Thread: Game for Small Children Program

Hello everyone. I've been told to post my questions here. I'm a novice programmer who needs to write a game program for small children that shows images of animals whose names are only three letters in length(e.g. "cat" "dog"). It has three panels for the letters to be placed and a keyboard of buttons for the child to choose from that places the chosen letter in one of the three panels. It still needs a play button, code that congratulates the child for getting the correct animal and vice versa, and it needs a "Play Again?" button. It supposed to use arrays, loops, and whatever else there is to use as a novice programmer. Here is a link to my code. Pastebin.com

GuessMyAnimal1.jpg
Here is a picture of the output running in it's current state.

I'm using NetBeans if that makes a difference, the problem I'm having with my code is that I still need it to put in letters into the other two panels and recognize whether or not they are the correct letters. As a student I would like an explanation for any changes made, I'm here to help me learn how to write Java code, because my teacher is difficult to understand and doesn't always explain things very well.

All help is appreciated and I thank you all in advance for even looking over my code. Below is a "too long; didn't read" version of my post.

TL;DR
Want to learn how to write code for the given school assignment, many thanks to those who help.

Hello Javazoid,

Your ButtonHandler classes actionPerformed method always sets the text of box1Tf and never box2Tf/box3Tf. To do this you will need to create a logic statement checking to see if the boxes have text already or not and move on accordingly. That can be accomplished through some simple if statements. So if box1 has text then write to box2 or if box2 then write box3 etc... Of course that is only one way to go about it. To see if the answer is correct you will need to concatenate the contents of the three boxes and check it against an answer string. Hope that can help a bit.

Okay, I've gotten a little further on the code and it now can display the three correct letters in the boxes. I didn't understand what you meant by "some simple if statement" not really sure which one. Assume I don't know anything about Java and explain it very basically, or give examples of code snippets I could apply. I still need the program to reset itself after the correct answer is received, and display an error when the wrong answer is received.

/*
 * To change this template, choose Tools | Templates
 * and open the template in the editor.
 */
package pkg611;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
 
public class GuessMyAnimal extends JFrame{
    private static final int FRAME_WIDTH = 650;
    private static final int FRAME_HEIGHT = 400;
 
    private String abc = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
    private String toBeGuessedImage =("DOG");
    private String letter1 = "D";
    private String letter2 = "O";
    private String letter3 = "G";
 
    private JButton[] keyBoardButtons;
 
    private JButton pictureBtn;
 
    private JPanel picturePanel;
    private JPanel displayPanel;
    private JPanel keyboardPanel;
 
    private JTextField box1Tf;
    private JTextField box2Tf;
    private JTextField box3Tf;
    private ButtonHandler handler;
 
    public GuessMyAnimal()
    {
        setTitle("Guess My Animal Name");
        setSize(FRAME_WIDTH, FRAME_HEIGHT);
        setLayout(new BorderLayout());
        //centers the window on the monitor
        setLocationRelativeTo(null);        
        setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
 
        ////////////////////////////////////////
        ///////////////picturePanel/////////////
        ////////////////////////////////////////
        //Create a panel
        picturePanel = new JPanel();
        picturePanel.setLayout(new FlowLayout());
        //create the button
        pictureBtn = new JButton();
        //create an instance pf image
        ImageIcon image = new ImageIcon("dog.jpg");
        //place the image on button
        pictureBtn.setIcon(image);
        //Add object into the panel
        picturePanel.add(pictureBtn);
 
        //////////////////////////////////////
        ///////////displayPanel///////////////
        //////////////////////////////////////
        //Create a panel
        displayPanel = new JPanel();
        displayPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout(1, 3));
        //create textfields
        box1Tf = new JTextField();
        box2Tf = new JTextField();
        box3Tf = new JTextField();
        box1Tf.setEditable(false);
        box2Tf.setEditable(false);
        box3Tf.setEditable(false);
        displayPanel.add(box1Tf);
        displayPanel.add(box2Tf);
        displayPanel.add(box3Tf);
 
        /////////////////////////////////
        ////////keyboardPanel////////////
        /////////////////////////////////
        //Create a panel
        keyboardPanel = new JPanel();
        keyboardPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout(2, 13));
        //Allocate 26 x 4 byte array space
        keyBoardButtons = new JButton[26];
        //Create 26 buttons
        Create26Buttons();
        //Add buttons into the keyboard panel
        Add26ButtonsToPanel();
 
        //add panels to frame
        add(picturePanel, BorderLayout.NORTH);
        add(displayPanel, BorderLayout.CENTER);
        add(keyboardPanel, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
 
        setVisible(true);
    }
    public void Create26Buttons()
    {
        String letter;
 
        handler = new ButtonHandler();
        for(int index = 0; index < 26; index++)
        {
            letter = String.valueOf(abc.charAt(index));
 
            //create A button
            keyBoardButtons[index] = 
                    new JButton(letter);
            keyBoardButtons[index].addActionListener(handler);
 
 
        }
    }
    private class ButtonHandler implements ActionListener
            {
                public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
                {
                    String letter; 
                    for(int index = 0; index < 26; index++)
                    {
                        if(e.getSource() == keyBoardButtons[index])
                        {
                            letter = keyBoardButtons[index].getText();
                            checkAnswer(letter, index);
                            break;
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
    public void checkAnswer(String letter, int index)
    {
        if(letter.equals(letter1))
        {
            box1Tf.setText(letter);
            keyBoardButtons[index].setBackground(Color.red);
        }
        if(letter.equals(letter2))
        {
            box2Tf.setText(letter);
            keyBoardButtons[index].setBackground(Color.red);
        }
        if(letter.equals(letter3))
        {
            box3Tf.setText(letter);
            keyBoardButtons[index].setBackground(Color.red);
        }
    }
    public void Add26ButtonsToPanel()
    {
        for(int index = 0; index < 26; index++)
            keyboardPanel.add(keyBoardButtons[index]);
    }
 
    public static void main(String[]args)
    {
        GuessMyAnimal game = new GuessMyAnimal();
    }
 
}//end class

This my updated code.