Looking for ideas for a university "project"

Damnshock · 2007-03-13 12:40:44

Hi folks!

I'm currently studying Java (optional subject) at university and we have to write a program for evaluation. The problem is... which program should i go for? I've thought in a little game ( it can't be a chess game, as it is what the teacher has given us as example)... What do you think? Any suggestions?

What about a simple filemanager? don't really know because it has to be multiplatform... Well, i'm counting on you guys!

Thanks in advance!

phrakture · 2007-03-13 15:17:26

One of the java classics is a minesweeper clone... and that's always fun.

rhfrommn · 2007-03-13 15:35:31

If you know a little physics and math you could copy a project I did for computational physics class almost 20 years ago (although in Basic, not Java of course). Make a model of 2 binary stars with a planet orbiting. You specify the mass of each star and distance between, and the starting position and speed of the planet. Enter the values in a little dialog box, then have the program draw the resulting orbit. It was fun trying to set the parameters just right so the planet would make a stable orbit. Usually it would crash into one star or escape the system completely within a few orbits. The equations and math needed are not too hard and should be easy to get in any general astronomy textbook (for Astronomy or Physics majors, not the Astro 101 type book).

Probably a little harder than most projects because of the math and physics, but the coding should be very easy for that one. I did it in only a few dozen lines of QuickBASIC.

Damnshock · 2007-03-13 15:44:54

Mmmm maybe a few dozens lines project is a bit small, don't you think? However it's a start
Phrakture's idea probably is nearer to what i was looking for.

The teacher only wants that the code uses the hineritance and polimorfism concepts no matter what the program is about. This said, i don't really thing a minesweeper clone fits in my needs.

I have also thought in a bomberman clone or an strategy game.

Damnshock

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-03-13 15:52:32

I try to do a little memory game, but it would be to small to act as an idea for you. Works with customizable picture sets and up to four players, a built-in highscore and other gimmicks to make it nice to play. Mostly XML-based.

Written in .NET C# with Windows.Forms, as everything at our school...

Last edited by chaosgeisterchen (2007-03-13 15:55:58)

skottish · 2007-03-13 17:50:41

There are some standards which nearly everyone learns in OOP/OOD classes. For instance, employee databases and multimedia collections are popular choices. They're not too involved, but will let you not only use OOP/OOD principles, but it will also give you time to build a GUI, which also requires the same principles.

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-03-13 22:06:34

skottish wrote:

There are some standards which nearly everyone learns in OOP/OOD classes. For instance, employee databases and multimedia collections are popular choices. They're not too involved, but will let you not only use OOP/OOD principles, but it will also give you time to build a GUI, which also requires the same principles.

Now as you mention it...

At the moment, the whole class has to do some 'mini-projects', including rudimentiary documentation. The favourite topics are management of either employees or goods, or projects similar to it. A friend of mine (a very talented webdesigner, from my point of view) started to program a media collection application. So it seems to be typical, what we are approaching.

It is true, that these applications are very good to start off, but the applications itself could also be realised in form of a script, as they do not necessarily require self-defined classes and their instances to be used. I tried to advance further (as my interest in programming goes somewhat beyond what we learn in school, with 1 (!) lesson per week) and started to play around with properties and inheritance. Very interesting techniques and I slowly come to understand, what OOP is all about and it's really fascinating to go deeper and deeper into the issue and to understand the fundamental things, not just the surface we're taught at school.

It may sound childish to a experienced programmer, but actually, 2 years ago, I was not a bit into programming. I started up Microsoft Visual Studio .net and forced myself to play around a bit with programming. I soon came to the result, that this is actually extremely fascinating. Due to my own laziness, I never to got to advance to a level I actually wanted to achieve, but I think this is slowly changing, mostly due to the fact, that I've become interested in all of this open source thing. It's not only about using F|OSS for everyday work, it's more the will to be a lively member of the community, which is able to share some of its knowledge in order to improve the whole project. So, if I ever manage to go beyond the barrier of my own laziness, I have some (from my point of view) intesting projects to start and am very much looking forward to participating.

To return to your initial question: How much time and experience do you have? As a beginner, I try to understand your situation as I am actually in the same one and had to do a project for school for myself. If you have more time at your disposal, you could try out some advanced stuff, like not merely employee management, but a simplified company management software or things like that, you could even program a operating system 'control center', with a rather limited approach, but it is indeed an interesting idea, which I also have in mind as the biggest project yet to come. If you can emphasize on ArchLinux, you could sit down and try to program a GUI control module for some service, the operating system is offering. Look out for appealing GUI frameworks (GTK or Qt) and their Java bindings. I wish you good luck.

Stalwart · 2007-03-13 22:11:54

Make arcade game (like supertux). It will have inheritance

soniX · 2007-03-14 22:12:55

I like the filemanager idea. multiplatform in Java is not difficult if you use the apis correctly.

magnum_opus · 2007-03-15 02:36:40

audio player
specifically implement: http://piman.livejournal.com/272518.html
My frustration with the current system has been at critical mass for a while, which is why I've been doing so much thinking about. Probably sometime soon (this week or next) I'm going to be flowcharting out a basic design for a project I'm tentatively calling MS, for music server. The client will consist of two parts, the ms(1) client and the msd(8) daemon. msd will track the playlist and handle playing, and ms will issue commands through a FIFO to msd. I expect to address at least the following issues with the project:

* Decoupling the UI and playlist. MS's capabilities are going to be protocol limited, not UI limited, and the protocol will be designed to be extensible and complex, since client software can be charged with translating the complex protocol to a simple UI. Obviously, "complex" is relative. It won't be "NEXT", "PREVIOUS", and "PAUSE", like XMMS is, but it's not going to be a TCP/IP reimplementation either.
* A hierarchical playlist, with bookmarking and searching capabilities. The playlist should be of infinite depth, and both a song and a list of songs will provide mostly the same internal object interface, each being a quadtree with parent, child, next, and previous items.
* Each list item will have a shuffling boolean, which applies to (and only to) its immediate children items. So a node called "Bach" would have "Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue" and "The Art of Fugue", and with Bach.shuffle = true, it would randomly play one of the two, but since The Art of Fugue.shuffle = false, its children won't be shuffled. The Bach.shuffle treats each child atomically, even if it's not an atom internally.

i should point out that i didn't write that one of the developers of quod libet did, it just sums up what I'm looking for. basically it's a question of media players moving towards the direction of making accessing you music better. where as i've been looking for something that is better at playing my music

Last edited by magnum_opus (2007-03-15 02:41:13)

Damnshock · 2007-03-16 15:31:38

It seems that, after talking with my professor and classmate, we're going to try to implement a bomberman clone

Thanks all for your ideas!

Damnshock

Arch Linux

#1 2007-03-13 12:40:44

Looking for ideas for a university "project"

#2 2007-03-13 15:17:26

Re: Looking for ideas for a university "project"

#3 2007-03-13 15:35:31

Re: Looking for ideas for a university "project"

#4 2007-03-13 15:44:54

Re: Looking for ideas for a university "project"

#5 2007-03-13 15:52:32

Re: Looking for ideas for a university "project"

#6 2007-03-13 17:50:41

Re: Looking for ideas for a university "project"

#7 2007-03-13 22:06:34

Re: Looking for ideas for a university "project"

#8 2007-03-13 22:11:54

Re: Looking for ideas for a university "project"

#9 2007-03-14 22:12:55

Re: Looking for ideas for a university "project"

#10 2007-03-15 02:36:40

Re: Looking for ideas for a university "project"

#11 2007-03-16 15:31:38

Re: Looking for ideas for a university "project"

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