CPE 101:
Fundamentals of Computer Science 1

The Hangman Game

Hangman is a two player game word game where one player chooses a word and the other tries to figure out what the word is by guessing letters in it. In this game the role of the first player (who chooses the word) will be played by the computer.

The play goes as follows: The computer will guess a word and show it to the player as a series of dashes, one for each letter in the word. The player is then asked to guess a letter. If the letter is in the word, any blanks corresponding to that letter are filled in. If the letter is not in the word, the player moves one step closer to losing. This is indicated by adding another body part to a stick figure hanging from a gallows. If the full figure is completed before the word is completely guessed, the player is dead and, thus, loses. (Children's games are often such sweet, gentle activities, aren't they?)

Some Helper Files

To help you along, the following classes are provided:

Dictionary.java

• This provides a dictionary of words for the Hangman game to use.
• Its only public method is:

  public static String getRandomWord()

  • returns a random string from the dictionary.

• Everything in the dictionary is static, so it need not be instantiated.

HangedMan.java

• This is a class for creating player scoreboards for a hangman game, complete with appropriately imperiled stick figures.
• Because there could be versions of the game with more than one player, HangedMan must be instantiated for each player.
• Its public methods are:

  public void drawPicture()

  • draws the current image.

  public void drawWord(String word, boolean[] guessedLetters)

  • accepts the word in question for this round and a boolean array where the value true represents a letter (correct or not) that has already been guessed;
  • shows the current state of the word, with correctly guessed letters filled in and each as-yet-unguessed letter represented by an underscore.

  public void increaseBadness()

  • moves the player one step closer to doom.

  public boolean isDead()

  • returns true if the player is now dead.

You should just compile and use these two classes as they are. Do not edit them! In theory, you should be able to use them from just the information provided above but, if you are interested in how either of these work, do feel free to look at their implementation.

Your Task

Write a program, Hangman.java, that will do the following:

• Play Hangman with the user until the player does not answer "y" (for "yes") to the "Play again?" question.
• For each new round, choose a new word, clear out all previous guesses, and restore the player to a state of full health.
• Within a round, for each letter guessed, your program must:
  • Show the current state of the player's health. (Call drawPicture() for the current player to display the appropriate picture.)
  • Show the current state of the word. (Call drawWord() with appropriate parameters to display the state of the word for the current player.)
  • Get a new guessed letter from the user. Your program must insist on a letter, and it must not allow the player to guess the same letter twice. The remedy in case of failure, is to point out the error and ask again.
  • Report whether or not the letter was found in the string.
    • If it was found, check to see if the player has won (i.e., have all the word's letters been guessed).
    • If not, increase the badness for the current player.
      • If the player has any body parts remaining to be risked, the play continues.
      • If the player is dead, the round ends.
• At the end of a complete round (winning or death of the player), the program should:
  • draw the final state of the player's health (draw the picture again),
  • say what the word was, and
  • either congratulate winners or console losers.
• After each round, the program should ask the player whether s/he wants to play again.

Some hints:

• You will need to do some keyboard input here since I would like you to run this under DOS and on Central Unix. In order to do this, you must use a package that gives you a Keyboard class to do it. Download the file Keyboard.class to put into a cs1 folder. Here is the Keyboard.class. I will provide some instructions to access commonly needed methods. You should play around a little with this class before you use it in your program. You will not need to compile this class, it is already in bytecode (a .class file). You can't really look at the Java code because it is not provided. You should not "open" it, but "save" it to your directory named cs1 to put inside your Hangman directory. Create a directory called "cs1" and put the Keyboard class in it. Then put that cs1 directory inside the directory where you design your Hangman programs. You can import it and use it. Here are two commonly needed methods and how you might try to use them:

  public static String Keyboard.readString() // This will read a string from the keyboard and return it to you.

  public static String Keyboard.readInt() // This will read an integer from the keyboard and return it to you.

• Be sure to take time to design your game before you start coding. It is strongly recommended that you play a few rounds of Hangman on paper with a friend or classmate, and make note of how the game proceeds. What will your program need to do? What methods and variables will you need to accomplish it? How will you go about it?
• Maintain a boolean array to keep track of which letters have been guessed. The drawWord() method requires that you pass it such an array; you may find other uses for it (e.g., to check for duplicates). Remember (from the Cipher Lab, and other class activities) how you can use the distance from a given character (c) to the letter 'a' in a number of interesting ways.
• Keep the secret word as a String. (Again, drawWord() requires this.) A review of the String methods may prove useful (see your textbook appendices or other Java references). You can select particular characters from a String by using the charAt() method from the String class. You can check if a character is contained in a String by using the indexOf() method.
• Take advantage of some of the Character class methods to help manage letters vs. non-letters and upper- vs. lower-case letters. (Again, look in the Appendices or other Java references.)

Sample Output

% java Hangman
I'm thinking of a word.  It has 4 letters.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |         
        |         
        |         
        |         
        |________ 

        ____

Guess? e
I'm sorry, there is no 'e'.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |    O    
        |         
        |         
        |         
        |________ 

        ____

Guess? s
I'm sorry, there is no 's'.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |    O    
        |    |    
        |         
        |         
        |________ 

        ____

Guess? g
I'm sorry, there is no 'g'.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |    O    
        |    |    
        |    |    
        |         
        |________ 

        ____

Guess? a
I'm sorry, there is no 'a'.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |    O    
        |   /|    
        |    |    
        |         
        |________ 

        ____

Guess? l
I'm sorry, there is no 'l'.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |    O    
        |   /|\   
        |    |    
        |         
        |________ 

        ____

Guess? m
I'm sorry, there is no 'm'.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |    O    
        |   /|\   
        |    |    
        |   /     
        |________ 

        ____

Guess? w
I'm sorry, there is no 'w'.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |    O    
        |   /|\   
        |    |    
        |   / \   
        |________ 
I'm sorry, you seem to have died.
The word was "tonk"

Again? yes
I'm thinking of a word.  It has 6 letters.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |         
        |         
        |         
        |         
        |________ 

        ______

Guess? m
I'm sorry, there is no 'm'.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |    O    
        |         
        |         
        |         
        |________ 

        ______

Guess? M
You have already guessed 'm'.
Guess again: m
You have already guessed 'm'.
Guess again: 8
I'm sorry, '8' is not a letter.
Guess again: g
I'm sorry, there is no 'g'.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |    O    
        |    |    
        |         
        |         
        |________ 

        ______

[... In the interest of space, I'll skip a bit ...]

Guess? a
There is a letter 'a'.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |    O    
        |   /|\   
        |    |    
        |   /     
        |________ 

        fia_co

Guess? s
There is a letter 's'.
        ______    
        |    |    
        |    O    
        |   /|\   
        |    |    
        |   /     
        |________ 
Congratulations, you got "fiasco!"

Again? n		(Thinking, "That was just too close...")

%

Submitting Your Work

Use the "handin" facility available from your Central Unix account on Polylog1 to submit your game file:

• Hangman.java (your source code)

It is expected that your source code will contain full internal documentation. Use the standard comment block at the beginning of the program for your design specifications and other general information. Use comments throughout your programs to clarify to anyone reading your program what you are doing at each step along the way. If you have additional comments to make, you may submit a supplemental README document, in plain text format, but its existence must be documented in the program file you submit.

You are not to edit either of the two files you were given and, thus, you should not submit copies of those. Your code must run with your instructor's copy of those files.

Instructions about handin are given on preceeding pages on this site. You will submit to the "Pgm5" folder by 9 pm, Wednesday of the 9th week.