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LESSON 414 OF 414 · PROJECTS: OBJECT-ORIENTED

Tic Tac Toe - A Two-Player Game Class in Kotlin

Practice

Build a TicTacToe class for two players, X and O, on a 3 by 3 board. One object is one game: it remembers the board and whose turn it is, lets the players take turns, and tells who has won.

The board: rows and columns are numbered 0, 1 and 2. Cell (0, 0) is the top-left corner, (0, 2) the top-right, (2, 0) the bottom-left and (2, 2) the bottom-right. A cell holds 'X', 'O' or '.' when it is still empty.

Build:

  • A new game. The class has two private fields, set up when the object is created: board, a 3 by 3 array of Char filled with '.', and var player = 'X'. Every row must be its own array. All nine cells are empty and X moves first.
  • fun move(r: Int, c: Int) plays one turn at the given row and column (always between 0 and 2, so you do not need to check the range).
    • If the cell is not empty, ignore the call: nothing changes and it is still the same player's turn.
    • Otherwise put the current player's mark in the cell, then give the turn to the other player (X becomes O, O becomes X).
  • fun winner(): Char returns the winner as a Char: 'X', 'O' or '.'.
    • A player wins by having the same mark in all three cells of a row, a column, or one of the two diagonals ((0,0), (1,1), (2,2) and (0,2), (1,1), (2,0)). Three empty cells in a line are not a win.
    • If nobody has three in a row, return '.'. That covers a game still in progress, an empty board and a draw.

You start with this code, which plays six games and prints the result of each one:

class Solution {
    fun mainFunction() {
        var game = TicTacToe()
        game.move(0, 0)
        game.move(1, 0)
        game.move(0, 1)
        game.move(1, 1)
        game.move(0, 2)
        println("${game.winner()} wins!")
        game = TicTacToe()
        game.move(0, 0)
        game.move(0, 1)
        game.move(0, 0)
        game.move(1, 0)
        game.move(1, 1)
        game.move(2, 2)
        game.move(2, 1)
        println("${game.winner()} wins!")
        game = TicTacToe()
        game.move(0, 0)
        game.move(0, 1)
        game.move(1, 1)
        game.move(0, 2)
        game.move(2, 2)
        println("${game.winner()} wins!")
        game = TicTacToe()
        game.move(0, 2)
        game.move(0, 0)
        game.move(1, 1)
        game.move(0, 1)
        game.move(2, 0)
        println("${game.winner()} wins!")
        game = TicTacToe()
        game.move(0, 0)
        game.move(0, 1)
        game.move(0, 2)
        game.move(1, 1)
        game.move(1, 0)
        game.move(1, 2)
        game.move(2, 1)
        game.move(2, 0)
        game.move(2, 2)
        println("No winner: ${game.winner()}")
        game = TicTacToe()
        println("No winner: ${game.winner()}")
    }
}

Games played: X fills the top row; then a game where X tries to play on a cell that is already taken (ignored, and still X's turn) and O wins the middle column; X on the main diagonal; X on the other diagonal; a full board with no three in a row; and a brand-new game.

Expected output:

X wins!
O wins!
X wins!
X wins!
No winner: .
No winner: .

There are eight winning lines: three rows, three columns and two diagonals. A loop over i from 0 to 2 can check row i and column i together; the two diagonals come after the loop. Skip a line whose first cell is empty.

Check for a taken cell first and leave the move method before touching the board or the turn. Only a successful move passes the turn to the other player.

class TicTacToe {
    private val board = Array(3) { CharArray(3) { '.' } }
    private var player = 'X'

    fun move(r: Int, c: Int) {
        if (board[r][c] != '.') return
        board[r][c] = player
        player = if (player == 'X') 'O' else 'X'
    }

    fun winner(): Char {
        for (i in 0 until 3) {
            if (board[i][0] != '.' && board[i][0] == board[i][1] && board[i][1] == board[i][2]) return board[i][0]
            if (board[0][i] != '.' && board[0][i] == board[1][i] && board[1][i] == board[2][i]) return board[0][i]
        }
        if (board[0][0] != '.' && board[0][0] == board[1][1] && board[1][1] == board[2][2]) return board[0][0]
        if (board[0][2] != '.' && board[0][2] == board[1][1] && board[1][1] == board[2][0]) return board[0][2]
        return '.'
    }
}

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