James

James Games: War!

Jan 022012

Now that I have a deck of cards built, it’s time to write a game. The first game I’ll write will be war, because it’s the simplest game I know.

Here are the rules:

A standard deck is divided evenly between two players.
Each player draws their top card to play.
The player with the highest cardvalue wins (aces are high).
- The winner keeps both cards played and adds them to the bottom of his stack.
If both players draw cards of equal value, the players go to “war.”
- Each player lays three cards face down.
  - If a player runs out of cards during a “war,” then he may play his last card as his face-up card.
- The players choose a card from the three to turn face up.
- The higher card wins, with the winner adding all of the cards to the bottom of his hand.
- If both players choose cards of equal value, they go to “war” again.
The player to collect all the cards in the deck wins.

Proper Prompting with System.Console

Programming No Responses »

Dec 302011

Today as I was designing the object model for War (see: James Games), I decided to write a small console application to help with some testing. Early in the process, I had to deal with the typical task of getting user-input. Typical code for getting input looks something like this:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Console.WriteLine("How many players?");
    int numberOfPlayers = int.Parse(Console.ReadLine());
    Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Creating game for {0} players...", numberOfPlayers));

    // More code...
}

Building a Deck of Cards

Programming 2 Responses »

Dec 212011

In my last article, I defined a deck of cards as “a complete set of cards,” but it’s really not that simple. Though most games require one card of each face & suit combination (as in a standard 52-card deck), not all of them do. Some games, such as Mille, require multiple decks whereas other games, such as Spanish 21, require some of the standard cards to be removed. Therefore, to build “deck” functionality, we need:

A way to maintain an arbitrary list of cards.
An abstract way to supply an initial set of cards to the deck.
A method for shuffling the cards. Continue reading »

James Games

Programming 2 Responses »

Dec 202011

I’ve decided that in 2012 I’d like to do some technical blogging. I’ve been writing software since I was in high school and I fully expect coding to be a lifelong hobby and an occasional profession. This series of blog posts, and the software I’ll be developing along the way, will serve as a framework to help me continue to enjoy my passion for software development.

To get things started with blogging, I’ve decided to create an open source project on GitHub. The project will be a set of libraries for writing card games using C# and the Microsoft .NET Framework. I’m calling the project “James Games” (pardon my lack of creativity). The goal of James Games is to serve as a vehicle for:

Having fun.
Learning and applying good design.
Exploring technology that are new (to me).

The moral side of murder

Musings No Responses »

Oct 082010

The video below features Michael Sandel of Harvard University teaching a course on Justice.

In the first part of this video, we are presented with four moral dilemmas:

First Moral Dilemma: You are the driver of a trolley car.

You are the driver of a trolley car traveling 60mph towards a group of five workers working on the track. You try to stop only to learn the breaks are out. You know for sure that if you crash into the five workers they will all die. You notice a side track on which a single worker is working. Your steering wheel works and it is possible for you to divert the trolley onto the side track and miss the five workers but if you do that then you are sure you will kill the one worker. So you have the choice: Do you kill the five or the one?

Sandel asks the audience what they would do. The overwhelming majority say they would kill the one person to save the five. Continue reading »