, and false if the snake is dead.

Please don't modify the provided struct definitions. You should only need to modify state.c snake.c, and custom_tests.c in this project.

Compilation, Testing, and Debugging

In this project, we've provided a Makefile as some of the compilation commands are a bit more complex. Please do not call gcc yourself!

This project involves two executables:

• unit-tests: this executable contains all of the unit tests, which are provided for tasks 1 through 6.
• snake: this executable contains the full Snake game, and is involved in integration tests in task 7.

To compile an executable, you can run make executable-name. For example, to compile unit-tests, run make unit-tests. You can then run the executable with ./unit-tests or call cgdb and valgrind on the executable. Make sure to recompile after you make changes to your code!

Please note that the unit tests are not comprehensive, and passing them does not guarantee that your implementation is fully correct. However, they should be helpful to get you started with debugging.

Testing and Debugging Tips

If your implementation isn't working, it's time to start debugging. You can add printf statements in your code to print out variables during code execution, and then run compile and run the unit tests again to see the output of your print statements.

In CGDB, you can set a breakpoint in your own code (hint: see the GDB reference card for how to set a breakpoint in a different file). Then type run or r to start the program, and it'll pause at your breakpoint.

Tip: If you see "Segmentation fault (core dumped)", this means that your program crashed. One way to start debugging is by starting CGDB, running the program with no breakpoints, and then typing backtrace or bt to see what line of code the program crashed at.

You can also use p print_board(state, stdout) to print out your entire board while debugging in cgdb.

Task 1: create_default_state

Implement the create_default_state function in state.c. This function should create a default snake game in memory with the following starting state (which you can hardcode), and return a pointer to the newly created game_state_t struct.

####################
#                  #
# d>D    *         #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
#                  #
####################

create_default_state
Arguments	None
Return values	game_state_t *	A pointer to the newly created game_state_t struct.

Hints

• The board has 18 rows, and each row has 20 columns. The fruit is at row 2, column 9 (zero-indexed). The tail is at row 2, column 2, and the head is at row 2, column 4.
• Which part of memory (code, static, stack, heap) should you store the new game in?
• strcpy may be helpful.

Testing and debugging

Unit tests are provided for this task, and can be run via the unit-tests executable. For compilation and debugging, see Compilation, Testing, and Debugging.

Task 2: free_state

Implement the free_state function in state.c. This function should free all memory allocated for the given state, including all snake structs and all state->board contents.

free_state
Arguments	game_state_t* state	A pointer to the game_state_t struct to be freed
Return values	None

Testing and debugging

To test if we correctly freed memory for the game state, run make valgrind-test-free-state to check for memory leaks. If nothing is leaked, then you've passed the unit test for this task.

Task 3: print_board

Implement the print_board function in state.c. This function should print out the given game board to the given file pointer.

print_board
Arguments	game_state_t* state	A pointer to the game_state_t struct to be printed
	FILE* fp	A pointer to the file object where the board should be printed to
Return values	None

Hints

• The fprintf function will help you print out characters and/or strings to a given file pointer.

Testing and debugging

Unit tests are provided for this task, and can be run via the unit-tests executable. For compilation and debugging, see Compilation, Testing, and Debugging.

If your function executes successfully (doesn't segfault or crash) but doesn't print the correct output, the board you printed will be in unit-test-out.snk. A correctly-printed board should match the default board from Task 1.

Task 4: update_state

Implement the update_state function in state.c. This function should move the snakes one timestep according to the rules of the game.

Helper functions are not graded; for this task, we'll only be checking that update_state is correct.

Task 4.1: Helpers

We have provided the following helper function definitions that you can implement. These functions are entirely independent of any game board or snake; they only take in a single character and output some information about that character.

• bool is_tail(char c): Returns true if c is part of the snake's tail. The snake's tail consists of these characters: wasd. Returns false otherwise.
• bool is_head(char c): Returns true if c is part of the snake's head. The snake's head consists of these characters: WASDx. Returns false otherwise.
• bool is_snake(char c): Returns true if c is part of the snake. The snake consists of these characters: wasd^<v>WASDx. Returns false otherwise.
• char body_to_tail(char c): Converts a character in the snake's body (^<v>) to the matching character representing the snake's tail (wasd). The output may be undefined for characters that are not a snake's body.
• char head_to_body(char c): Converts a character in the snake's head (WASD) to the matching character representing the snake's body (^<v>). The output may be undefined for characters that are not a snake's head.
• unsigned int get_next_row(unsigned int cur_row, char c): Returns cur_row + 1 if c is v or s or S. Returns cur_row - 1 if c is ^ or w or W. Returns cur_row otherwise.
• unsigned int get_next_col(unsigned int cur_col, char c): Returns cur_col + 1 if c is > or d or D. Returns cur_col - 1 if c is < or a or A. Returns cur_col otherwise.

Unit tests are not provided for these helper functions, so you'll have to write your own tests in custom_tests.c to make sure that these are working as expected. Make sure that these tests comprehensively test your helper functions--our autograder will run your tests on buggy implementations to make sure that your tests can catch bugs!

When writing a unit test, the test function should return false if the test fails, and true if the test passes. You can use printf to print out debugging statements. Some of the assert helper functions in asserts.h might be useful.

Once you've written your own unit tests, you can compile them with make custom-tests, which produces the custom-tests executable that you can run or debug.

Task 4.2: next_square

Implement the next_square helper function in state.c. This function returns the character in the cell the given snake is moving into. This function should not modify anything in the game stored in memory.

next_square
Arguments	game_state_t* state	A pointer to the game_state_t struct to be analyzed
	int snum	The index of the snake to be analyzed
Return values	char	The character in the cell the given snake is moving into

As an example, consider the following board:

##############
#            #
#            #
#            #
#   d>D*     #
#            #
#       s    #
#       v    #
#       S    #
##############

Assuming that state is a pointer to this game state, then next_square(state, 0) should return *, because the head of snake 0 is moving into a cell with * in it. Similarly, next_square(state, 1) should return # for snake 1.

The helper functions you wrote earlier might be helpful for this function (and the rest of this task too). Also, check out get_board_at and set_board_at, which are helper functions we wrote for you.

Use make unit-tests to compile the provided unit tests. You can also use p print_board(state, stdout) to print out your entire board while debugging in cgdb.

Task 4.3: update_head

Implement the update_head function in state.c. This function will update the head of the snake.

Remember that you will need to update the head both on the game board and in the snake_t struct. On the game board, add a character where the snake is moving. In the snake_t struct, update the row and column of the head.

update_head
Arguments	game_state_t* state	A pointer to the game_state_t struct to be updated
	int snum	The index of the snake to be updated
Return values	None

As an example, consider the following board:

##############
#   d>D      #
#        *   #
#        W   #
#        ^   #
#        ^   #
#        w   #
#            #
#            #
##############

Assuming that state is a pointer to this game state, then update_head(state, 0) will move the head of snake 0, leaving all other snakes unchanged. In the snake_t struct corresponding to snake 0, the head_col value should be updated from 6 to 7, and the head_row value should stay unchanged at 1. The new board will look like this:

##############
#   d>>D     #
#        *   #
#        W   #
#        ^   #
#        ^   #
#        w   #
#            #
#            #
##############

Note that this function ignores food, walls, and snake bodies when moving the head.

Use make unit-tests to compile the provided unit tests. You can also use p print_board(state, stdout) to print out your entire board while debugging in cgdb.

Task 4.4: update_tail

Implement the update_tail function in state.c. This function will update the tail of the snake.

Remember that you will need to update the tail both on the game board and in the snake_t struct. On the game board, blank out the current tail, and change the new tail from a body character (^<v>) into a tail character (wasd). In the snake_t struct, update the row and column of the tail.

update_tail
Arguments	game_state_t* state	A pointer to the game_state_t struct to be updated
	int snum	The index of the snake to be updated
Return values	None

As an example, consider the following board:

##############
#   d>D      #
#        *   #
#        W   #
#        ^   #
#        ^   #
#        w   #
#            #
#            #
##############

Assuming that state is a pointer to this game state, then update_tail(state, 1) will move the tail of snake 1, leaving all other snakes unchanged. In the snake_t struct corresponding to snake 1, the tail_row value should be updated from 6 to 5, and the tail_col value should stay unchanged at 9. The new board will look like this:

##############
#   d>D      #
#        *   #
#        W   #
#        ^   #
#        w   #
#            #
#            #
#            #
##############

Use make unit-tests to compile the provided unit tests. You can also use p print_board(state, stdout) to print out your entire board while debugging in cgdb.

Task 4.5: update_state

Using the helpers you created, implement update_state in state.c.

As a reminder, the rules for moving a snake are as follows:

• Each snake moves one step in the direction of its head.
• If the head crashes into the body of a snake or a wall, the snake dies and stops moving. When a snake dies, the head is replaced with an x.
• If the head moves into a fruit, the snake eats the fruit and grows by 1 unit in length. (You can implement growing by 1 unit by updating the head without updating the tail.) Each time fruit is consumed, a new fruit is generated on the board.

The int (*add_food)(game_state_t* state) argument is a function pointer, which means that add_food is a pointer to the code section of memory. The code that add_food is pointing at is a function that takes in game_state_t* state as an argument and returns an int. You can call this function with add_food(x), replacing x with your argument, to add a fruit to the board.

update_state
Arguments	game_state_t* state	A pointer to the game_state_t struct to be updated
	int (*add_food)(game_state_t* state)	A pointer to a function that will add fruit to the board
Return values	None

Testing and debugging

Unit tests are provided for only update_state, and can be run via the unit-tests executable. For compilation and debugging, see Compilation, Testing, and Debugging.

Task 5: load_board

Implement the load_board function in state.c. This function will read a game board from a stream (FILE *) into memory. Your implementation of load_board must support reading in from stdin and any other streams, so please do not use anything that does not support stdin, such as seeking, rewinding, or reopening.

Remember that each row of the game board might have a different number of columns. Your implementation should be memory-efficient and should not allocate significantly more memory than necessary to store the board. For example, if a row is 3 characters long, you shouldn't be allocating 100 bytes of space for that row.

You must use fgets to read from the file pointer. We reserve the ability to manually regrade your submission if it uses a function other than fgets to read from file. Other string functions, such as strchr, may be helpful here as well! Do not worry about error handling for calls to fgets.

Hint: realloc may be helpful for this task.

Tasks 5 and 6 combined will create a game_state_t struct in memory with all its fields set up. In this task, please set num_snakes to 0 and set the snakes array to NULL, since these will be initialized in task 6.

Task 5.1: read_line

Implement the read_line function in state.c. Given a FILE * file, read a line from file and store the string on the heap. If fgets errors, return NULL.

read_line
Arguments	FILE* file	A file pointer where the string can be read from
Return values	char *	A pointer to the newly read string. NULL if there are any errors, or if EOF is reached.

Task 5.2: load_board

Using read_line, implement the load_board function in state.c.

load_board
Arguments	FILE* file	A file pointer where the board can be read from
Return values	game_state_t *	A pointer to the newly created game_state_t struct. NULL if there are any errors.

Testing and debugging

Unit tests are provided for this task, and can be run via the unit-tests executable. For compilation and debugging, see Compilation, Testing, and Debugging.

Task 6: initialize_snake

Implement the initialize_snake function in state.c. This function takes in a game board and creates the array of snake_t structs.

Task 6.1: find_head

Implement the find_head function in state.c. Given a snake_t struct with the tail row and column filled in, this function traces through the board to find the head row and column, and fills in the head row and column in the struct.

find_head
Arguments	game_state_t* state	A pointer to the game_state_t struct to be analyzed
	int snum	The index of the snake to be analyzed
Return values	None

As an example, consider the following board:

##############
#            #
#        *   #
#            #
#   d>v      #
#     v      #
#  W  v      #
#  ^<<<      #
#            #
##############

Assuming that state is a pointer to this game state, then find_head(state, 0) will fill in the head_row and head_col fields of the snake 0 struct with 6 and 3, respectively.

Task 6.2: initialize_snake

Using find_head, implement the initialize_snake function in state.c. You can assume that the state passed into this function is the result of calling load_board, but you may not assume that the snakes array is defined. This means the board-related fields are already filled in, and you only need to fill in num_snakes and create the snakes array.

You may assume that all snakes on the board start out alive.

initialize_snakes
Arguments	game_state_t* state	A pointer to the game_state_t struct to be filled in
Return values	game_state_t* state	A pointer to the game_state_t struct with fields filled in. This can be the same as the struct passed in (you can modify the struct in-place).

Testing and debugging

Unit tests are provided for this task, and can be run via the unit-tests executable. For compilation and debugging, see Compilation, Testing, and Debugging.

Task 7: main

Using the functions you implemented in all the previous tasks, fill in the blanks in snake.c. Each time the snake.c program is run, the board will be updated by one time step.

To test your full implementation, run make run-integration-tests. This will compile your program for you by calling make snake internally.

To debug your implementation, run cgdb --args ./snake -i tests/TESTNAME-in.snk -o tests/TESTNAME-out.snk. To check for memory leaks or out-of-bounds reads/writes, you can run valgrind ./snake -i tests/TESTNAME-in.snk -o tests/TESTNAME-out.snk. Replace TESTNAME with one of the test names in the tests folder:

• 01-simple
• 02-direction
• 03-tail
• 04-food
• 05-wall
• 06-small
• 07-medium
• 08-multisnake
• 09-everything
• 10-filled
• 11-manyclose
• 12-corner
• 13-sus
• 14-orochi
• 15-hydra
• 16-huge
• 17-wide
• 18-tall
• 19-101-127
• 20-long-line
• 21-bigL

Similarly, you can test loading from stdin by running ./snake --stdin -o tests/TESTNAME-out.snk < tests/TESTNAME-in.snk, then running diff tests/TESTNAME-ref.snk tests/TESTNAME-out.snk. To debug, run either cgdb ./snake followed by set args --stdin -o tests/TESTNAME-out.snk < tests/TESTNAME-in.snk or run valgrind ./snake --stdin -o tests/TESTNAME-out.snk < tests/TESTNAME-in.snk. Note: this behavior is not explicitly tested with the unit tests or make run-integration-tests, but will be tested on the autograder.

If you make changes to your code, please make sure to recompile before running other commands (except for make run-integration-tests)!

You can also run make run-nonexistent-input-file-test to make sure that your program correctly exits with error code -1 if the input file doesn't exist.

Task 8: Partner/Feedback Form

Congratulations on finishing the project! This is a relatively new project, so we'd love to hear your feedback on what can be improved for future semesters.

Please fill out this short form, where you can offer your thoughts on the project and (if applicable) your partnership. Any feedback you provide won't affect your grade, so feel free to be honest and constructive.

Submission and Grading

Submit your code to the Project 1 Gradescope assignment. Make sure that you have only modified snake.c, state.c, and custom_tests.c. You can submit to Gradescope as many times as you want, and the score you see on Gradescope will be your final score for this project.

Just for fun: play snake

Now you can play a game with the code you've written by make interactive-snake followed by ./interactive-snake. Use the wasd keys to control your snake!

To speed up or slow down the game, you can run ./interactive-snake -d 0.5 (replacing 0.5 with the number of seconds between time steps). During the game, you can also press ] to move faster and [ to move slower.