A Battleship Game for Playing Against Kids

Building

Building from source should be simple with the Gradle wrapper

./gradlew :{clean,build}

This should work from the top-level directory ('battleship') of the repository.

Running the Game

Building the repository produces a packaged (all-in-one 'shadow') JAR, whose main class (tdanford.battleship.Main) is listed correctly in the JAR manifest. Running it will drop you into a simple prompt-based text interface.

% java -jar build/libs/battleship-0.3-all.jar
           1
  1234567890
A ..........
B ..........
C ..........
D ..........
E ..........
F ..........
G ..........
H ..........
I ..........
J ..........
Shot?
> c3
Human Player: C3 -> HIT 
Computer: F9 -> ?
	(enter: 'hit' or 'miss')
> miss
computer2 Player: F9 -> MISS 
           1
  1234567890
A ..........
B ..........
C ..X.......
D ..........
E ..........
F ..........
G ..........
H ..........
I ..........
J ..........
Shot?
> c4
Human Player: C4 -> MISS 
Computer: J3 -> ?
	(enter: 'hit' or 'miss')
> hit
Ship sunk? (enter ship name, or blank)
> 

Writing Your Own Computer Player

The default computer player, appropriately titled DumbComputerPlayer, simply shoots randomly around the board.

Its code is simple, all it does is extend a base class AutomatedPlayer and define one method called chooseAction.

@Override
public BattleshipAction chooseAction(final BattleshipState publicKnowledge) {
  final BattleshipState.PlayerState currentState = publicKnowledge.getPlayerState(this);

  final Board board = currentState.shots;

  Spot shot = null;

  do {
    shot = randomShot(board);
  } while(!board.isNoShot(shot));

  return new BattleshipAction(this, shot);
}

All it does is choose a random location (where it hasn't shot before), and then package up the choice in a helper class called BattleshipAction.

It should be reasonably easy to re-define this method with some better logic; I'll be adding the ability to plug in arbitrary definitions for the computer player in the future.

Play Two Computers Against Each Other

If you want to watch the computer play itself, run the program with the first argument being the word computer, i.e.

% java -jar build/libs/battleship-0.3-all.jar computer

and you should see output like (for example), this:

computer1: SHOT -> C3
computer2: MISS
computer2: SHOT -> D5
computer1: HIT, SUNK DESTROYER
computer1: SHOT -> F3
computer2: MISS
computer2: SHOT -> B3
computer1: MISS
computer1: SHOT -> C2
computer2: MISS
computer2: SHOT -> C5
computer1: MISS
computer1: SHOT -> G2
computer2: MISS
computer2: SHOT -> F2
computer1: MISS
computer1: SHOT -> B6
computer2: HIT, SUNK SUB
computer1 is the winner