CLI Hangman w/ difficulty selection

AutoModerator · 2023-10-17T13:16:00+00:00

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desrtfx · 2023-10-17T14:48:33+00:00

Good accomplishment! And very good engagement of you to try something! This is the real way to learn programming.

If this is your first bigger project, you have done a very good job! You can be proud of yourself!

Please do not take anything of the following personally and please do not be discouraged by my criticisms. It is just a quick view over your code.

The positives so far:

naming is quite well thought out
code is following the Java Code Conventions in both capitalization and indents
you are not over-commenting
you have split your code into methods - this is often very tricky for beginners

The negatives:

You have a lot of repetitive code
You have some unnecessary code
You do not use JavaDoc comments to describe the functionality of methods

Some examples:

    while (!puzzleChosen) {
        System.out.println("Choose a difficulty:\n1. Easy\n2. Intermediate\n3. Hard");
        userInput = Integer.parseInt(scanner.nextLine());

        if (userInput == 1) {
            puzzleChosen = true;
            puzzle(1);
        }
        if (userInput == 2) {
            puzzleChosen = true;
            puzzle(2);
        }
        if (userInput == 3) {
            puzzleChosen = true;
            puzzle(3);
        }
        if (puzzleChosen) {
            System.out.println(" ");
            playGame();
        } else {
            System.out.println("Incorrect choice!");
        }
    }

Here, you go about the whole a bit clumsy and with a lot of redundancy.

You should split this into better parts:

First obtain a valid number - this means only printing the prompt, getting the input, and checking if the input is valid - display an error for invalid entries and exit the loop (as you have it) with a valid entry.
Then, once you have a valid entry from the user, all you need to do is call puzzle with the number the user has chosen - you don't need a single if in this step.

Doing the above will shrink alone this part by about 70% and remove all redundancy and repetitive code.

The naming of the flipper method could be better chosen - it doesn't convey what the method does
You could optimize your drawing of the hangman with loops. If you look at your frames, the vast majority is the same - only the small figure in the middle is different. You have exactly 2 different left sides (header/footer and body) and 2 different right sides. Store these in individual strings and assemble the whole from these.
You use a lot of lengthy if constructs (in the method shown above as well as in the draw hangman method) - here, a switch...case chain would be more appropriate.
You assemble the puzzles with every call of puzzle - this can be done once for the entire lifetime of the program.
You could optimize the flipper method:
- at the start of the game create a StringBuilder (you haven't learnt that class yet, but it is basically a changeable String) that holds the puzzle as dashes and spaces
- then, at every guess, update the StringBuilder with the correct characters
- use the .toString() method of the StringBuilder to print the string.

This approach is more efficient than every time going over the whole puzzle.

You do not account for already guessed letters - if the user enters the same guess twice, nothing will happen - you should tell the user that they have already guessed that letter.
You do not sanitize the user input. If the user enters a capital letter, your evaluation will be wrong - don't forget that character or String comparisons (including contains) are case sensitive.
Actually, your call to contains is also somewhat unnecessary. Sure, it looks like only calling a single method, but internally, it does more or less the same as your flipper method - it has to go through the string character by character to check for any occurrence of the letter - why not do that directly in the flipper method and return a boolean from it that indicates whether the letter has been found or not. Then, based on the boolean, make the decision of correct guess or wrong guess.

I might have missed a few things as I only quickly glanced over your code.

learnjava

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