Homework: Ruby Hangman

Purpose

More experience with Ruby, including objects
Learn new features on your own (e.g. file IO, default parameters)

Preparation

You may want to review how the game is played.
Download my sample word file (right-click and choose Save link as…).

To work with command line arguments, read:

Note: Some students have identified an issue running ruby programs that use gets within the Git Bash shell. You may want to use another command line (e.g. Windows PowerShell).

Lesson

For this lesson you will create the game of hangman. For simplicity, we will not display the “hangman” graphic. The user interaction for this program is described below, with figures. Additional requirements (to exercise specific features of Ruby) are described under Specific Requirements.

When the program starts, display a number of underscores equal to the number of letters in the word, and a prompt to enter a letter or some character to guess (I used ‘0’).

Examples

Start of hangman game:

THE WORD
_ _ _ _ _ _

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: 

A winning game with all the letters filled:

THE WORD
_ _ _ _ _ _

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: g


THE WORD
_ _ _ _ _ _
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): g

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: t


THE WORD
_ _ _ _ _ _
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): gt

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: b


THE WORD
b _ _ _ _ _
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): gt

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: a


THE WORD
b a _ a _ a
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): gt

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: n


THE WORD
b a n a n a
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): gt

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: b


THE WORD
b a n a n a
Congratulations, you win!

Winning the game by guessing the complete word:

THE WORD
_ _ _ _ _ _

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: p


THE WORD
_ p p _ _ _

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: 0

What's the word?
apple
That is correct, you win!

The game is lost if there are too many bad letter guesses. In the hangman game, the face, body, arms, and legs would be drawn. For our game we will allow 6 bad guesses.

THE WORD
_ _ _ _ _ _

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: b

THE WORD
_ _ _ _ _ _
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): b

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: l

THE WORD
_ _ _ _ _ _
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): bl

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: g

THE WORD
_ _ _ _ _ _
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): blg

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: t

THE WORD
_ _ t t _ _
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): blg

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: i

THE WORD
_ i t t _ _
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): blg

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: y

THE WORD
b a n a n a
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): blgy

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: p

THE WORD
b a n a n a
Bad guesses (only 4 left!): blgyp

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: o

Sorry, too many bad guesses!

Enter 'q' to quit or any other character for another game:

Another way to lose is to enter a guess that is incorrect:

THE WORD
_ _ _ _

Enter your next letter or '0' to guess the answer: 0

What's the word?
pear
That is not correct, you lose!

After a win or loss, prompt to play again or quit:

THE WORD
k i w i
Congratulations, you win!

Enter 'q' to quit or any other character for another game: q

Your display does not need to match the examples exactly.

Rubric

This lesson is worth 40 points. Please read these requirements carefully.

6 points Create a separate class named Words in a file named words.rb to store word choices:

Points	Metric
2	Load words from a file into an array
2	Allow words to be on separate lines or on one line separated by a space
2	Include a method to randomly pick a word from the list.

28 points Correctly operating game with:

Points	Metric
4	Display of underscores, prompts, guesses
4	Game correctly determines if letters are in word, updates word and guesses display accordingly
1	Convert guesses to lowercase, to avoid losing due to capitalization
2	Game is won if word is filled
2	Game is won if person guesses word
2	Game is lost if person guesses incorrectly
2	Game is lost if too many bad guesses
5	User can choose to continue playing or quit. Word is chosen randomly.
2	Use a default parameter for the filename. For example, `hangman = Hangman.new`. uses the default parameter (in my case, `testWords.txt`), but I can do `hangman = Hangman.new "words.txt"` to specify another file.
4	Code includes comments and is modular (small methods, each has one “job” to do)
2	Follows simplicity of grading requirements, including the use of a command-line argument.

4 points Create a unit test for Words:

Points	Metric
2	Test loading the file
2	Test selecting a random word

2 points Discretionary (coding style/cleanliness, etc.)

Submit

For simplicity of grading, please:

Name your program hangman.rb
Name your test program words_test.rb
Name your words program words.rb
Be sure to use my words file (testWords.txt) as the default
Use relative pathnames for the words files. Do not include a complete path that will only work on your system.
Be sure to zip the .txt files along with your .rb file(s)
The grader should be able to play hangman by typing ruby hangman.rb or ruby hangman.rb "otherWords.txt" at the command line.
The grader should be able to run your tests by typing ruby words_test.rb at the command line.

Zip all your .rb and .txt files and submit on Canvas.

dgrisham.github.io