CS 371p: Object-Oriented Programming

• Fall 2026: 55440 (55)
• 24 Aug - 7 Dec 2026
• MWF 1 pm: GDC 1.304
• https://gitlab.com/gpdowning-ut/cs371p/
• https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~utpc/

Project #4: Darwin

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• Due: Wed, 11 Nov, 11:59 pm
• Write a program, ideally with a partner, to solve Darwin [C++23 (g++ 14.2.0, 2 sec, 512 MB, source 50 KB)].
• You may not use new, delete, malloc() or free().
• You may use the STL.
• Inheritance is not needed for this project.

Specification

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• Darwin's World contains a two-dimensional grid. Each square in the world can contain at most one creature.
• Each creature has a species, a direction, and a program counter.
• Each species has a program (a set of instructions).
• A creature executes the instruction indicated by the program counter. Each creature is given a turn.
• Here's an example of a creature program:
  0. if_wall 3
  1. hop
  2. go 0
  3. left
  4. go 0
• Creatures begin executing at line 0. There are two types of instructions: those which cause an action and those which affect the flow of control. Above, the only action instructions are hop and left. The rest are control instructions.
• Darwin gives each Creature a turn in a left-to-right and top-down ordering. During a turn a Creature can execute only one action instruction.
• Here are the descriptions of the 9 instructions:

  Type	Instruction	Description
  Action	hop	If the space ahead is empty, move forward, otherwise, do nothing.
  	left	Turn to face left.
  	right	Turn to face right.
  	infect	If the space ahead contains a creature of a different species, change that creature to be of your species, reset the program counter to zero, but leave the direction unchanged, otherwise, do nothing.
  Control	if_empty n	If the space ahead is empty, go to line n, otherwise, go to the next line.
  	if_wall n	If the space ahead is a wall, go to line n, otherwise, go to the next line.
  	if_random n	Randomly choose between going to line n or the next line. If rand() from <cstdlib> returns an odd number, go to line n. Call srand(0) at the start of every test case that uses rand().
  	if_enemy n	If the space ahead contains a creature of a different species, go to line n, otherwise, go to the next line.
  	go n	Go to line n.

• Various types of creatures are defined below:

      Food
       0: left
       1: go 0
  
      Hopper
       0: hop
       1: go 0
  
      Rover
       0: if_enemy 9
       1: if_empty 7
       2: if_random 5
       3: left
       4: go 0
       5: right
       6: go 0
       7: hop
       8: go 0
       9: infect
      10: go 0
  
      Trap
       0: if_enemy 3
       1: left
       2: go 0
       3: infect
       4: go 0

• The interface to your classes should be rich enough to be able to create your own creature without writing any code.
• I mean something like this:

  Species species_f;
  species_f.add_instruction(...);
  species_f.add_instruction(...);
  ...
  Species species_h;
  species_h.add_instruction(...);
  species_h.add_instruction(...);
  ...
  Species species_r;
  species_r.add_instruction(...);
  species_r.add_instruction(...);
  ...
  Species species_t;
  species_t.add_instruction(...);
  species_t.add_instruction(...);
  ...
  // read eval print loop (REPL)
  ...
  Darwin x(72, 72);
  x.add_species("f", species_f);
  x.add_species("h", species_h);
  x.add_species("r", species_r);
  x.add_species("t", species_t);
  ...
  Creature creature("f", ...);
  ...
  x.add_creature(creature, ...);
  ...

• Create a good object-oriented design with no getters and setters by writing well-defined classes that are responsible for a specific and modular part of the solution:
• Read Getters and Setters and More on Getters and Setters
• create a UML diagram using PlantUML and put it on GitLab as Darwin.uml and Darwin.svg

Analysis

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• Dickinson
• Duke
• Stanford

Rubrics

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Updated 27 Oct 2026