The Competition
The FAST Apprentice Programmer Competition challenges first-year students enrolled in introductory object-oriented programing courses to demonstrate their programming skills and to further develop their knowledge with a fun, engaging and challenging competition. Participants are tasked with creating a game using Java programming language. The students are mentored by Learning Assistants and receive recognition through the Co-Curricular Record (CCR). At the end of the term, Professors Magdin Stoica and Rich Smith, as well as the Java Learning Assistants from the guard.me Tutoring Centres, evaluate the submissions to determine the successful completion of the project for CCR credit and to determine the winner of the competition.
The Challenge
In the competition, students develop the Jungle game, or Dou Shou Qi (鬥獸棋), which is a fun strategy game in which animal pieces are moved in a chess like game with the goal of entering the opponent’s den (base) at the far end of the board, or take all the opponent’s pieces. Students in Term 1 start with a working core that allows one game piece to move on the board and have to complete the development of all the pieces as well as an AI that can be used by games to compete against each other. Students in Term 2 have to develop the entire game from scratch including the user interface.
The School of Applied Computing in FAST & Library and Learning Services are proud the present the winner for the Winter 2015 FAST Apprentice Programmer Competition: Rafael Battesti whose submission was outstanding in all aspects. Here are screenshots and a YouTube screencast of Rafael’s winning submission.
Congratulations to Rafael and to all other students who have successfully earned their CCR credit. Congratulations to the Java Learning Assistants who mentored our students: Joel Cummings, Nolan Buchannan, Greg Wood and Ian Stoodley.
A heartfelt thank you to the three Learning Assistants who developed the project for our students in the Summer of 2014: Andrei Letavin who designed the architecture of the game and led the development of the project, Zain Qureshi for the development of the user interface and Srishti Chakraborty for project management and development.