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Is my computing NEA complex enough?

(For AQA A-level computer science) My idea was to program a multiplayer version of the retro game ‘Asteroids’, which would allow players on different computers to connect and play together. My teacher was unsure about this because he thought it wasn’t complicated enough to count as a ‘complex client-server model’. Would it be complex enough? If not, what does constitute a ‘complex client-server model’? Thanks :smile:

Reply 1

BeingBoring

Original post by matthewdg

I'm sure you've read the AQA specification for the NEA on their website:
https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/computer-science-and-it/as-and-a-level/computer-science-7516-7517/subject-content-a-level/non-exam-assessment-the-computing-practical-project
The trouble with words like 'complex' is that they can be very subjective, i.e. one teachers view of what something complex looks like might be completely different to another teachers view and they might mark the same thing quite differently..

However, if you take a look at this page they have a go at giving some definitions to it:
https://bournetocode.com/projects/AQA-A-NEA/pages/TechnicalSolution.html

If you look at their marking scheme then I'd say that what you are proposing probably falls into table B, whereas if you are looking for the best mark then you want to be coding something that sits in the table A definition...

You might be able to achieve what you want by thinking about how you'd go about recording the game statistics for a multi or single player game on a centralised server. How many seconds did a player survive for, how many shots did they fire, how many asteroids did they hit/destroy, their score, location, name, how much thrust did they use etc... Then you can store all of that on a database on a central server (via JSON interaction) which would give you your complex client-server model to create cutomised league tables based on any of those recorded metrics, who lasted the longest, who had the best hit percentage vs shots fired, least use of thrusters etc.

Just a thought... Good luck.

Reply 2

matthewdg

Ahh okay, its great to have another opinion. Thanks for the advice

Reply 3

BeingBoring

Original post by matthewdg

Ahh okay, its great to have another opinion. Thanks for the advice

No problem, you might be able to find a way to do it the way you want by just thinking about the client server interactions a bit more... Maybe you could make the multiplayer gameplay updates based on JSON database interactions, or maybe it's just that Asteroids isn't the game to do it with, there is another document here:
https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/computing/AQA-7517-NEA-GUIDE.PDF

Be careful as I'm not 100% sure that this applies to the current year, but it is interesting as towards the end it gives specific examples of games that are acceptable or not and gives reasons why, so might give you some ideas about how to adapt your original idea a bit, or go with something different... I'd have a read of the various docs and think of a few ways that you can adapt your idea and run them back past your teacher, hopefully you'll find something that they can agree is 'complex' enough :smile:

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Is my computing NEA complex enough?

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