Question

So I am writing a class that plays the card game war. I have already made separate classes for the hand, the deck, and the different methods that go along with these types such as shuffling, dealing, and dropping the cards.

/*Using the Card, Deck, and Hand classes from the previous lab, write a main program          that will play games of war.  The program should

1) Inatantiate a Deck and two Hands

2) Read in n, the number of games of war to play

3) n times, 
  a) shuffle and deal the deck 
  b) play a game of war, counting the number of turns, the number of wars, and the   number of double wars
4) After all n games have been played, print the average number of turns, average number of wars, and the average number of double wars.

The rules for the game can be found here:
 http://www.pagat.com/war/war.html

If a player runs out of cards during a war, use option 1 on that site.

*/



import java.util.Scanner;

public class War {
public static void main (String args [])
{

    //Instantiate Deck and two hands
    deck Pile = new deck();
    hand Player1 = new hand();
    hand Player2 = new hand();
    Scanner kb = new Scanner (System.in);
    int n, turns = 0, wars = 0, dubwars = 0;
    System.out.println("Please enter the number of times you would like the game   'war' to be played:");
    n = kb.nextInt();
    for (int i = 0; i<n; i++)
    {
        //Game playing code goes here
        Pile.shuffle();
        Pile.deal(Player1, Player2);

        while(Player1.size() != 0 && Player2.size() !=0)
        {

            Card Card1 = Player1.DropCard();
            Card Card2 = Player2.DropCard();
            Card P1WarCard = Player1.WarCard(1);//Cards Used in the   First War
            Card P2WarCard = Player2.WarCard(1);
            //if statement saying if the player does not have two cards then exit the program
            //Cards Used in the Second War
            Card P1DubWarCard = Player1.WarCard(2);  
            Card P2DubWarCard = Player2.WarCard(2);



        //If player 1 has a higher rank, then...
        if (Card1.rank > Card2.rank)
        {
            //Player 1 takes both cards
            Player1.add(Card1);
            Player1.add(Card2);
            turns ++;
        }
        else if (Card1.rank < Card2.rank)
        {
            //Player 2 takes both cards
            Player2.add(Card2);
            Player2.add(Card1);
            turns++;
        }
        else 
        {
            if (Player1.size() <3 || Player2.size() <3)
            {
                System.exit(0);
            }
            //War
            wars ++;
            turns++;
        //  while (Player1.size() >=2 && Player2.size() >=2)
            {
            if (P1WarCard.rank > P2WarCard.rank)
            {
                //Player1.add(Card1);
                Player1.add(Card2);
                //Player1.add(P1WarCard);
                Player1.add(P2WarCard);
                //Player 1 takes 4 cards
            }
            else if (P1WarCard.rank < P2WarCard.rank)
            {
                //Player2.add(Card2);
                Player2.add(Card1);
                Player2.add(P1WarCard);
                //Player2.add(P2WarCard);
                //Player 2 takes 4 cards
            }
            else
            {
                if (Player1.size() <3 || Player2.size() <3)
                {
                    System.exit(0);
                }
                //Dubwar
                dubwars++;
                turns++;
                //while (Player1.size() >=3 && Player2.size() >=3)
                {


                if (P1DubWarCard.rank > P2DubWarCard.rank)
                {
                    //Player1.add(Card1);
                    Player1.add(Card2);
                    //Player1.add(P1WarCard);
                    Player1.add(P2WarCard);
                    //Player1.add(P1DubWarCard);
                    Player1.add(P2DubWarCard);
                    //Player 1 takes 6 cards
                }
                else if (P1DubWarCard.rank < P2DubWarCard.rank)
                {
                    //Player2.add(Card2);
                    Player2.add(Card1);
                    Player2.add(P1WarCard);
                    //Player2.add(P2WarCard);
                    Player2.add(P1DubWarCard);
                    //Player2.add(P2DubWarCard);
                    //Player 2 takes 6 cards
                }
                else
                {
                    System.out.println("NUCLEAR WAR");
                    break;
                }
            }

        }
    }
}
        }
    }



System.out.println("The average number of turns was " +turns/n);
System.out.println("The average number of wars was " +wars/n);
System.out.println("The average number of double wars was " +dubwars/n);

}



}

My question is how can I prevent entry into a double war if there are not enough cards to complete the double war? There must be at least three cards in the deck at that time.

Also the war card method simply returns the card at that position in the deck.

This is my first time posting so I apologize if I did something wrong.

Thanks

Chris

Answer 1

You can always use a boolean to determine whether the game is running or not, and then check at the start of your while loop as to whether it should still be set to true, for example:

boolean isPlaying = true;

while (isPlaying) {
  if (numberOfCardsLeft <= cardsNeededToContinue) {
     isPlaying = false;
  }
  //rest of logic here
 }