Text Based Games

1 NIM

Learn It

Nim was one of the earliest Computer Games ever created.
In fact, a special computer called the NIMROD was created for the sole purpose of playing the game.
There are numerous variants of the game, so we'll start off with one of the simplest - The 100 game
Have a read of the rules, so you understand the game

Code It

Let's start with some basics. Create a new Python file called The-100-Game.py
If we're going to have a two player game, we'd best let our players state their names and save these values using variables.

playerOne = input('What is the name of Player One? ')
playerTwo = input('What is the name of Player Two? ')

Run It

Run your code (Ctrl+s then F5)
Once you've typed in some test names, make sure it's all working fine by getting the interpreter to print the names.

print(playerOne)
print(playerTwo)

Code It

Now let's give the players some instructions.

print('Welcome to The 100 Game.')
print('You will each take turns to choose a number between 1 and 10.')
print('The first person to reach 100 is the winner')

It would be nice if we could personalise this output a little, by using the players names.
In python, you can string formatting syntax to print variable values within your strings.
Try replacing the first print line with the following

print('Welcome to The 100 Game %s and %s'%(playerOne,playerTwo))

The %s within the print statements are placeholders, where the variable values will be placed. The s indicates that the value will be a string.
At the end of the print statement (but inside the brackets), we place the variable names, whose values we want in the string.
Notice that the variable names have brackets around them as well - in Python, when we place items in brackets like this, it is called a tuple.
e.g (1,2,3,4) or ('abc','def','ghi') or (foo,bar,baz)

Learn It

For the game to work, we're going to need to keep asking each player for a number, and keep track of the total, until it reaches 100, at which point the game should end.
This looks like a job for a while loop

Code It

Save your original The-100-Game.py file.
Create a new file called whileLoops.py
A while loop will keep running until a given condition is met.
The basic structure is…

while something:
    do something

Badge It - Silver

Try each of the following while loops - One at a time
Write down what each of the loops does using comments in the code..

##This loop ....
while True:
    print('Computer Science is the best')

##This loop ....
foo = 0
while foo < 10:
    print(foo)
    foo += 1

##This loop ....
answer = 'yes'
while answer == 'yes':
    answer = input('Shall I continue? ')
print('I have stopped')

##This loop ....
answer = 'yes'
while answer != 'no':
    answer = input('Shall I continue? ')
print('I have stopped')

##This loop ....
x = 1
while x < 1000:
    print(x)
    x += x

##This loop ....
x = 0
y = 1
while x < 100:
    x = x + y
    y = x - y
    print(x)

Take this self-assessment quiz after you have uploaded your work.

Badge It - Gold

Create a while loop that asks for user input and then prints out that user input until the user types exit.
Create a while loop that prints out all the triangle numbers up to 100
Create a while loop that asks the user to enter a number, and tells them to keep guessing until they choose the number 7.
Take this self-assessment quiz after you have uploaded your code of the three while loops.

Code It

Open up your The-100-Game.py file again.
Our while loop will need to keep going until the players have a number totaling 100, so we'll need a variable to store the total number in.

total = 0
while total < 100:

Let's start off simply and just ask for a number between 1 and 10, within the loop, and then add the answer onto total.

total = 0
while total < 100:
    answer = input('Give me a number between 1 and 10')
    total = total + answer

Run It

Run your code and note any errors you get.
What do you think the problems might be?

Code It

You assigned the variable total a value of 0
Then, within your while loop, you're trying to add on the user input.
Let's see what the problem might be.
Type this into your interpreter.

total = 0
type(total)

Now try this

answer = input('Give me a number')

Now give the interpreter a number, and then type:

type(answer)

Learn It

input() always returns a string.
Even when a number is typed in, it is interpreted as a string.
You can't add strings to integers (in Python), so we need to convert the string into an integer before we add it on.

Code It

total = 0
while total < 100:
    answer = input('Give me a number between 1 and 10')
    answer = int(answer)
    total = total + answer

While this code works well, and is easy to understand, it can easily be condensed.

total = 0
while total < 100:
    total += int( input('Give me a number between 1 and 10'))

If you completely understand the second version, then use it. Otherwise, stick with the first.

Run It

Run your game.
It should allow you to type in numbers, and then stop when the total reaches 100, but there's very little feedback from the computer.

Code It

Add in a print statement so that you can see what the total is each time.

Badge It - Platinum

To get your platinum badge, you're going to need to give a little more feedback to the user.
You'll need to use all the following lines of code, and put them in the correct place (and order) in your script, to get it working

playerOneTurn=True
print('%s WINS'%(playerTwo))
print('%s WINS'%(playerOne))
print('%s - pick a number from one to ten'%(playerTwo))    
print('%s - pick a number from one to ten'%(playerOne))
if playerOneTurn == True:
if playerOneTurn == False:
else:
else:
playerOneTurn = not playerOneTurn

The game should keep track of who is the current player, prompt each player by name to make their turn, and congratulate the winner of the game at the end.
Take this self-assessment quiz after you have uploaded your code of your finished 100 game.