01219245/javascript1/tutorial4

This is part of 01219245.

Everyone should know what Hangman Game is. If you don't, it's a simple vocabulary game and you can try it here.

Task breakdown

Exercise: Let's think about what our Hangman program has do to.

Expand this box to see a few examples after you finish thinking.

• Random a word.
• Show the word with blanks.
• Read the guess alphabets and show the correct ones in the word.
• Count the number of wrong guesses.
• Show the hangman figures.
• Show a list of alphabets from which the user can choose.
• Hide used alphabets.
• Reset the game after the game ends.
• (... I can keep listing other features.)

Not all features above are extremely important to the game. For example, if you don't even draw the hangman figures, the game will be a pretty weird hangman game, but it is still the hangman game. If we can only choose 2 features to implement, we can simply throw away the hangman drawing task.

Exercise: From the list above, try to order the items according to their importance to the game.

Expand this box to see some possible ordering.

This is how I would order it. It is OK if your preference is different.

• Show the word with blanks.
• Read the guess alphabets and show the correct ones in the word.
• Count the number of wrong guesses.
• Random a word.
• Show the hangman figures.
• Show a list of alphabets from which the user can choose.
• Hide used alphabets.
• Reset the game after the game ends.

Core mechanics

Notice that the first few most important features are related to game mechanics. Let's try to think about that part, i.e., what is the essence of the game?

To see that, let's try to think about a sample play between A and B:

• A: I have this word _ _ _ _ _.
• B: A?
• A: No, I don't have A. This is your first wrong guess.
• B: E?
• A: Yes I have E. The word is now: _ E _ _ _.
• B: I?
• A: No, I don't have I. This is your second wrong guess.
• B: O?
• A: Yes I have O. The word is now: _ E _ _ O.