Tic-Tac-Python
I have been working on Python 3 tutorials on Codecademy. One of the projects was to write a terminal application in Python 3. I decided to go with a two player Tic-Tac-Toe game.
I made a Board class to manage the game state. The class had a two dimensional list to keep track of the nine spaces. Each row had a letter ‘a’, ‘b’, or ‘c’ which I kept track of with a dictionary. The columns were numbered ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’. I also kept track of which spaces were still valid with a dictionary to make validation simple.
I used the Python’s built-in “__repr__” method to print out a diagram of the board state.
I wrote a check_cats_game method to test if all of the spaces have been filled.
I used a check_winner method to check in every row, column and both diagonals for three of a given marker in a row.
I set up an is_valid_space method that used the dictionary that kept track of valid spaces. Any unused space returns True, used spaces return False, and invalid spaces that are not on the board return None.
I had a reset_board method that cleared the game state back to an empty board and reset the dictionary of valid spaces so users can play repeat games.
The final method was a set_space method that would take a player marker and set it to the correct position in the two dimensional array. It would also mark that space as no longer valid.
I wrote a get_binary_answer function to get the answer to a question with two options. This was useful for asking player one for their marker, either ‘x’ or ‘o’, and other yes and no questions. The function loops until the user picks one of the two valid options.
The game starts by displaying a greeting, a valid move list and prompting the user to chose a marker, either ‘x’ or ‘o’. I used the get_binary_answer function to clean up the code for this.
Then the game enters a while loop. This loop will continue until players finish the current game and chose not to start a new game. Each iteration of the loop switches between player one and player two as the current player.
The players are prompted for a space code that maps to one of the nine spaces. Each code has the row as a letter and the column as a number. The codes are ‘a1’, ‘a2’, ‘a3’, ‘b1’, ‘b2’, ‘b3’, ‘c1’, ‘c2’, and ‘c3’.
The player’s space code input is validated to make sure that it is an empty space on the board. If it is then, the code is used to mark that space on the board with the current player’s maker.
Then the check_winner board method is used to determine if the move resulted in three in a row for that player. If there is no winner and the board is not full the loop continues until either a player wins or the game ends in a draw.
Once a player has won or a cat’s game has been reached the result is displayed to the user. They are prompted to play another game. If they chose to play another game then they are also asked if they want to switch markers. I used the get_binary_answer function to avoid having to create the same while loops and error handling code to make sure a ‘y’ or ’n’ was inputted.
Once the player’s have decided to finish playing, the game exits the while loop and prints ‘Thanks for playing!’.
This project was a good way to practice Python 3 classes and handling user inputs. I found it satisfying to put a small application together that I could see running on my computer’s terminal.
Here is the link to the python file on my GitHub repository for the project:
https://github.com/aajungroth/tic-tac-python/blob/main/tic-tac-python.py
