My choice of a final project for Programming 1 was to create a game similar to the Hunger Games Simulator. Instead of being based off of the Hunger Games, my program is based off of the board game, Clue, though the idea of each character being eliminated comes from the novel And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. For those of you who don’t know what the Hunger Game Simulator is, basically you’re given a list of characters from the Hunger Games, or in my case, Clue. Once you click the proceed button, the characters are put into a list. Next to each character is a line of text saying what happened to them/what they did in that round. The rounds continue until all but one character is eliminated. If my description didn’t make much sense to you, you can click here and try the Hunger Games Simulator out, or you can click here to see a playthrough and click here to see how it works. Lastly, if you’d like a few more technicalities, click here.

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Creating a simulator wasn’t the first idea I had, and honestly I didn’t think I’d enjoy it quite as much as I did. I was planning on writing a Buzzfeed-styled quiz, but realized after posting my idea in a class discussion forum that multiple other people had already chosen that idea. I wanted my idea to be unique, but had no idea what else I could do until our teacher, Mr. Sommerer, gave me a suggestion. Because of the way I made my Guessing Game program earlier that year (which had a murder mystery theme), he felt like I would enjoy writing a program like the Hunger Games simulator. 

I began writing it, at least hoping to get a few rounds and a list of characters to choose from at the beginning. After getting that down, it really wasn’t that hard to start adding in details. Again, I settled on basing it off of the board game Clue, though taking the idea of each character getting eliminated throughout the game from the book And Then There Were None. I was able to give it a plot line (similar to Clue’s actual backstory), that it prints out at the beginning, instructions, a bigger variety of scenarios for what the characters do each round, and even a set of character images that pop up on the screen.

One of the things I feel would be interesting to add in would be background music and/or sound effects. Music would help set the mysterious mood of the game and would overall make it a little more entertaining. Another cool feature that I could add is making an “X” to appear over the characters that were eliminated and having the pictures stay on the screen throughout the game. This would just add a little more to the graphics side of the game and it would help notify the user on which characters have been eliminated.

Realistically, I think that I would have time to add in both of these features if I wanted to. I used sound effects on one of my previous programs and found out that it isn’t very difficult to do, so adding in that feature wouldn’t take long. On the other hand, I’m not sure how to put “X”s over the pictures yet, so this could be a bit more difficult than I was thinking. If not, I believe this is totally achievable. Simply adding these two features, though it doesn’t seem like much, would make my program much more entertaining.

Learning how to program wasn’t easy, but in the end it was very rewarding. Programming wasn’t easy and often led to frustration and many late nights trying to code. Despite this, the feeling of completing a program always made the hard work worth it. Even if we can’t use the programs we made in class in our every day lives, the skills we gained allow for us to create programs that could be useful.