Description
Purpose
Think about Java Objects and how they communicate. Work with multiple classes and their constructors. Work with examples of the has-a
relationship, Association, Aggregation, Composition between objects.
Description
For this exercise, we will be considering the implementation of a simple guitar simulation. Simulation is the basis of many games, but it also has
important industrial applications.
Our goal is to become familiar and comfortable with the notion that Object Oriented Programming is about Objects communicating and
interacting. Recall that Java Objects in general have fields (also called attributes, instance variables, or properties) which constitute their state,
and methods which constitute their behaviors. These Objects are instances of Java Classes, which have fields (and constructors) to specify the
Object’s state, and methods to specify the Object’s behaviors. When a property of one object is a reference to yet another object, we say the
first object is in a has-a relationship with the second, and there is an Association between them. More specifically, there is an Aggregation
relationship.
Background
Consider a piece of wire or cord or wire with one end tied or fastened to a wooden board. The other end of the wire is wrapped around a nail or
peg embedded in the same board, so the wire is tight. If the peg is somehow turned with fingers or a wrench, the wire wraps further around the
peg and the wire becomes tighter. We can simulate this situation with Java code.
The peg will be represented by a simple Java object that can be turned. Therefore, we have a Peg class that has a turn method. A Peg has a wire
wrapped around it. Note the phrase, “has a”, in that sentence. A Peg has-a Wire. In other words, a Peg has an attribute which is an instance
variable that holds a reference to a Wire object.
A Wire object can tighten. Hence the Wire class has a changeTension method that increases the Wire’s tension attribute by a certain amount
(or decreases it if the amount is negative). So we can change the tension of a wire, but what else can we do with it? We can pluck the wire, or in
other words, we can tweak it with our finger to make it make sound. So the Wire class has a pluck method. What else do we know about a
Wire? The Wire is attached to the board. This attachment is an attribute rather than a behavior. To understand why, think of a person who is
married to their spouse. We say the person has a spouse, and we speak of their marital status. The behavior or act of having a wedding and
getting married is a different concept. Marital status is a property. So we will say the Wire has an attachment to the board, or even better, a
Wire has-a Board, the same way we might say a person has a spouse. This means one of the instance variables of the Wire class will be a
reference to a Board object.
Now, it turns out the part of the Board where the Wire is attached is thin like the membrane of a drum. So when the Wire is plucked and it
vibrates, the Board makes a sound that corresponds to the tension of the Wire. The Board class has a soundNote method that takes a
parameter corresponding to the tension property of the wire.
What should a Peg’s turn method do? We need to specify the amount by which the Peg is turned, so the turn method needs a parameter to
correspond to that amount, which can be positive or negative. The Peg’s turn method would contain one line of Java code that simply calls its
Wire’s changeTension method to change the Wire’s tension by that amount. We could say that when the Peg’s turn method is called, the Peg
sends a message to the Wire that it should change its tension (the Peg calls one of the methods of the Wire).
Our simple guitar has (is Composed of) six Peg, Wire pairs (one pair shown below) and a Board. The Composition relationship is a form of
Aggregation. Composition means consists-of, which is a stronger form of has-a. So the Guitar class has an array of Wires, an array of Pegs, and
a Board as attributes.
Board object
Wire object Peg object
The Wire vibrates at a certain frequency corresponding to its tension, and when the corresponding Peg is turned, the wire’s frequency changes.
We will keep things really simple and consider the unit of turning a Peg the same as a unit of tension. For example, one of the behaviors of the
Guitar will be that turn(1,-2) will mean that the first Peg (that is, Peg 1, the first argument) is turned just enough in the loosening direction to
decrease the wire’s tension or vibrating frequency by two units (a decrease of 2, the -2 which is the second argument). We will call this second
argument the change-in-tension, or in other words, delta-tension. For now, our wires can have any tension, but wires with tensions less than
zero will be floppy, and when plucked they will sound like they have a tension of zero (no sound).
There are not many lines of code to write. The main work is to figure out what goes where, and which methods call which other methods.
You are given the following items:
1. UML for the objects in this guitar simulation (see below). The constructors (whose parameters are often used to initialize properties of
the object being constructed) are not mentioned in the UML so you will need to determine those yourself. Ask for help if you get stuck.
2. Java library Guitarlib.jar for the Board class, which you will download from blackboard. This will be the mechanism through which our
simulation activates the sound card on your computer. You will use this library (your Wire object’s vibrate method will call the Board
object’s soundNote method) but you are NOT expected to understand how the Board class works. You only need to know the
soundNote method is there, and you need to use that method at the appropriate place in the code. Follow the instructions from the
class to “add” the library into your project.
3. A Java source code file called SimpleSong.java containing a main method for testing your guitar simulation. Download this file from
Blackboard. When you run this file, you are playing a simple song on your guitar simulation. Feel free to change this file to make
different sound patterns, but note that at this point our guitar doesn’t yet have frets, so we will be limited in the notes we can produce,
although you could turn the Peg to create different sounds. We will work on removing those limitations in a future assignment.
4. Constant declarations in Midi class (also available from GuitarLib). You will use these constants into the appropriate place in your
Guitar.java file. Alternatively, you can use Midi’s GUITAR_TABLE which is an array of those constants – up to you. These constants are
just integers that correspond to the tensions and therefore vibrating frequencies of the six wires.
Your assignment is to implement the simulation by writing Java Classes, Guitar, Wire and Peg according to the UML. Format your code with
proper indentation and other formatting, using the coding conventions of the first Hybrid Activity for guidance. Test plan and external
documentation are not required for this exercise, but in future labs they will be required.
Hints:
1. You will create only one Board object. One attribute (instance variable) of the Guitar class is a reference to the one Board object. The
constructor of the Guitar class will pass the reference of this Board object as a parameter to the Wire constructor as each wire is created
a total of six times, so that in its constructor, each Wire can copy this reference into its Board property. Your Guitar constructor will
create (that is, new Board(), new Wire(…), etc, all of the objects the guitar is composed of.
2. You will have only six Wire objects, and six Peg objects, all created in the constructor for the Guitar class. The Wire objects are created
one by one, and each is passed as an argument to the corresponding Peg constructor as the pegs are created, so that each Peg object in
its constructor can set its Wire attribute.
3. In Guitar.java, the methods take an integer N as a parameter, and then those methods need to do something with the N
th object (that is
call a method on the N
th object). You will probably be using N as the index into an array. You will discover that often your methods are
implemented with a single method call on another object. The main point of this assignment is for you to think about which objects
should invoke which methods on other objects.
Submission
The submission process for this assignment is the same as before:
1. demonstrate your simulation to your lab instructor.
2. submit a zip archive of your sources folder (i.e. ‘src’ in Eclipse): Lastname_Firstname_CST8132_Lab3.zip
Grading Scheme
Successful sound demo: 7 marks; Readability: 3 marks
UML (next page)
UML
