Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology

Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

Course: Computer Architecture Lab (CO2008)

Assignment
BATTLESHIP

Ho Chi Minh City, October 23rd 2023

 Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology
Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

Contents

1 Outcomes 2

2 Introduction 2

3 Requirements 3

4 Submission 4

5 Plagiarism 5

6 Rubric for evaluation 5

6.1 Friendly interface - 2 points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.2 Application implementation - 6 points . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.3 Report - 2 points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Exercise for Computer Architecture

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 Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology
Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

1 Outcomes
After finishing this assignment, students can proficiently use:

• MARS MIPS simulator.

• Arithmetic & data transfer instructions.

• Conditional branch and unconditional jump instructions.

• Procedures.

2 Introduction
Battleship is a strategic board game between 2 players. It focuses on the
process of planning deducting skill of both players. The game rules can be
found in [1], in summary:

1. In a classic game, each player sets up a fleet of battleships on their map

(a 10x10 grid). A fleet must contain a predefined set of battleships with
different sizes. For example, a fleet of ships can consist of 5 2x1 ships,
3 3x1 ships, 1 5x1 ship.

Figure 1: Example of the battleship game in real life

2. After the ships have been positioned, the game proceeds in a series of
rounds. In each round, each player takes a turn to announce a target

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 Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology
Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

square in the opponent’s grid which is to be shot at. The opponent

announces whether or not the square is occupied by a ship. If it is a
”hit”, the player who is hit marks this on their own or ”ocean” grid
(with a red peg in the pegboard version), and announces what ship was
hit.

3. If all of a player’s ships have been sunk, the game is over and their
opponent wins.

3 Requirements
In this project, we will replicate the battleship game in MIPS assembly
language. Since the resource is limited and to keep things simple, we will
work with a smaller grid size which is 7x7. Please create a program that
does the following:

• A note before entering the program: A ship location is indicated by the

coordinates of the bow and the stern of the ship (rowbow , columnbow ,
rowstern , columnstern ). In Figure 2, the coordinates of the yellow 4x1
ship is ”0 0 0 3”; the blue 2x1 ships are ”1 4 2 4”, ”2 1 3 1”, and ”4 4
4 5”; the green 3x1 ships are ”5 3 5 5” and ”6 0 6 2”.

• We begin with the preparation phase where the players set up their
ship locations. The program should prompt to ask the players to insert
the location of the ships. The values of the cells of the map will be
either 1 or 0. 1 means that the box is occupied by a ship, otherwise
it’s 0. The players will need to setup the exact amount of ships with
the same size in order to complete the setup phase. In detail, each
player will have 3 2x1 ships, 2 3x1 ships, and 1 4x1 ship. Note that
the ships can not overlap with each other. An example of an acceptable
arrangement is shown in Figure 2.

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 Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology
Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

Figure 2: Example of the the ships that a player can place in this project

• After the setup phase, both players will take turn targeting a box on
the other player’s map blindly. If the attack hits a cell that is occupied
by a ship, an announcement should pop up in the terminal and says
”HIT!”. This will allow the attacking player to know if they hit an
opponent’s ship or not. The players will need to remember the cells
that have been hit themselves. If a cell got hit, its value should change
into 0, as there it is no longer occupied by a ship. A ship is completely
destroyed if all of the cells it’s occupying are targeted. A player will
lose if all of their ships got destroyed first. In other words, the game
will end when a player’s board contain only 0’s.

• Note: Bonus points are provided if you can write out the moves of each
player into a separate text file for ease of review.

4 Submission
Students are requested to submit the MIPS program(s)/source code (.asm
files) and the Assignment report to BK E-learning system (BKEL) no later
than the last lab session of your group. Assignment must be done individu-
ally. Students have to demonstrate program(s) on MARS MIPS during the
last lab session. Students who do not show up during the demonstration
time will get 0 for the assignment. The report should not contain code.
Instead, students should present the algorithms as well as the idea in your
implementation.

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 Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology
Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

5 Plagiarism
Similarity less than 30% in MIPS code is allowed. In other words, you
will get 0 for assignment if your answers are similar to another student’s more
than 30%. Note that, we will use the MOSS tool developed by Stanford for
checking similarity (https://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/).

6 Rubric for evaluation

6.1 Friendly interface - 2 points
Students can design and implement an amicable user interface so that
players can play easily without any confusion (2 points).
Students can design and implement a friendly user interface; however,
players face some difficulties when playing the game (1.5 points).
Students can design and implement a user interface, but it is not friendly,
or players need to do several steps for one move (1 point).
Student can design and implement a user interface, but it fails to allow
playing (0.5 points).

6.2 Application implementation - 6 points

Students can implement an excellent application without any errors found
(5.0 - 6 points).
Students can implement a good application with some minor errors, but
players do not need to restart the application to continue (4.0 - 5.0 points).
Students can implement the application with some errors that prevent
players from playing the game (2.0 - 4.0 point).
Students cannot implement the application so that players can play/run
(0 - 2.0 points).

6.3 Report - 2 points

Students write such an excellent report that others can understand with-
out any difficulty (2 points).
Students write a good report but it’s quite simple or lack of some infor-
mation to clarify the implementation (1.0 - 1.5 points).
Students write a report with a lot of code embedded without any expla-
nation (0.5 - 1.0 points).
Students with no report submitted (0 point).

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 Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology
Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

References
[1] Wikipedia, “Battleship (game).” [Online]. Available: https://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship (game)

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