A348/A548 Mastering the World-Wide Web (4/3 cr.)

Fall Semester 2002

Midterm Exam: Stone, scissors, paper... (that's what you need for this exam)

There are two parts to this exam:

(Written Exam) Read the exam, turn in a solution in 75 minutes.
(Reality Check) Implement your solution by Tue Oct 29 5:30pm and show it next lab.

The grade for this exam will be:

40% the grade for the Written Part and
30% from the Reality Check part.
The rest 30% part comes from the Practical Part that you should have finished already.

And now the problem.

Consider the following session with a program (Two) that was written in Java:

frilled.cs.indiana.edu%javac Two.java
frilled.cs.indiana.edu%java Two
Hello and welcome to the game.
*** The computer has chosen. 
Now it's your turn.
Paper, scissors, or stone...
Which will it be? Type here: paper
*** The computer's choice was: paper
***(This game's a draw.)***
The score is now: 
  Computer: 0
  You     : 0
*** The computer has chosen. 
Now it's your turn.
Paper, scissors, or stone...
Which will it be? Type here: scissors
Very good.
*** The computer's choice was: paper
***(So, you win.)***
The score is now: 
  Computer: 0
  You     : 1
*** The computer has chosen. 
Now it's your turn.
Paper, scissors, or stone...
Which will it be? Type here: stone
*** The computer's choice was: stone
***(This game's a draw.)***
The score is now: 
  Computer: 0
  You     : 1
*** The computer has chosen. 
Now it's your turn.
Paper, scissors, or stone...
Which will it be? Type here: stone
Very good.
*** The computer's choice was: scissors
***(So, you win.)***
The score is now: 
  Computer: 0
  You     : 2
*** The computer has chosen. 
Now it's your turn.
Paper, scissors, or stone...
Which will it be? Type here: paper
Too bad.
*** The computer's choice was: scissors
***(So, you lose.)***
The score is now: 
  Computer: 1
  You     : 2
*** The computer has chosen. 
Now it's your turn.
Paper, scissors, or stone...
Which will it be? Type here: frilled.cs.indiana.edu%clear

Essentially this is the famous stone-scissors-paper game:

Both you and the computer choose one of the three objects.
scissors is stronger than paper.
stone is stronger than scissors.
But paper can wrap around the stone, so paper is stronger than stone.
Entering an invalid choice makes you lose the round.
The computer chooses first, then you choose, then the choices are compared.
You can either
1. win a point, or
2. the computer wins a point, or
3. the game is a draw.
If it's a draw the score stays the same.
After each round the score has to be shown.
The game basically can go on forever.

You are to use PHP or CGI/Perl to implement a web-based version of it.

What technologies can you use?

Any of the following:

CGI/Perl with hidden fields
CGI/Perl with sessions (MySQL, DBI.pm, CGI.pm)
PHP with hidden fields
PHP with sessions

How many implementations are needed?

Answer: just one.

Choose one that you like best and implement a solution.

Good luck and do well!

Don't forget there's a second part to this exam, to be shown in lab next week.

Last updated: Oct 24, 2002 by Adrian German for A348/A548