FAQ
Course staff will continuously add to this page as you all ask questions about the project! If you have a question that isn’t answered here, ask in lab, OH, or on Ed!
Setup
In IntelliJ, I get “release version 18 not supported”
Go into File > Project Structure > Project Settings > Project, and make sure that your Language level is set to 17.
Additionally, head over to Modules and make sure that the proj0 Language level is 17.
Getting Started
This seems like a lot of code to write. How do we check along the way if we’re doing it correctly?
This is called testing! There are 2 main ways we can test our code: unit testing and acceptance / integration testing. Unit testing aims to test the individual pieces of code of your program—generally, individual methods. Acceptance / integration testing tests how your program as a whole works, including how classes interface with each other and how user input is handled.
Here’s the section about testing in the spec. For this project, we have provided you all the tests we’ll use to grade the assignment. You’ll run these tests via JUnit. You can run each of the test classes in IntelliJ, and it will show you which tests pass or fail, including expected values vs. your actual output. This is very, very useful for debugging. A general workflow would be to take a look at the tests you’re failing, understand the expected values, compare them with your actual output, and use the debugger to walk through the test case if you’re stuck. You can even write your own tests, following the format of the provided ones! This is good practice as we’ll expect you to do this in later assignments (and you’ll have to write your own tests in the real world).
Paraphrased from Shreyas Kallingal.
TestAtLeastOneMoveExists
I pass everything in TestAtLeastOneMoveExists except for testAnyDir. If my code works for each direction, why would it break for any direction?
In this test, the relevant moves are on the border (specifically, the upper-right corner). If you are looping over the coordinates in the board, make sure that you are considering every possible comparison. For example, your boundary condition in the for loop may be off by one.
tilt
I don’t know how to get started on tilt.
Please watch Josh’s intro video to this method! However, the methods in the intro video might be different that current skeleton code since a lot changed.