Description
Overview
The creation of this assignment was inspired by Nintendo’s popular fighting video game, Super Smash Bros.
Ultimate (2018).
The game involves two or more fictional characters (which we will call fighters) battling
each other with each character having unique moves they can use. As of when this assignment was written,
there are 79 fighters available in the game.
The purpose of this assignment is to be able to use maps and
sets to build a small database that you can use to query or view “startup frame data” – how fast fighters
can perform a given move – for each playable character in the game. No prior knowledge of the Super Smash
Bros. series is needed to complete this assignment.
Startup Frame Data
As mentioned earlier, each fighter has various moves they can use to battle. Each move starts to happen at
a different “frame”. We will only be concerned with this type of frame data throughout this homework, also
referred to as “startup frames” for each move.
Frame is the standard unit of time in a fighting game, where there are 60 frames in one second. If a fighter’s
move comes out at frame 60, it takes one second for the animation of that move to appear on your screen
while playing the game; whereas if an option comes out at frame 3, the animation for that move would appear
almost instantly.
Below are a list of moves that each character can use in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate:
jab
forward-tilt
up-tilt
down-tilt
forward-smash
up-smash
down-smash
For the sake of this assignment, assume that the above moves are the only ones a character may use, though
in reality Super Smash Bros. Ultimate offers many more options.
Each character in the game will be able to use any of the above moves. However, the startup frames for
each of these moves may differ by character. For example, both Pikachu and Kirby are playable characters
in the game, so both of them are able to use up-tilt.
However, the animation for Pikachu’s up-tilt starts up
at frame 7, while the animation for Kirby’s up-tilt starts at frame 4.
We have provided two ‘database’ text files, large ult frame data.txt and mini ult frame data.txt, that
contain frame data information for some or all playable characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as of
January 2020.
You can assume that there are no errors in the formatting of these files.
As you work on this assignment, keep in mind that faster moves will have a smaller startup frame value and
slower moves have larger startup frame values.
Queries & Output
To run your code for this assignment, use:
./smash.out [database_file] [input_file] [output_file]
The following commands may be present for any given [input file]:
-q [character_name] [move]/all: A simple query – given the name of the character, output the startup
frame data for one particular move or all moves of this character. If ‘all’ is specified, output should be in
alphabetical order based on move name.
-f [move] [limit]: Output [limit] number of fighters that have the fastest [move], along with the corresponding
frame data.
-s [move] [limit]: Output [limit] number of fighters that have the slowest [move], along with the corresponding
frame data.
-d [move] [startup frame]: Output fighters that have a startup frame of [startup frame] for [move].
The output for these queries should be sent to [output file].
You can assume that there are no errors in the formatting of [input file], though it is possible that an illegal
[character name], or [move] is given; if this is the case, simply output
“Invalid character name: [character_name]”
or
“Invalid move name: [move]”
and move on to the next command.
If both an invalid name and move are given, only print the error for the
invalid name. You can also assume that every command starts with -q, -f, -s, or -d and that [limit] will be
a non-negative integer.
For a query beginning with -f, -s, or -d, if two characters have the same startup frames for a particular
move, break ties using alphabetical ordering based on character name. Please refer to the provided files for
examples of this. For -f and -s if there are fewer than [limit] results, you should print as many results as you
can.
Constraints
This assignment relies heavily on the usage of STL maps and sets – you are required to use at least one of
each in your solution. In fact, they are the only containers you are allowed to use, along with pairs and
custom classes that you write. You can use strings, ints, etc. but cannot use arrays (except for the global
one in the provided main.cpp) and cannot use the new keyword.
The time complexity to check if a legal [character name] or [move] is given should be O(log (f)) or O(log (m))
respectively, where f represents the total number of fighters provided and m represents the total number
of legal moves.
In addition to this, queries beginning with -q must look up fighters in O(log (f)) time as
well. This constraint is placed to avoid iterating through an entire set of fighters or moves to check for illegal
queries and data.
You are also required to create a Fighter class that will help organize information for each fighter.
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Hints & Suggestions
The challenge of this assignment lies mainly in generating the Fighters with the fastest or slowest moves in
the game by only using maps and sets.
Think about which key-value pairs may be useful for retrieving information quickly. One suggestion would
be to initialize a map where the key is a string representing a fighter’s name, and where the value is a
corresponding Fighter class object, similar to the student grades example in Lecture 16.
After this map
has been initialized, you can then use the stored information in it to create new maps or sets with different
data types. We suggest that you write a function to populate this data structure by reading the contents of
[database file], and that you fill in this data structure before processing any queries.
Another suggestion is to overload the operator< for the Fighter class. You can then directly store Fighter
class objects in an STL set based on the frame data value for a particular move. To accomplish this, you
may need to create a member variable in your Fighter class that will keep track of the current method used
for comparison (jab, forward-tilt, etc.).
Keep in mind that breaking ties occurs quite often in this assignment, both with respect to [character name]
and to [move].
Submission
Use good coding style when you design and implement your program. Don’t forget to comment your code! Use
the provided template README.txt file for notes you want the grader to read. You must do this assignment
on your own, as described in the “Collaboration Policy & Academic Integrity” handout. If you did discuss
this assignment, problem solving techniques, or error messages, etc. with anyone, please list their names in
your README.txt file.
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