A simply implemented web application representing the popular board game That's Life, which shows the consequences of the decisions we make in life and the fact that good decisions do not always lead to a series of good events, and vice versa.
To enjoy the charms of That's life, run the following command in the terminal
lein figwheel
and open your browser at localhost:3449. This will auto compile and send all changes to the browser without the need to reload. After the compilation process is complete, you will get a Browser Connected REPL.
The aim of the game is for players, using their skill and luck, to collect as many positive cards as possible, as well as fortune cards, while trying to avoid negative cards. The player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner.
The best way to learn the rules is to play. So, let's go.
At the beginning of the game, we need to enter the names of the players and press the Entry button.
After entering two or more players, we get a Start button. The maximum number of players is 6.
Now we see the players we entered and their pawns. Each player has his own pawn color. The third player is called Robot-Zika and he is actually a bot that plays automatically. For now, we won't worry too much about it, but more about the bot will be in one of the next sections.
Ok, we hit the Start button.
The game has started and we see the path of the cards consisting of 32 cards, not counting the start and finish cards. Pawns are placed on the start card. If there are 2-4 players in the game, the number of pawns each player has is 3, while if there are 5-6 players, each player has 2 pawns. Now it's time to explain what each card (and other elements of the board) mean.
This is a negative card, there are 18 of them in total and they are represented by the poison icon. Each card has one of the values between -1 and -10 and costs as many points as are indicated on it.
This is a positive card, there are 8 of them in total and they are represented with a potion icon. Each card has one of the values between 1 and 8 and scores as many points as are indicated on it.
This is a fortune card and there are 6 of them in total. Fortune cards convert the player's highest negative card into a positive card. If a player have serveral fortune cards, then the same number of negative cards are converted into positive cards. Should a player have more fortune cards than negative cards, the other fortune cards do not score.
When the negative card, thanks to the effect of the fortune card, turns into a positive card, and its icon changes, so it is no longer a poison but an antitoxin.
Last but not least are the guards. There are 8 of them in total and they are placed on all fortune cards and two positive cards at the beginning of the game. Guards represent a kind of protection for the player because thanks to them he can play his moves smarter, create tactics and avoid negative cards.
So let the games begin!
The player who makes the first move is determined by random selection and rolls the dice first. The number on the dice tells how many cards the player moves forward. Movement is always forward, players cannot go backwards. They then move one of their pawns or one of guards by that card number. The next player continues the game.
When playing a move, a player can move any of his pawns, but not any guard. A guard may only be moved if there is at least one pawn on that route card. This pawn can belong to any player. If there are only guards on a route card, none can be moved. Otherwise, any number of pawns and/or guards may be positioned on a card. If one of the pawns or a guards is moved onto the finish card, then the remaining points of the dice are not played.
When a pawn is moved from a route card and this route card is left unoccupied, the player must collect it. If the pawn was not on its own, the card stays where it is.
In the application, next to each player are shown the cards that the player has collected until that moment.
The game is over when all of the pawns have reached the finish card. Once a player has moved all of his pawns to the finish, he stops playing. The player's total number of points is calculated by adding up the values on his cards.
The player with the highest number of points is the winner.
Oh, it seems that human doesn't have a chance against a robot... 😉
When entering players, if the player's name starts with Robot-, the application will recognize that player as a robot. The robot's moves are played by a relatively simple function that first determines the robot's possible moves and then rendomly chooses one of them. So, the robot's moves are valid, but not always overly clever, so the above remark that a human has no chance against a robot is actually not always true. Adding some sophisticated artificial intelligence to Robot-Zika is my next step in further development.
ClojureScript now ships with a port of clojure.test in the form of cljs.test. It attempts to preserve most of the functionality provided by clojure.test along with enhancements for asynchronous testing in a single threaded environment. Most of the functionality is provided via macros as cljs.test relies on compiler reflection and static vars to provide most of its functionality.
Only file logic was tested. In order to run the tests, we need to have executed the lein figwheel command first, then after the figwheel server starts and shows the prompt, we enter in the prompt
(require 'thatslife.test-runner)
(thatslife.test-runner/run-all-tests)
and we see the test results.
The first step of further development is certainly making robots smarter. My idea is that the function that determines the robot's move, in addition to looking at possible moves, also determines which moves would bring the highest number of points and develops some kind of tactics for the next few moves.
In the official rules of this game, it is stated that, in addition to the basic, initial path of cards, for a more fun and dynamic game, there is also an option to mix the cards, so that the arrangement of positive, negative and fortune cards is random. This would introduce changes in the logic of some of the application's functions, but would make the game richer, so the 'Shuffle card' button is also part of future development.
[1] Higginbotham, D., 2015, Clojure for the Brave and True: Learn the Ultimate Language and Become a Better Programmer
[2] Sotnikov D., Brown S., 2021, Web Development with Clojure: Build Large, Maintainable Web Applications Interactively
[3] ClojureScript - Testing (https://clojurescript.org/tools/testing)
[4] Reagent: Minimalistic React for ClojureScript (https://reagent-project.github.io/)
[5] Introduction to ClojureScript and Reagent, Decypher Media (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq6ctyZBb0A)
[6] React without JavaScript: ClojureScript, Reagent, Figwheel (React Helsinki meetup, 23.10.2018), Codexpanse (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R07s6JpJICo)
[7] Thats Life! Board Game Review, Jeremy Reviews It (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSEdCEaAznw)
Copyright © 2014 FIXME
Distributed under the Eclipse Public License either version 1.0 or (at your option) any later version.