6.005  Elements of Software Construction

Please find the list of nominees and winners here.

Hi students,

Congratulations again on a job well done! We enjoyed playing all of your MUDs and were impressed by your diverse creativity. We also wanted to specially recognize again those groups that won an award:

Best software design: Group 03 - Syed Raza, Abdul Munir, Maciej Pacula
Best gameplay: Group 08 - Kevin Luu, Brandon Yoshimoto, Ruitian Lang
Best extension: Group 17 - Reid Kleckner, Gregory Vargas, Katherine Redfield
Most artistic: Group 36 - Tammy Ngai, Xudan Liu, Hout Nga

As you saw, the competition was tough in each category, and everyone really exceeded our expectations. Great job again.

We just have a few quick reminders for what's remaining:

- project 6c, due today by 5:00pm. We changed our normal format for this project so that you weren't burdened with both the code and the write-up for the same deadline. We hope that's been helpful. Make sure to both commit your write-up to your group's repository and put a printout in your group TA's box. Also note that your write-up should include the transcript from task 7, so make sure to make a transcript if you don't have one.

- final lab notebooks, due today by 5:00pm. We need them for calculating final grades, so make sure your TA has yours. This week's tasks were just lecture 22 feedback and project 6 personal reflection. If you already turned yours in, you can do this on looseleaf paper or by emailing your TA.

- project 6 grading meetings. Be on the lookout for an email from your group TA about this. We need to hold all the meetings by the end of the day tomorrow. Note that you're meeting with your group TA, who may not be your normal section TA, and that all members of your group should be there.

- course evaluation, due tomorrow. Right now, only a little more than 20% of you have responded. Please take the 5-15 minutes to fill this out if you haven't already: 6.005 course evaluation. We can't stress enough how much these help, both for the staff and for future 6.005 students. And, as Professor Jackson mentioned, we read every single thing you all write.

Once the above are done, you're officially finished with 6.005! It was a lot of work, but we hope it was both educational and enjoyable. On behalf of all the TAs, it was a pleasure working with you all this semester. Good luck with finals, and have a terrific summer!

- the TAs

Hi students,

We'd like to remind everyone that project 6b is due *at the latest* by tomorrow at 11:59pm. We also want to make it explicit that, unlike what some of you may be assuming, there will *not* be any grace period for this deadline. This may mean you should consider the deadline to be an hour earlier.

Very soon after 11:59pm, the TAs will be checking out each group's code, and if it doesn't compile, we'll revert to the latest version that does. This means it's vital that you commit working code long before the deadline, and make sure that you don't commit buggy code that still compiles near the deadline.

To clarify the spec, note that this deliverable includes task 7. This means that, along with your code (and an XML file), you should make sure to commit a transcript to your repository by the deadline. The transcript must be plaintext, but you can also include an HTML transcript if you like (just make sure it's readable simply by double-clicking the HTML file).

We'll be reading the transcripts and playing each MUD in order to determine which groups to nominate for awards. However, you are welcome to nominate yourself also; sometime before the deadline, or soon after, you can email your group TA to do so. Make sure to include a few sentences (max) on why your group deserves an award.

As the project page says, we'll be holding a project fair for Wednesday's class. This will take place in the normal room at the normal time; please don't be late. Among other things, we'll demo many or all of the nominated MUDs and announce the winners. The TAs are also preparing a surprise (that even the professors don't know about), so hopefully you'll get to see that too. =)

There are two important things you should do for the project fair:

- Bring a laptop (if you don't have one, don't worry); and
- Be prepared to give a very short speech about your MUD and demo it, in case you're nominated for an award!

We're definitely looking forward to trying out all of your MUDs. Keep up the hard work -- you guys are almost there. See you Wednesday!

- the TAs

Hi students,

Sorry for the delay, but I've finally finished the set of client code that I mentioned earlier. It consists of HTML, Javascript and CSS files that should make your life easier. It's similar to the original ChatBox.html page in functionality, but has space for an image built-in, and provides Javascript methods to set/replace that image, as well as to redirect the user to another URL, etc.

We've also released an example MUD (that uses this new client code) for you to play around with. It meets the full spec, along with a few additional commands to take, drop and give items, as well as a minor extension for items having weights and players being limited to the weight they can carry. If any of you are uncertain about portions of the spec, hopefully this answers your questions.

Finally, we've changed the central server to support extra libraries beyond the JRE and JUnit libraries. Just put any additional JAR files into a top-level "lib/" folder and commit them; the central server will then use those JARs when it builds your MUD.

Further information on all of this, and links to the code and example MUD, can be found on a new "Updates" section to the assignment page: http://web.mit.edu/6.005/www/project6/assignment.html#updates. If you have questions on any of this, please check the forums as usual, and post there. We'll try to get back to you ASAP.

We know this is a large project, and hopefully many of you have made good progress so far. I and possibly some other TAs may hold some long office hours tomorrow evening to help; we'll email out if we do. Good luck, and keep working hard!

- the TAs