05-830, User Interface Software, Spring, 1998.

Battleship Game Benchmark Description

Ann Sluzhevsky

Introduction

This is a simple interface for playing the Battleship game. It features direct manipulation, simple animation and simple sound.

The interface allows the user to play the Battleship game with the computer as the opponent. All user actions and commands are issued with the help of a mouse. This is a rather simple game similar to Minesweeper on MS Windows or Macintosh. (I was only able to find some non-commercial Java implementations of Battleship on the WWW).

This benchmark was chosen for several reasons. It features direct manipulation by allowinng the user to drag and drop ships onto the playfield. The drag and drop feature must have a constraint of being able to "snap" the ship on the grid of the field. The user should not just be able to place the ship starting in the middle of a cell. This constraint is representative of many other direct manipulation interfaces, such as the "Snap to Grid" options on drawing packages such as ClarisDraw.

Other features are animation and sound. When a ship is hit, the user sees the cell explode and when a ship is drowned there is a bigger explosion. These explosions are accompanied by sound..

Description