Many of us were led into the profession of a programmer by the love of games and puzzles. Therefore, it is not surprising that as soon as we have at least some knowledge in IT, we try to apply it to writing games. Well, it’s not for nothing that they say that knowledge is best acquired through the game … so we play!
There are games that every programmer should be able to write. And this is a great workout! Here are some games that will help you progress from a beginner to a mature programmer, and maybe even a future creator of bestselling games.
Bulls and cows
The essence of the game: your opponent, be it a computer or a friend, thinks of a 4-digit number consisting of non-repeating numbers. Your task is to guess it in a limited number of moves. The “cows” (the number is guessed, but its position is not) and “bulls” (when both the number and its position coincide) act as clues. That is, if the number “1234” is conceived, and you call “6531”, then the result will be 1 cow (number “1”) and 1 bull (number “3”).
Why it is useful: creating a game does not require an in-depth knowledge of the language, and the language itself can be almost any. In this case, you will have to work out a lot of basic exercises with loops and operators, and the result will be a very interesting game.
How to complicate things: saving results, round robin competition for several players, tournament mode, online play.
Text quest
The essence of the game: there are no strict principles, it can be either a linear plot that requires minimal actions from the player, or completely interactive fun, where the number of possible outcomes is numbered in dozens. A classic example of the first type is the television show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire ?, the second type is the Dungeons & Dragons board game.
Why it is useful: Text quests are a great workout for a novice programmer. They have everything you need: calculating probability, manipulating data and predicting further actions. You can do without this, but in any case, you have to learn how to work with classes, objects and modules.
How To Complicate: Improvise!
