theRiddler 0.1.2

Sample project for the lecture "Introduction to Python" of the HTWG Konstanz.

The Riddler is a project for learning purposes.

It is a sample project made for the upcoming lecture Einfuehrung in Python of the university HTWG Konstanz at Constance, Germany.

It consists of riddles the solution of which preferably require learning Python basics. The riddles are intended to be solved programmatically, and most of them can be solved by straightforward and short scripts. The solution sometimes will require the use of extra modules, which can all be downloaded from the internet.

The Riddler is designated to accompany the lecture and make the students apply and consolidate their theoretical knowledge without greater guidance and by play. After mastering the first few riddles, the application leads to the project itself and its distribution here on PyPI, and is then intended to encourage the students to revise and modify, and finally republish it for the following ones.

With this approach, the project is expected to result in the making of a sophisticated learning project, geared to the needs of the learners, and well tried and tested.

Getting Started

At the beginning, the project is handed out to the students in the form of an installer package (“.msi” file), for “mysterious” intentions.

Once they have solved the first riddles and end up here, The Riddler shall be downloaded over its PyPI-Homepage and the downloaded File has to be extracted. Subsequently it can be run by moving to the extracted folder and typing python theriddler in the shell.

Installing with Pip

It is also possible to install this project with pip from the shell by typing pip install theRiddler, but it is not meant to be installed this way for testing and development purposes.

Anyway, it could be started then by going into the directory where pip installed it in, and by directly running the “__main__.py” script from there.

Prerequisites

• The “setup.py” script is yet built with Setuptools.

• The Pillow or “PIL” (Python Imaging Library) module is used to display pictures, as the “PhotoImage” class from the built-in “Tkinter” module provides comparably lean functionalities.

• To run tests, Nose is required.

• The installer package handed out at the beginning is made with cx_Freeze. Therefore, another “setup.py” script is used. More information is provided in the attachment folder “misc” within the package.

• Some riddles require a valid connection to the internet. The connection is accomplished with certifi, beautifulsoup4 and urllib3.

Contributing

Please read the CONTRIBUTING file from the “misc” folder for details.

Versioning

The versioning is intended to be made after “Semver”. Check https://semver.org/.

The initial release was “theRiddler 0.1.0”, 21th February 2018.

License

The entire content of this project is “self-made”, pictures included.

The icon was created with a freeware version of the application “IcoFX” (v1.64).

The author waives any copyright for the content.

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Author

Etienne Martin,

student of the HTWG Konstanz, at the department of electrical engineering.

This project is part of the bachelor thesis created to achieve the bachelor of science degree.

Acknowledgments

• The conception of this project was inspired by http://www.pythonchallenge.com/. Some riddles resemble an adaptation of the ones found in the python challenge.

  Thanks to Nadav Samet, you can go visit his blog. “Because everyone needs a blog”.

• The “Gothon Trash Game” is an adaption and inspired by “Gothons from Planet Percal#25” from Zed Shaw’s book “Learn Python the Hard Way”, exercise 43.