PROJECT: The Puzzle Box (TPB0)

Use your observational skills, ability to track and utilize details, problem solving abilities, and investigative prowess to unravel the puzzle box, which will attempt to throw obstructions in your path to deter you from success.

As usual, provide documentation on the project page.

Do note, the productive way to go about this project involves taking the following steps:

• starting early
• reading the project page
• asking questions regarding things you do not know, are not clear on, or are confused about
• as information, concepts, processes become clear, that is something you can contribute to the project documentation (so you can better remember)

If you start too late, and do not ask questions, and do not have enough time and don't know what is going on, you are not doing the project correctly.

You are to unravel the puzzle, getting to the instructions inside. Be wary of deceptions and obstacles trying to throw you off track.

To start off, there is a starter puzzle, ascii.512 that must be solved and acted upon first before you can get to your actual puzzle.

You are seeking the creation of two files, that you will submit:

• results - the final instructions correctly unscrambled
• tpb0steps - a list of the steps taken to accomplish the core task

You will want to go here to edit and fill in the various sections of the document:

• https://lab46.g7n.org/notes/unix/fall2024/projects/tpb0

To be successful in this project, the following criteria (or their equivalent) must be met:

• Project must be submit on time, by the deadline.
  • Late submissions will lose 33% credit per day, with the submission window closing on the 3rd day following the deadline.
• All code must run cleanly (no warnings or errors)
  • all requested functionality must conform to stated requirements (either on this document or in a comment banner in source code files themselves).
• Executed programs must display in a manner similar to provided output
  • output formatted, where applicable, must match that of project requirements
• Processing must be correct based on input given and output requested
• Output, if applicable, must be correct based on values input
• Code must be nicely and consistently indented
• Code must be consistently written, to strive for readability from having a consistent style throughout
• Code must be commented
  • Any “to be implemented” comments MUST be removed
    • these “to be implemented” comments, if still present at evaluation time, will result in points being deducted.
    • Sufficient comments explaining the point of provided logic MUST be present
• Track/version the source code in your lab46 semester repository
• Submit a copy of your source code to me using the submit tool

Let's say you have completed work on the project, and are ready to submit, you would do the following:

lab46:~/src/SEMESTER/DESIG/PROJECT$ submit DESIG PROJECT file1 file2 file3 ... fileN

You should get some sort of confirmation indicating successful submission if all went according to plan. If not, check for typos and or locational mismatches.

I'll be evaluating the project based on the following criteria:

65:tpb0:final tally of results (65/65)
*:tpb0:submitted results file via submit tool [8/8]
*:tpb0:submitted tpb0steps file via submit tool [8/8]
*:tpb0:results md5sum matches project MANIFEST [8/8]
*:tpb0:results is correctly unscrambled and assembled [8/8]
*:tpb0:tpb0steps contains valid set of instructions [8/8]
*:tpb0:tpb0steps any commentary after hash mark [8/8]
*:tpb0:emailed results via instructions [8/8]
*:tpb0:matching subject line as per instructions [9/9]

• each class member is to participate in the contribution of relevant information and formatting of the documentation
  • minimal member contributions consist of:
    • near the class average edits (a value of at least four productive edits)
    • near the average class content change average (a value of at least 256 bytes (absolute value of data content change))
    • near the class total content contribution average (a value of at least 1kiB)
    • no zero-sum commits (adding in one commit then later removing in its entirety for the sake of satisfying edit requirements)
  • adding and formatting data in an organized fashion, aiming to create an informative and readable document that anyone in the class can reference
  • content contributions will be factored into a documentation coefficient, a value multiplied against your actual project submission to influence the end result:
    • no contributions, co-efficient is 0.50
    • less than minimum contributions is 0.75
    • met minimum contribution threshold is 1.00

• Solutions not abiding by spirit of project will be subject to a 50% overall deduction
• Solutions not utilizing descriptive why and how comments will be subject to a 25% overall deduction
• Solutions not utilizing indentation to promote scope and clarity or otherwise maintaining consistency in code style and presentation will be subject to a 25% overall deduction
• Solutions not organized and easy to read (assume a terminal at least 90 characters wide, 40 characters tall) are subject to a 25% overall deduction