/codecademy-python-terminal-game

This portfolio project was created as part of Codecademy's Computer Science Career Path course. The Python terminal game I have created is a Tic-Tac-Toe game.

Primary LanguagePython

Computer Science Projects - Portfolio Project: Python Terminal Game

This portfolio project was created as part of Codecademy's Computer Science Career Path course.

Table of contents

Project Overview

"Welcome to the portfolio project in CS 101: Introduction to Programming! In this portfolio project, you will research, brainstorm, and build a basic terminal program of your choice for your friends and family to play with. After you finish building the program, you will create a blog post to share the program on a publication of your choice!" - Codecademy

Project objectives

  • Build a terminal program using Python.
  • Add at least one interactive feature using input().
  • Use Git version control.
  • Use the command line and file navigation.
  • Write a technical blog post on the project.

Python Terminal Game: Tic-Tac-Toe

For this particular project I decided to create a Tic-Tac-Toe game.

Screenshots

Game instructions:

Game instructions for Tic-Tac-Toe Python terminal game

Players taking turns:

Players taking turns in Tic-Tac-Toe Python terminal game

Overall scores:

Overall player scores and play again message in Tic-Tac-Toe Python terminal game

Process

  • Think of an idea for the python terminal game: Tic-Tac-Toe game.
  • Project brainstorming on how the game will work:
    • Game to be turn based for 2 players to play within a terminal.
    • Print out initial board game with instructions on how to play the game.
    • Get names of players and assign which player is using O (marker) and which player is using X (marker).
    • Play starts with each player taking turns stating location of where to place their marker.
    • After each turn, reprint board game to show where the placed markers are.
    • Check for when 3 matching markers are either in a row, column, or along a diagonal.
      • If yes, print winner information.
      • If all locations on board are full, print draw information.
      • If neither the above are true then continue the game with the next player taking their turn.
    • At the end of the game, get the answer as to whether players wish to play another round of the game.
      • If yes, reset game with same player information.
      • Otherwise end game.
    • Keep total score of overall wins for each player.
  • Set up a GitHub repository.
  • Set up Git version control.
  • Write Tic-Tac-Toe game program.
  • Refactor program.
  • Create blog post about project. (This README file is my post about the project I have created.)

Coding decisions

There are a number of decisions I made as to how to approach and code this game. So below is an explanation as to the what and why I wrote the code in the way that I did.

  • As there are 2 players in the game I created a class Player to handle the player's name, marker (X or O) and score.
  • Initialising the game overall is split into two parts - init_player() and init_game(). This is so that the game can be reset with init_game() with using the same players, if the players select that they wish to play another game.
  • The grid board is drawn by using Unicode box drawing (line-drawing) characters. This created a nicer boxed image for the board.
  • The use of a counter was used in several places in the program for the following reasons:
    • To determine whether player1 (odd counter number) or player2 (even counter number) is currently entering information.
    • check_won() is only called if counter >=5 as that's the minimum amount of moves used between player1 and player2 before the first player can obtain 3 markers in a line.
    • board_full = True when counter > 9 as that's the maximum amount of moves playable in a Tic-Tac-Toe game.
  • Error checking is done for:
    • Input of player's name: name is not empty or only whitespace.
    • Input of player's marker: marker is only X or O (upper or lower case are both accepted).
    • Input of marker position player_turn:
      • Position number from 1 to 9 only
      • Position also has to be empty (i.e. with no marker already).

What I learned

  • There are Unicode codes for drawing lines that are useful for creating grid drawings in a terminal.

  • How to return multiple variables.

  • \ enables a line to be split into multiple lines without causing syntax errors (for easier readability)

  • How to catch a value error with using:

    try:
  ...
except ValueError:
  ...

Potential improvements to program

  • Highlight the three markers that created the winning line.
    • This would make it more visually obvious which markers made the winning line.
    • Possible way of doing this, could be by changing the colour of the three winning markers when printed to the terminal screen.

Useful resources

Author

  • V. Tickner