Thread: Tic-Tac-Toe Help

This is for a college class so I already understand if you can't straight up tell me the answer. That being said I still am in need of help...

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CompSci 251: Spring 2012
Programming Assignment #6
Due Tuesday, March 6, 11:59pm
Topics Covered: Arrays of classes and classes that contain arrays
Introduction: TTTBoard class
You will write a program that generates a number of boards for a TicTacToe game and fills each 
one with equal numbers of X and O characters in random positions.  For each board, it will check 
whether that board’s pattern of X and O characters has been seen before and if not, it will save it 
in an array.  Once all the boards requested by the user have been generated, the program will print 
out the number of unique board configurations that it saw.  Then it will ask the user if it should 
print all of the unique board configurations and does so if requested.
What you will do
You will implement the TTTBoard class and the TTTBoardDriver class.  
TTTBoard
– board: char[][]  // each contains either -, X, or O
– size: integer  // number of rows and columns of board, at least 2
+ TTTBoard(boardSize : integer) 
+ fillWithRandomXAndO() : void
+ getCellChar(rowNum : integer, columnNum : integer) : char
+ setCellChar(rowNum : integer, columnNum : integer, xo: char) : void
+ equals(TTTBoard) : boolean 
+ toString() : String 
The TTTBoard class’s methods do the following:
• The constructor instantiates the two-dimensional array of characters at the size 
specified by the user and puts a hyphen character (‘-‘) in every space of the board.
• The fillWithRandomXAndO() method puts either an X or O in every cell of the 
array.  In general, it chooses the letter randomly.  However, it also ensures that 
each letter is in half of the board spaces when it ends.  So, for 4-by-4 boards, there 
will be 8 X characters and 8 O characters.  For a 5-by-5 board, there will be 13 of 
one character and 12 of the other.
• The setCellChar method is a mutator for individual board spaces.  It only lets the 
three legal characters be put on the board.
• The equals method returns true if the two boards are the same size and they have 
the same characters in each board position.• The toString method returns a String object that contains the characters of the 
board, with one line per row of the board.  It does not call System.out.println() 
itself.  It just returns a String that main() can use in printing.
•
Sample session:
Note: Since you are generating the boards randomly, you need to remember that:
1. For the 2-by-2 example below, you should get at most 6 unique boards, but you can’t 
predict the order in which they will appear.
2. For larger board sizes (4 and up), you are likely to get different numbers of unique boards 
on different runs.  
Finally, the number of possible board configurations goes up really fast with increasing board 
size.  For 2-by-2 boards, there are 6 possible configurations.  For 3-by-3, there are 252.  For 
boards of size 4 and 5, the totals are 12,870 and 10,400,600, respectively.  Once we get to size 6, 
my calculator starts using scientific notation.  Anyway, if you try to make too many boards of 
larger sizes, the program will get quite slow.  
Welcome to the Tic-Tac-Toe Board Generator
Enter board size (at least 2): 2
Enter number of boards to generate: 100
Number of unique boards generated = 6
Would you like to see all of the unique boards (y/n): y
Unique Board #0
OX
OX
Unique Board #1
XO
OX
Unique Board #2
OO
XX
Unique Board #3
XX
OO
Unique Board #4
OX
XOUnique Board #5
XO
XO
Goodbye!
Welcome to the Tic-Tac-Toe Board Generator
Enter board size (at least 2): 1
ERROR: Board size must be at least 2
Enter board size (at least 2): 3
Enter number of boards to generate: 0
ERROR: Must generate at least one board
Enter number of boards to generate: 2
Number of unique boards generated = 2
Would you like to see all of the unique boards (y/n): y
Unique Board #0
OOX
XOX
XXO
Unique Board #1
XXX
XXO
OOO
Goodbye!
Welcome to the Tic-Tac-Toe Board Generator
Enter board size (at least 2): 4
Enter number of boards to generate: 4
Number of unique boards generated = 4
Would you like to see all of the unique boards (y/n): y
Unique Board #0
OXXX
OOOX
XXOO
XXOO
Unique Board #1
OXXX
OXXO
XXXO
OOOOUnique Board #2
OOXX
OOXO
XXXX
OXOO
Unique Board #3
XOOO
OOOO
XXXX
OXXX
Goodbye!
Welcome to the Tic-Tac-Toe Board Generator
Enter board size (at least 2): 4
Enter number of boards to generate: 10000
Number of unique boards generated = 5435
Would you like to see all of the unique boards (y/n): n
Goodbye!
Welcome to the Tic-Tac-Toe Board Generator
Enter board size (at least 2): 4
Enter number of boards to generate: 10000
Number of unique boards generated = 5387
Would you like to see all of the unique boards (y/n): n
Goodbye!
Submission
Submit both files of your program as a single .zip archive file to the D2L dropbox.  You 
can create a .zip archive using the Export command in Eclipse.

My TTTBoard class:

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Random;
public class TTTBoard {
	private char[][] board;
	private int size;
 
	public TTTBoard(int boardSize)
	{
		board = new char[boardSize][boardSize];
		for (int i=0;i < board.length;++i)
		{
			for(int j=0;j<i;++j)
			{
				board[i][j] = '-';
			}
		}
	}
	public void fillWithRandomXandO()
	{
		int xCounter=0;
		int oCounter=0;
		for(int i = 0; i < this.size; ++i)
		{
			for(int j = 0; j< this.size; ++j)
			{
				int XorO = (int)Math.random()*2;
				if(XorO == 1 && xCounter != ((this.size*this.size)/2))
				{
					board[i][j] = 'X';
					xCounter++;
 
				}
				else if (XorO == 2 && oCounter != ((this.size*this.size)/2))
				{
					board[i][j] = 'O';
					oCounter++;
				}
			}
		}
	}
	public char getCellChar(int row, int column)
	{
		return this.board[row][column];
	}
	public void setCellChar(int row, int column, char xo)
	{
		this.board[row][column] = xo;
	}
	public boolean equals(TTTBoard b)
	{
		for (int i = 0; i < this.size;++i)
		{
			for(int j = 0; j < this.size; ++i)
			{
				if (this.getCellChar(i, j) == b.getCellChar(i, j))
 
				{
					return true;
				}
			}
		}
		return false;
	}
	public String toString()
	{
		/*String s = "";
		for (int i = 0; i < this.size; ++i)
		{
 
			for (int j = 0; j<this.size;++j)
			{
				 s += ""+getCellChar(i,j);
			}
		}*/
		String s = Arrays.toString(this.board);
		return s;
	}
}

My TTTBoardDriver Class:

import java.util.Scanner;
public class TTTDriver {
 
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Scanner stdIn = new Scanner(System.in);
		int size;
		int numberOfBoards;
		int actualNumberOfBoards = 0;
		System.out.println("Welcome to Tic-Tac-Toe board game generator!");
		System.out.println("");
		System.out.print("Enter board size (at least 2): ");
		size = stdIn.nextInt();
		System.out.print("Enter the number of boards you would like to generate: ");
		numberOfBoards = stdIn.nextInt();
 
		while (actualNumberOfBoards != numberOfBoards)
		{
			TTTBoard board = new TTTBoard(size);
		}
 
 
 
	}
 
}

Right now I'm wondering how do i go about generating the proper number of "random" boards and also I'm not sure if i have my other methods functioning correcting. In particular the fillWithRandomXorO's method I'm wondering if how i have that set up will truly give me random x/o placements in the array and still keep them with the half/half bounds. this is due tonight at midnight so fast help is appreciated! thanks in advance and if I'm not making any sense point out where you need clarification please!

how do i go about generating the proper number of "random" boards

What determines what the "proper number" is?
Does the code now generate a "random" board?

I'm wondering if how i have that set up will truly give me random x/o placements in the array

What output do you get now?

Originally Posted by Norm

What determines what the "proper number" is?
Does the code now generate a "random" board?

the proper number would be, i guess being given the size of the boards from the user, the total number of boards possible without two boards being the same. (no duplicate boards)

What output do you get now?

I haven't even gotten to a point for board outputs atm, been trying to think of a way to generate the most possible (non duplicate boards) given the user's input of size.

What is your problem now? Can you generate a board?

I just tried to generate a board and my toString() method for my array doesn't work. we can't print from the method as printing the array seems simple to me with nested for loops. but generating a string of my array in order to call print from main is more complex. So... in short, My current problem is that the Arrays.toString(obj) method was returning addresses and my self made toString() (its currently commented out in code example) doesn't work at all.

Can you post the code and show its output or the errors?
If you want to print a 2D array with the Arrays class, it has a method to do that. Its name begins with deep

Originally Posted by Norm

Can you post the code and show its output or the errors?
If you want to print a 2D array with the Arrays class, it has a method to do that. Its name begins with deep

import java.util.Scanner;
public class TTTDriver {
 
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Scanner stdIn = new Scanner(System.in);
		int size;
		int numberOfBoards;
		int actualNumberOfBoards = 0;
		System.out.println("Welcome to Tic-Tac-Toe board game generator!");
		System.out.println("");
		System.out.print("Enter board size (at least 2): ");
		size = stdIn.nextInt();
		System.out.print("Enter the number of boards you would like to generate: ");
		numberOfBoards = stdIn.nextInt();
 
		TTTBoard board = new TTTBoard(size);
		System.out.println(board.toString());
		/*while (actualNumberOfBoards != numberOfBoards)
		{
 
			TTTBoard board = new TTTBoard(size);
		}*/
 
 
 
	}

OUTPUT:
Welcome to Tic-Tac-Toe board game generator!

Enter board size (at least 2): 3
Enter the number of boards you would like to generate: 1
[[ , , ], [-, , ], [-,-, ]]

Now with the deepToString its not showing x's or o's but there being hyphens still shows me that my fill with random x and o's method is failing... shittt...

Print out the board after filling it with -

Try debugging the fillWithRandomXandO method by adding some println statements to print the values of the variables it uses so you can see what the code is doing. The more you print out the more you'll know.

unfortunately I don't know how to debug my programs all that well. We haven't gone over that too much yet. but I have figured out why the x's or o's weren't generating! I never declare what this.size is in my constructor so when I was running the loops in my fill method the if statements were never true because of the (this.size*this.size/2) was = 0; as far as my toString() method now, I'd like for my output to be better formatted rather then displaying each row next to each other.

Printing the endline char: "\n" will move the output to the next line.

The Arrays toString method is mostly for debugging.
You'll have to write your own code using some loops to have multiple rows of output