Straights Card Game [C++]
Straights is a four-player game. The objective is to get the fewest number of points among the players. The game ends when one player accumulates 80 points or more, and the player with the lowest score is declared the winner. If the lowest score is a tie, then all players with that score win.
Straights uses a standard 52-card deck, without the jokers. Each player is dealt 13 cards at the beginning of each round. In this game, the Ace is considered to be the lowest card in each suit (rank of 1), while the King is the highest (rank of 13).1
Immediately following the deal, the player with the 7 of spades goes first. This player must play the 7 of spades in the centre of the table. After the 7 of spades, the players take turns to play cards on the table. At this point, the players must play cards that constitute legal plays. The following cards are legal: • A 7 of any suit. This card starts a new pile on the table. • A card with the same suit and adjacent rank2 as another card that has already been played. It must be played on the pile of the appropriate suit. (Note that the “pile” is spread across the table, so that play can proceed at either end.) 1A Jack has a rank of 11, while the Queen has a rank of 12. The rank of all other cards is their numeric value e.g. 2 has a rank of 2. 2A card has adjacent rank if its face value is one more or one less than the rank of card under consideration. The King and Ace of a suit are not considered to be adjacent ranks to each other.
For example, if the 7 of spades is the only card on the table, then the legal plays are: the 7 of diamonds, the 7 of hearts, the 7 of clubs, the 8 of spades, and the 6 of spades. Once the 8 of spades is played, the next legal plays are: the 9 of spades, the 6 of spades, the 7 of diamonds, the 7 of hearts, and the 7 of clubs. In this way, you can add cards to either end of the suit “pile” so long as there are no gaps.
When a player has no legal plays, they must then choose a card in their hand, and place it face down in front of them. This is a discard. Note that if a player has at least one legal play in their hand, then they must make a legal play; they may not discard in this case.
The round ends when all the cards have either been played or discarded. For each player, their score for the round is the sum of all the ranks of the player’s discards. Jacks, Queens, and Kings count as 11, 12, and 13 points, respectively. For example, if a player discarded an Ace, a Six, and a King, the number of points would be 1 + 6 + 13 = 20. Each player’s game score is of the sum of their scores in each round. If no player has accumulated 80 or more points at the end of a round, then the deck is reshuffled and another round begins.
Question: What sort of class design or design pattern should you use to structure your game classes so that changing the user interface or changing the game rules would have as little impact on the code as possible? Explain how your classes fit this framework.
The user can provide an optional integer argument seed, used to initialize the random number generator when starting the program: ./straights 44 This allows for pseudo-random shuffling. See the provided shuffle.cc for an example of declaring a random number generator that is used to randomly shuffle cards in the deck. The random number generator is seeded once with the (possibly global variable) seed, and then used in std::shuffle. Games that are started with the same seed value have the same sequences of deals, so long as the deck of cards is restored between rounds to its previous state before being shuffled again.
At the beginning of the program, prompt the user with the following message: Is Player a human (h) or a computer (c)?
where is the id number representing the player being initialized. The user then types either h or c to set the desired player type. Repeat this step for each of the four players. 5.3 Shuffling and Dealing Initially, the cards in the deck must be in the following order3 : AC 2C 3C ... TC JC QC KC AD 2D ... QD KD AH 2H ... QH KH AS 2S ... QS KS 3 In this notation, cards are displayed as (e.g. 7S). For the ranks, T=10, J=Jack, Q=Queen, K=King. The suits are: C=Clubs, D=Diamonds, H=Hearts. S=Spades
At the beginning of every round, shuffle the deck once. Then, deal out the cards such that the first 13 cards belong to Player 1, the next 13 cards belong to Player 2, the next 13 belong to Player 3, and the last 13 cards belong to Player 4. When the round is over, the deck is restored to the state it was in just after shuffling at the beginning of the round, but before the players play the round. This ensures that subsequent shuffles (i.e., at the beginning of each round but before any cards are played) produces a repeatable shuffling. For example, if after shuffling the deck has the order 6S 2S 4C 2H 6C AD JD 8D 2D AS JH 7S AH 2C 3H 3S KD 5C 5H 9C 3D JC 6H AC TH 4D 5D TD 7D 4S 7H 4H TC 9D JS KC 8S KS TS QC 9H 7C 9S QS 5S 8C 8H KH 6D QD QH 3C, then before it is shuffled for the next round, the cards are returned to their previous order of 6S 2S 4C 2H 6C AD JD 8D 2D AS JH 7S AH 2C 3H 3S KD 5C 5H 9C 3D JC 6H AC TH 4D 5D TD 7D 4S 7H 4H TC 9D JS KC 8S KS TS QC 9H 7C 9S QS 5S 8C 8H KH 6D QD QH 3C (note that these two sequences are identical). This way, the results will be repeatable, which will make your testing and demonstrations easier.
The game starts after the shuffle and the deal. The four players take turns to play their cards. The play order is 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → back to 1. But remember that the player with the 7 of spades begins. First, print the following line (regardless of whether the first player is a human or computer): A new round begins. It’s Player’s turn to play. where depends on who has the 7 of spades.
Question: If you want to allow computer players, in addition to human players, how might you structure your classes? Consider that different types of computer players might also have differing play strategies, and that strategies might change as the game progresses i.e. dynamically during the play of the game. How would that affect your structure? Question: If a human player wanted to stop playing, but the other players wished to continue, it would be reasonable to replace them with a computer player. How might you structure your classes to allow an easy transfer of the information associated with the human player to the computer player?
Whenever it is a human player’s turn, print the following 8 lines: Cards on the table: Clubs: Diamonds: Hearts: Spades: Your hand: Legal plays:
Each of list of cards in a specific suit is an ordered sequence of all the ranks in that suit (e.g., 6 7 8 9 T J Q) that have already been played. and are lists of cards in the player’s hand, where each card is in the form (e.g. 7S). Print the cards in the same order that they appear in the deck. Do not rearrange the cards. Every list of cards, except for that produced by the deck command, starts with a space character, and a single space separates each card from the next. There is no space after the final card in the list. If there are no legal plays, then the list of cards consists of an empty string i.e. print Legal plays:\n. The program then waits for the user to enter a command.
There are 5 valid commands for the human player in this game: Command Description play Play the specified card. You may assume that the has valid syntax (i.e., , such as 7C), and that the specified card is in the player’s hand. However, it might not be a legal play. If the play is legal, print: Player plays . and proceed to the next player. Otherwise, print: This is not a legal play.
and do not proceed to the next player until a legal play is made. discard If the player has no legal plays, discard the specified card from the player’s hand into the player’s discard pile. Again, assume that the has valid syntax and that the is in the player’s hand. For test purposes, the value of the card is printed even though that deviates from the normal straights game play. Player discards . Otherwise, print the following error message: You have a legal play. You may not discard.
deck Print the contents of the deck in order, 13 cards per line. For example: TS 2D 3S KH 3H 2C 5D TC 8S TD AC KC QH 4D JH 6H JC KD 8C 7D TH 4H 9S 6S 4S KS 7S 7C QD 6C 2H 6D 3C 9C 5H 3D AD 5S 8H QC 2S 8D JS QS AS JD 4C 7H 9D 5C AH 9H
(This command is not part of the straights game. It is provided to help both you and us with the testing and debugging of your program.) quit Terminate the program immediately. ragequit Filled with anger, a human player decides to leave! Print the following message: Player ragequits. A computer will now take over. Replace the current human player with a computer player, and resume the game. While your handling of the commands is not required to be robust, you will find it in your best interest to make it at least somewhat robust so that a game doesn’t have to be started over from the beginning if a player enters an invalid command or card value.
If it is a computer player’s turn to play, print either one of the two lines, as appropriate: Player plays . or Player discards . Proceed to the next player. The computer player that you will implement is very simple. It always makes the first legal play in its hand. If there are no legal plays, the first card in its hand is discarded.
When all of the cards have been played, the round ends. At this point, print the following lines for each of the players: Player’s discards: Player’s score: + = is a list of the cards the player discarded in the current round. Print the cards in the same order that they were discarded. If at least one player has accumulated 80 points or more, the game ends. (Note that there is no prompt to replay again. Instead, you would just run the executable again.) The player with the lowest score wins. Print the following victory message for the winning player(s): Player wins! If multiple players tie for the win, print the above message for each winner. If no one exceeded the score limit, then reshuffle the deck and begin another round.
On the Gitpod executable environment, run the command make in the terminal. Then, right click on the .html file created and press Open in Live Server to launch the game. Note: You would need emscripten set up in your environment before running make.
The game is also hosted on itch.io.
