I’ve been learning Java for about 4 months now, it’s the first programming language I learn. For school we have to do a project, a console-based game. I chose for Boggle.
I have an ArrayList with dices, each one gets a random ‘side up’, and then the ArrayList gets shuffled and a two-dimensional array gets filled with the values of each side up. At this moment the Array is filled with Strings, chars may be a better option but something that’s fairly easy to change.
The problem I’m facing is that I need to be able to find words in the array. Words in Boggle can go in any direction, each unique block can be used only once per word, but the path can cross, you can search diagonally too. I managed to find if the first letter is present in the array. If not than the search can be aborted, if it is present there needs to start a search that searches for the second character of the word, that has to be around the first character’s block.
I did some math and found that it’s always for example “i-1 and j-1” as the upper left corner of the surrounding blocks. I worked this out but can’t seem to be able to find words… Also, if there are 2 “e”‘s surrounding, I have no clue how to search for the word trying each “e”. Here is my code so far:
This is my most important class at this moment, the class Gameboard
public class Gameboard {
private List<Dice> dices = new ArrayList<Dice>();
private final int boardSize;
private String[][] board;
private boolean [][] blocksAvailable;
private Random random = new Random();
public GameBoard() {
// Making the board with a given size (will be changeable later but is "4" for now)
boardSize = 4;
board = new String[boardSize][boardSize];
blocksAvailable = new boolean[boardSize][boardSize];
for(int i = 0; i < boardSize; i++) {
for(int j = 0; j < boardSize; j++) {
blocksAvailable[i][j] = true;
}
}
}
public String[][] getBoard() {
return board;
}
public int getFullSize() {
return boardSize*boardSize;
}
public void makeBoard() {
//random "side up" for each dice
for(int i = 0; i < dices.size(); i++) {
dices.get(i).setSideUp();
}
// Shuffle all dices
Collections.shuffle(dices);
// Fill the board with the values of the dices
int counter = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < boardSize; i++) {
for(int j = 0; j < boardSize; j++) {
board[i][j] = dices.get(counter++).getSideUp();
}
}
}
public String showBoard() {
//Show the board, each block divided by "|"
String str = "";
for(int i = 0; i < boardSize; i++) {
for(int j = 0; j < boardSize; j++) {
str += String.format("|%s|", board[i][j].toString());
if(j == 3) {
str += "\n";
}
}
}
return str;
}
public void addDices() {
dices.add(new dice("R", "I", "F", "O", "B", "X"));
dices.add(new dice("I", "F", "E", "H", "E", "Y"));
dices.add(new dice("D", "E", "N", "O", "W", "S"));
dices.add(new dice("U", "T", "O", "K", "N", "D"));
dices.add(new dice("H", "M", "S", "R", "A", "O"));
dices.add(new dice("L", "U", "P", "E", "T", "S"));
dices.add(new dice("A", "C", "I", "T", "O", "A"));
dices.add(new dice("Y", "L", "G", "K", "U", "E"));
dices.add(new dice("Q", "B", "M", "J", "O", "A"));
dices.add(new dice("E", "H", "I", "S", "P", "N"));
dices.add(new dice("V", "E", "T", "I", "G", "N"));
dices.add(new dice("B", "A", "L", "I", "Y", "T"));
dices.add(new dice("E", "Z", "A", "V", "N", "D"));
dices.add(new dice("R", "A", "L", "E", "S", "C"));
dices.add(new dice("U", "W", "I", "L", "R", "G"));
dices.add(new dice("P", "A", "C", "E", "M", "D"));
}
public boolean searchWord(String word) {
String wordUp = woord.toUpperCase();
String firstLetter = Character.toString(wordUp.charAt(0));
for(int i = 0; i < boardSize;i++) {
for(int j = 0; j < boardSize;j++) {
if(firstLetter.equals(board[i][j]) == true) {
int a = i;
int b = j;
String theLetter = "";
// First letter found, continue search
for(int h = 1; h < hetWoord.length(); h++) {
theLetter = Character.toString(wordUp.charAt(h));
int[] values = searchLetter(theLetter, a, b);
if(values[0] > -1) {
a = values[0];
b = values[1];
} else {
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
}
}
return false;
}
public int[] searchLetter(String letter, int i, int j) {
int[] values = new int[2];
try{if(board[i-1][j-1].equals(letter) && blocksAvailable[i-1][j-1] == true) {
values[0] = i-1;
values[1] = j-1;
blocksAvailable[i-1][j-1] = false;
} else if(board[i-1][j].equals(letter) && blocksAvailable[i-1][j] == true) {
values[0] = i-1;
values[1] = j;
blocksAvailable[i-1][j] = false;
} else if(board[i-1][j+1].equals(letter) && blocksAvailable[i-1][j+1] == true) {
values[0] = i-1;
values[1] = j+1;
blocksAvailable[i-1][j+1] = false;
} else if(board[i][j-1].equals(letter) && blocksAvailable[i][j-1] == true) {
values[0] = i;
values[1] = j-1;
blocksAvailable[i][j-1] = false;
} else if(board[i][j+1].equals(letter) && blocksAvailable[i][j+1] == true) {
values[0] = i;
values[1] = j+1;
blocksAvailable[i][j+1] = false;
} else if(board[i+1][j-1].equals(letter) && blocksAvailable[i+1][j-1] == true) {
values[0] = i+1;
values[1] = j-1;
blocksAvailable[i+1][j+1] = false;
} else if(board[i+1][j].equals(letter) && blocksAvailable[i+1][j] == true) {
values[0] = i+1;
values[1] = j;
blocksAvailable[i+1][j] = false;
} else if(board[i+1][j+1].equals(letter) && blocksAvailable[i+1][j+1] == true) {
values[0] = i+1;
values[1] = j+1;
blocksAvailable[i+1][j+1] = false;
} else {
values[0] = -1; // If not found, negative values, easy to check in searchWord if letter was found
values[1] = -1;
}}catch (ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException e) {
}
return values;
}
}
This may get deleted, because I am not going to answer your question. But please, pretty please, use:
Using such helper method you will