COMP2521 Notices

Peer assessment for the Fury of Dracula

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Wednesday 06 February 2019, 10:55:22 PM.

Hello! Marking of assignments and exams is progressing; I'm currently aiming to have provisional marks by the 12th, and final results will be released on the 16th.

I've set up a peer assessment form for the assignment 2 groups, at cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs2521/19T0/peer : log in with your zID and zPass, give each person a rating, optionally leave a comment to explain the rating, hit the [Submit] button, and you're done.

I'm expecting everyone to do this (except for the one person in a group of size 1). If you don't bother, you won't receive a mark for the assignment.

Final Exam information, including seating allocation

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Sunday 03 February 2019, 12:53:59 PM.

Hello!

The COMP2521 19T0 final exam is on Monday, 4 February 2019 at 8:45 am. It consists of three practical questions and six theory questions. You will have ten minutes to read, and three hours to complete this exam.

Seating allocations are available here — note that, for this exam, there is a per-student seating allocation. Check it carefully.

We will be meeting on level 3 of J17; please be there promptly! Bring a writing implement (a pen or pencil), your student card (or another piece of photo id), and a clear unmarked water bottle.

Get a good night's sleep. Leave plenty of time to reach UNSW. See you tomorrow!

Prac Exam 2 information

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Wednesday 30 January 2019, 09:13:33 PM.

Hello!

The second practical exam is on Thursday, 31 January 2019 at 10 am . It consists of three programming questions, a question of five multiple-choice parts, and a question of two short-answer parts; you will have 90 minutes to answer these questions. You have been assigned to a lab for the exam, based on your tutorial group. We'll be meeting on level 3 of J17; please be there promptly!

• M10A (mon10-sitar): flute
• M14A (mon14-sitar): kora
• T10A (tue10-sitar): oboe
• T17A (tue17-sitar): viola (strings)
• W10A (wed10-sitar): cello (strings)
• W14A (wed14-sitar): bugle (brass)
• H14A (thu14-sitar): sitar
• F10A (fri10-sitar): flute
• F14A (fri14-sitar): horn (brass)

For information about the content that will be covered, see the WebCMS3 page .

Visualising the Fury of Dracula

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Friday 25 January 2019, 12:11:07 PM.

There's been a few great Fury of Dracula visualisers from past years.

My previous favourite, and the one I've used in lecture demos so far, was developed by one of my former students from COMP1927 16s2, Dominic He, and it's available at he-lium.github.io/dracula-map

My new favourite, developed by another of my former students from COMP2521 18x1, Kevin Luxa, is available at kluxa.github.io/dracula-game-viewer

You feed a past-plays string from one of Dracula's turns (i.e., "Running player 4") or from the revealed past plays into the text box, load it, and then use the buttons to step through the game.

However, I'd love to see more visualisers with more features... perhaps you could build the next great one, for people's ovation and fame forever?

In previous years, students have said that these visualisers have helped them see how the game is running, develop tactics, etc. I hope you find them useful too. Send them nice email if you like what they've done.

Prac Exam 2 information; Final Exam information; myExperience

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Tuesday 22 January 2019, 06:49:06 PM.

Hello! A quick reminder of what's left in the course in the way of assessment:

The second practical exam is on Thursday, 31 January 2019 at 10 am . It will consist of five questions, both theory and practical, which you will have 90 minutes to complete. More information about the exam will be released next week.

The final exam is on Monday, 4 February 2019 at 9 am . It will consist of ten questions, both theory and practical, which you will have 3 hours to complete. More information about the exam, including a sample final exam, will be released by next week.

And, instead of us assessing you, you can assess us: myExperience is UNSW's course and teaching evaluation and improvement scheme. I encourage you to fill out: myExperience.unsw.edu.au . Responses are anonymous, and we won't get to see them until after your marks are submitted. I'd love to know what you all thought of the course!

The Hunt is released!

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Tuesday 22 January 2019, 06:26:01 PM.

Dracula is unleashed! The hunts are starting tonight!

We've got some test rounds that are running over the next day or so. There's only three submissions... so there might be something interesting to see in tonight's round. The link in the sidebar to The Hunt will take you to the hunt reports (once the hunt has run).

We'll be running two rounds a day -- one at sunset and one at sunrise -- when we'll get your latest submissions from Give, and run them in the competition. Until our views are released, it uses the view stubs.

Competition rounds (tentatively) start on Wednesday evening -- but you should try to at least get something submitted for one of the test rounds at Tuesday sunset and Wednesday sunrise.

To help make sure your submissions compile, we've got a dryrun that takes our game engine and runs your dracula against your hunter. To use it, run `2521 dryrun assign2hunt Makefile [your .c and .h files]`. Try not to break your Makefile; we rely on it working.

Census date; prac exam 1 results; Fury of Dracula groups

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Sunday 13 January 2019, 06:22:12 PM, last modified Sunday 13 January 2019, 06:22:34 PM.

Hello! Firstly: if you've emailed me or asked a question on the forum in the last week or so, and haven't gotten a response, my apologies; I'm working through the backlog now.

Census date for summer session is today: this is your last chance to drop the course without financial or academic penalty. If you found the first prac exam challenging, the first assignment painful, or you're feeling you're not keeping up with the course, I'd suggest considering this.

Prac exam 1 is now marked. Here's the overall results:

• prac1_q1: average 7.23/10; 49/103 got full marks.
• prac1_q2: average 7.28/10; 47/103 got full marks.
• prac1_q3: average 6.51/10; 35/108 got full marks.
• prac1_q4: average 7.09/10; 30/100 got full marks.
• prac1_q5: average 4.97/10; 14/84 got full marks.
• prac1: average 30.79/50; 64/108 got >50%; 7/108 got full marks.

I've now fetched WebCMS3 groups for assignment 2. On the grades page, you should see a field 'ass2_group'; if you see a group ID in that field, your group is correctly set up. If you don't see a group ID there, you should fix up your group:

• If you haven't yet formed an assignment 2 group -- that's around a third of you -- you should do so soon!
• You should have a group of two. If you're in a group of three that hasn't yet been ok'd by your tutor, you should either get in touch with your tutor, or form a group of two.
• Make sure you're in a WebCMS 3 group of type "Assignment 2", and make sure it's set to private. There's a few groups which aren't private, or where only one person is in the group.

I've been annoyed enough by people about tutorial changes that I've relaxed the hard requirement about the same tutorial. I'll be dealing with the tutorial change requests in the next day or so.

Prac Exam 1 information; Fury of Dracula part 1 released

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Sunday 06 January 2019, 10:13:47 PM.

Hello!

The first practical exam is on Thursday, 10 January 2019 at 10 am . It consists of five questions, each worth 10 marks, and you will have 90 minutes to solve them. You have been assigned to a lab for the exam, based on your tutorial group. We'll be meeting on level 3 of J17; please be there promptly!

• M10A (mon10-sitar): sitar
• M14A (mon14-sitar): kora
• T10A (tue10-sitar): flute
• T17A (tue17-sitar): bugle (brass)
• W10A (wed10-sitar): horn (brass)
• W14A (wed14-sitar): viola (strings)
• H14A (thu14-sitar): oboe
• F10A (fri10-sitar): sitar
• F14A (fri14-sitar): cello (strings)

For information about the content that will be covered, see the WebCMS3 page .

Also: the first major part of Assignment 2, the Fury of Dracula: the View has been released. See the spec on WebCMS3 or on the course website , and get started sooner rather than later!

(My apologies for this information being a few days later than I'd said: I've spent the last few days coughing.)

Classes resume; public holiday tutorials rescheduled

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Wednesday 02 January 2019, 12:59:46 AM.

Hello, and happy new year! Classes resume on Wednesday 2 January.

If you had a class on Monday or Tuesday, you can visit one of the scheduled make-up tutorials for your class:

• mon10 (Hayden, Cliff): Wednesday 2pm-5pm, kora
• mon14 (Hayden, Kristian): Friday 2pm-5pm, kora
• tue10 (Deep, Liz): Thursday 2pm-5pm, kora
• tue17 (Gal, Deep): Friday 10am-1pm, kora

... or attend any other tutorial, but let the tutor know.

You should pay some attention to forming a group for assignment 2, which will be released this week. Note that you cannot work by yourself (unless you have a really good reason), and you cannot form a group across tutorial classes (for gruesome technical reasons).

Teaching recess and UNSW shutdown

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Friday 14 December 2018, 09:44:16 PM.

Hello! As of this evening, summer teaching has paused for your last-ever mid-session break. There are no classes next week, though labs should be open if you want to work on-campus.

The university shuts down on Wednesday 19 December 2018 at 5pm . From midday on the 19th, some parts of campus will have restricted access. To the best of my knowledge, CSE servers and services will remain available during the shutdown, but services may be unavailable during some of this time.

I'm overseas for the break. I'll be reachable by email, but don't expect rapid responses.

The university reopens on Wednesday 2 January 2019 . Classes resume then; our next lecture is on Thursday 3 January.

Have a safe and restful holiday, and we'll see you next year! ~j

Assignment 1 and lab 3 extended

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Tuesday 11 December 2018, 06:23:32 PM.

Assignment 1 is now due Sunday 16 December 2018 23:59 ... but note that this date is within the university shutdown period, so don't rely on things working. I won't be extending this date again, and I won't be extending this date for the reason of supplementary examinations.

Lab 3 is now due Sunday 6 January 2019 23:59 , as will be lab 4.

(Assignment 2 will be released in week 4. It will be in pairs within your tutorial class ... you might like to find someone to work with sooner rather than later.)

`3c +leak' fixed; assignment 1 white-box tests

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Friday 07 December 2018, 10:04:46 PM, last modified Friday 07 December 2018, 10:16:54 PM.

Hello! Thanks to everyone who provided me useful information to track down the bug in `3c +leak'; it's now fixed. (The calloc(3) implementation correctly multiplied the size and count arguments, but inadvertently didn't use the result. Oops.) As before, please let me know if you run into any problems with the leak checker.

Also, thanks to everyone who's been prodding me about white-box testing assignment 1. As promised, I've added a prototype to textbuffer.h to allow you to invoke your white-box tests from your test_textbuffer.c --

/**
 * Run white-box tests for this particular implementation.
 */
void white_box_tests (void);

So long as you haven't broken the link to the provided textbuffer.h , you may have already seen these changes. Otherwise, you should grab a fresh copy .

Assignment 1 update; consults

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Monday 03 December 2018, 11:06:14 AM.

Hello! In the lecture on Tuesday, I'll give some pointers about how to begin assignment 1, if you've not already done so, especially for the string manipulation code. In addition, a few bugs crawled out of the spec, which have meant I've needed to change the header file a bit:

• textbuffer_search now returns type ssize_t , not size_t , so you can indicate search failures with -1; and
• all use of the const Textbuffer type have changed to just Textbuffer ; you should update your prototypes and signatures.

So long as you haven't broken the link to the provided textbuffer.h , you may have already seen these changes and potentially compiler errors due to type mismatches as a result of the second change.

My consultations/help sessions start this week, on Monday (today!) and Thursday from 4 to 6.

Assignment 1 released!

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Friday 30 November 2018, 03:02:23 PM, last modified Friday 07 December 2018, 10:10:28 PM.

Hello! In case you haven't seen it yet, assignment 1 is available . It'll be due Friday 14 December, but I strongly recommend starting sooner rather than later. Some simple submission tests will be available in the next day or so.

P.S. Lecture recordings are (or, at least, should be) now available; a direct link to Echo360 is in the sidebar. You'll need to go there via Moodle (ugh) at least once so Echo360 knows you're associated with the course. Let me know if you're having trouble accessing them.

P.S. A few people have gotten in touch about swapping tutorial classes. I understand it's possible to do this yourself via myUNSW at the moment; but please let your old and new tutors know if you're going to do so.

Welcome to COMP2521 in Summer 2018-19!

Posted by Jashank Jeremy Saturday 24 November 2018, 06:05:21 PM.

Hello, and welcome to COMP2521 this summer!

Tutorials and labs start from the 26th of November — this coming Monday, not in January. The first set of tutorial questions and laboratory exercises will be up on WebCMS3 shortly.

Our first lecture is on the 27th in Ainsworth G03, and I look forward to meeting you all there!