CSC 15 Horse Race Lab


Reminder:  Important Linux commands.

     When running programs that draw graphics, please do not move the window
     while the program is running.  If all goes well the program should stop
     when the mydraw function finishes.  But sometimes you may want to stop
     it in the middle.  For this, the best thing to do is the following:

     At the terminal prompt where you ran the program, type Control-Z.  You'll
     see a message such as 
     
     [5]+  Stopped                 python2 bounce.py

     This program is now a ZOMBIE.  A zombie is a program that should have
     terminated but didn't.  You need to kill it with the following command:

     kill -9 %5

     The "5" needs to match the number in the message above.  Don't leave
     zombies around: THEY WILL EAT YOUR BRAIN (i.e., they will eat your 
     computer's memory and other resources.)

     At the command prompt, type the word "jobs".  This shows all the
     programs at their current status are were started from the terminal window.
     You can kill them with the same command.
-------------


1. Make sure you have ready the function that returns an array of the
INDICES of the largest number in an array: this function is used to
determine which horses are leading the race, and eventually which
horses win the race.  You can put that in a file called "myfuns.py",
in the same directory as the horserace program, then insert the
following line at the top of the program to use it:

from myfuns import *

     
2. Horse Race Simulation

     This is the main part of the lab, and requires you to complete a
     horse race simulation.  You'll need to use the largest-indices function
     from class.  Download "hroutline.py" which contains an outline
     program, and modify the "mydraw" function.  You'll need to use an
     array to represent the x coordinates of each horse.  The number
     of horses in the race MUST be variable.  The program needs to
     contain a NESTED while loop.  The outer loop controls animation,
     and stops when some horse crosses the finish line.  The inner
     loop needs to iterate through the array of horses and increment
     the x position of each horse by a random value, as well as draw
     each horse on the screen.  You then need to determine which horse
     is in the lead and print a message to screen using the drawtext
     function I've given you.  Follow the notes and examples in the outline 
     program.  The finished product should look similar to the professor's
     sample program.  The following elements are required in particular:

     A. Your program needs to work for ANY HUMBER of horses between 2 and 10.  
     Use a variable to define the number of horses in the race. 

     B. You need to draw lines to separate the horses between "tracks". You
     also need to draw the finish line.  The exact position of the finish line
     is up to you (try width-50), and this is something you may have to 
     experiment with to come up with a good value.


-----------------

Options.  The following could be done for extra credit

    1. name the horses.  Try to use the "command line argument array" sys.argv.

       First put "from sys import *" at the top of the program.

       When you start a python program, you can start using a command such as

       $ python2 horserace abc def ghi

       Inside the program, sys.argv[0]=="horserace", sys.argv[1]=="abc", etc..

       Thus you can name the horses, as well as determine how many horses
       are going to be in the race when  you start the program.


    2. Find a background image, and instead of using a solid green rectangle,
       construct a more interesting background for the race


    3. Use different animated gifs for each racer.