Preparing for the presentation

Our team has divided our roles for the presentation.  Carly will do the intro, Shannon and I will talk about the 5 bugs, and Stephanie will do the closing.  Our powerpoint presentation is finished.  The toughest thing ahead of me will be discussing bug #5.  I am looking over it now and figuring out how I will explain it.  This presentation will be the last thing I have to do before I receive my BS in computer science degree!  I'm looking forward to the feeling of being finished with school (for the time being).

Bug #5 and powerpoint rough draft preparation

We fixed bug #5 by adding an indication of the day at the very top, and by ensuring the log shows the applicable day.  Until our fix, the log would show the previous day's log information as the log for the current day.  Initially, our fix would start off by showing a Day 0 log when the game starts, but we've since replaced the Day 0 log with the instruction "Start the day by visiting the store."

We've divided responsibilities for our final presentation; I am to present the first few bug fixes.  I am working on adding a few slides to our powerpoint.  They will be text only for now, but I plan on possibly adding screenshots to make my slides more presentable.

This is the last post before I am required to submit my entire collection of blogs from this semester as a pdf file.   It is hard to believe that the end of the semester is just 2 weeks away and I will finally receive my bachelor's degree in computer science.  This semester has flown by faster than any other semester.  Working 35 hours/week at my internship, taking this class, and daydreaming about life after college has kept me busy.  The next few weeks are very important as I am putting final efforts into The A-Team's project and preparing for interviews.

Working on open source projects over the last 2 semesters has been exciting and a great learning experience.  I've become alot better at looking at code created by others and figuring out what is going on, which is a skill I think could be the most important skill to have out in the workforce.  After I graduate, I will continue to look into interesting open source projects to work on my skills and contribute to something useful.

Bug #4 fixed, onto bug #5

We figured out why the game doesn't necessarily enforce a "fewest coins" policy;  this is because it allows the smallest required unit in a fewest coins solution to be further broken up.

To illustrate this, we can look at $4.35.

The smallest coins solution in largest to smallest order would be:
4 dollars, 1 quarter, and 1 dime.

In this case, the 1 dime would be allowed to be broken up into any of its possible combinations such as 2 nickels, 1 nickel and 5 pennies, or 10 pennies.

We decided to allow this functionality, and so bug #4 is fixed.

Fixing Bug #5 may be as easy as moving the one-line day increment to different areas until we find the place that works for us. 

Bug #4 continued

There are some slight problems with our recent fix to bug #4. In most instances, the correct output is shown when entering amounts in 3 situations: correct amount with the fewest coins possible, correct amount but not the fewest coins possible, and incorrect amount. We will be working to figure out how to make it 100%.

Bug #3 and Bug #4

After Shannon changed the code so that it would not advance the day until a valid purchase was made, we were mostly finished with bug #3. However, the change did cause another bug; every time you enter a "too large" purchase, there is a chance of a random event still happening. You could possibly exploit the game by causing random events that benefit you without advancing the day or decaying items. I was able to fix this by not letting the user leave the store until a valid order is made.
In class, we were able to further enhance this fix by adding a message that states "You attempted to order more items than you can afford. Try again."

Bug #4 is a bit trickier; we spent time in class looking at the code and trying to figure out where and how we can change things. We believe we have it narrowed down to a specific function. I plan on looking at the code this weekend.

Bug #3 is fixed

I believe bug #3 is now fixed after making it so that orders that are too large are not allowed. The game never leaves the store screen and zeroes the order quantities if the cost of the order is larger than the available amount of money. You can however still hit enter without buying anything. We should leave it that way because it would be possible to get stuck on that screen if we didn't have enough money to purchase anything and it forced a purchase before moving on.

Moving along

The A-Team is slightly behind, but it shouldn't be difficult to catch up. We still need to figure out how to add the Help and Quit commands to the bottom of the UI.