Compsci 101, Fall 2017, Assignment 2 - Totem poles

See the howto pages for details on creating projects, files, and so on. This page describes the assignment.

(image from Wikimedia, public domain)

In this assignment you will create variations of heads for totem poles. You'll do this by creating variations of eyes, hair, noses, mouths, hats, etc and then create a head by putting all the parts together. The heads will be generated by using functions and print statements. You will then build totem poles that have several heads on them, even randomly generating totem poles.

What is a totem pole? According to Wikipedia Totem Poles are "monumental sculptures" largely from the Pacific Northwest.

It is very important that you pay strict attention to the rules of the assignment such as the naming of files, modules, etc. You will not get credit for this assignment otherwise.

|||||||||||| ___ ___ / \ / \ o || o \___/ \___/ | | | \____/ | | | \__________/ |||||||||||| ___ ___ / \ / \ o || o \___/ \___/ | | | \____/ | | | \__________/ |||||||||||| ___ ___ / \ / \ o || o \___/ \___/ | | | \____/ | | | \__________/ ||||||||||| __ ___ /o \ / o\ || \___/ \___/ | | | \____/ | | | \__________/ |||||||||||| ___ ___ / \ / \ o||o \___/ \___/ | | | \____/ | | | \__________/ |||||||||||| ___ ___ / \ / \ o || o \___/ \___/ | | | \____/ | | | \__________/

Here are two sample three-head totem poles from an old assignment. NOTE: These sample totem poles may not be the correct width, and may not follow the specs of your assigment. Who knows, maybe we will be able to combine functions from all the totem pole programs in this course to create a mixing/matching/smashing/mashing to create the ultimate totem pole! To ensure these match ups will work, you must conform to totem standards as described in the totem howto pages. Be sure to read those pages carefully to understand the constraints in the functions and module you write. It's important to satisfy the standards, but it's important to have fun making totem poles as well. This assignment is designed so that you'll be able to demonstrate your understanding of writing and calling functions, returning values from functions, and adhering to design standards. It's also designed so that you can demonstrate some creativity, one of the important aspects of creating computational artifacts. While you're being creative, you'll need to design your program so that it can interact with other creators, part of understanding how programs interoperate when they're scaled up beyond being used by one person.

Requirements

• You must turn in a Python module named HeadPoles.py which has methods that conform to the totem standards defined in the howto pages.
• You should write at least twenty part functions, four part types must have at least three choices (for example, three of the 20 part functions might be three eye choices: eye_slanted, eye_wideOpen, and eye_wink). Of the twenty part functions, three must be beard choices.
  
  NOTE: You do not have to implement every type of part function, but should have enough to make some heads. For example you could probably not implement sides and still make some very nice heads.
• Each part function you write must return a string that is fifteen characters wide. (see the howto page for examples).

• You should write a function named totemHeads that will print three "heads", one on top of another, where a "head" is a distinct part of the totem pole your program creates. Each of the three heads your Python function totemHeads generates should be different.
• You should also write a function randomHeads as described in the howto pages that prints three heads, one on top of each other, with each generated randomly. The randomHeads function must also randomly include a beard or no beard.
• Include the if __name__ == "__main__" boilerplate in HeadPoles.py so that when the program is run, it calls both totemHeads and randomHeads.
• You must have a comment for each function you write describing what that function does, in addition to a comment at the top of the file with your name.

Your grade will be based on how well your program conforms to the totem standards and whether it prints a three-head totem pole from a function named totemHeads, followed by another three-head totem pole from a function named randomHeads that is randomly generated.

Submission

• Submit the following with Ambient/Eclipse or Websubmit to assign2-totem:

  • your HeadPoles.py module

  • one run of your program by copy/pasting the output into a text-file you create whose name is myRuns.txt (don't worry about the .txt suffix). You can create an empty text file in eclipse and then copy and paste the output from the console into this file.

• Fill out the README form on the assignment page.