Code a hangman game.

Step 1 – Make a plan.

The first thing I always do when designing a new program for the first time is I draw up a plan of what my game is going to look like. I then come up with a list of as many variables, data structures and functions that I can think of that I might want to use in my game.

Here is my plan!

From my plan it became clear that I would need at least the following:

Variables

The Lives left ( lives)
The chosen word (chosenWord)

Data Structures

A List of possbile words to pick from ( wordsList)
A list of letters that have been used
A list of stick men icons for each stage in the hangman hanging

Functions

A main screen to display the words, hangman etc (mainScreen).
Display the hangman graphic (drawStickMan)
Display the hidden word / blanks (drawTheWord)
Display the used words (showUsedLetters)
A letter input screen

From this I can already start to build the framework for my program. I start by creating the welcome screen function and the lists.

Step 2 – Create the framework

Now I’ve got a plan, I can take the plan and produce a basic outline of the game. From the drawing of the plan I can see that I am going to need a mainScreen function and this mainScreen function needs to display all of the main elements. Rather than try and code everything inside that one function I have created lots of little functions. This makes my code easier to read and maintain!

At the moment none of the functions work, they just display some placeholder text on the screen to show that they are there!

	import os
	#Global variables and lists to be used throughout my program.

	wordsList = ["dog","cat","mouse","hyena"]
	usedLetters = []
	lives = 5

	def mainScreen():
	os.system('clear')
	print("Welcome to the Hangman game\n\n")
	drawStickMan() # Draw the stick man
	print("\n\n")
	drawTheWord()
	print("\n\n")
	showUsedLetters()
	print("\n\n")
	getALetter()

	def drawStickMan():
	print("I'm a stickman")

	def drawTheWord():
	print("I'm the word with blanks")

	def showUsedLetters():
	print("Looking I'm drawing the used letters")

	def getALetter():
	print("Look, I'm getting a letter from the user")


	mainScreen()

view raw hangmanv1.py hosted with

by GitHub

Version 0 Demo

Making the graphic.

Step 3 – Display the hangman graphic

In order to make the stickman we are going to use a simplified version of ascii art. This is the type of artwork that can be found on many old text games. Some of this art is very impressive but we are just creating a simple version for ours!.

Our first hangman

Creating hangman artwork is easy. We put our designs in a string and move on to a new line for each line.

\n\ – This is an escape sequence that puts in a newline in the string and tells Python that we want to carry on with our string on the next line.

	stickman = "\
	\|------\n\
	\| O\n\
	\| ---\|---\n\
	\| / \\ \n\
	\| / \\ \n\
	\|_____"

	print(stickman)

view raw hangmanexample.txt hosted with

by GitHub

Combine the graphics in to a list

Adding the graphic to our program.

Step 4 – Get letter inputs

The next step is to getting letter input from the user.
We could just use the input function and add the letter to the list but this has a number of problems:

The user might duplicate an existing letter
The user might enter an invalid character (e.g. 4)
The user might enter multiple characters (e.g. fg)
The user might enter letters in uppercase ( e.g. F)
The user might just press enter without typing anything.

We need to create a function that can cope with all of these problems.

A working version should:

Keep asking the user until they enter a valid, unused letter.
It must then add a lowercase version of the letter to the usedLettersList.

How do we achieve this? Well this is where our separate functions come in handy. Any time the user enters and invalid, simply refresh the screen by running mainScreen() and start again. Any time the user enters a valid entry, add that letter to the letters list, change the number of lives and rerun the mainScreen()!

	def getALetter():
	global lives
	global usedLetters

	letter = input("please enter a letter")
	if not len(letter) == 1: #Have they entered only 1 character?
	mainScreen()
	elif not letter.isalpha(): #Is that character a letter?
	mainScreen()
	elif in usedLetters: # Have they already guessed that letter?
	mainScreen()
	else:
	usedLetters.append(letter) #if not, add it to the list of used letters
	if not letter in chosenWord: #Have the guessed correctly?
	lives = lives - 1 # If not, lose a life!
	mainScreen()

view raw getaletterhangman.py hosted with

by GitHub

Version 3

	import os,random
	#Global variables and lists to be used throughout my program.

	wordsList = ["dog","cat","mouse","hyena"]
	usedLetters = []
	chosenWord = random.choice(wordsList)
	lives = 6


	stickmen = [
	"\
	\|------\n\
	\| O\n\
	\| ---\|---\n\
	\| / \\ \n\
	\| / \\ \n\
	\|_____",

	"\
	\|------\n\
	\| O \n\
	\| ---\|---\n\
	\|\n\
	\|\n\
	\|_____",

	"\
	\|------\n\
	\| O\n\
	\|\n\
	\|\n\
	\|\n\
	\|_____",

	"\
	\|------\n\
	\|\n\
	\|\n\
	\|\n\
	\|\n\
	\|_____",

	"\
	\|\n\
	\|\n\
	\|\n\
	\|\n\
	\|_____",

	"\n\n\n\n______",

	"\n\n\n\n\n",
	]


	def mainScreen():
	os.system('clear')
	print("Welcome to the Hangman game\n\n")
	drawStickMan() # Draw the stick man
	print("\n\n")
	drawTheWord()
	print("\n\n")
	showUsedLetters()
	print("\n\n")
	getALetter()

	def drawStickMan():
	print(stickmen[lives])

	def drawTheWord():
	print("I'm the word with blanks")

	def showUsedLetters():
	print("Looking I'm drawing the used letters")

	def getALetter():
	global lives
	global usedLetters

	letter = input("please enter a letter")
	if not len(letter) == 1:
	mainScreen()
	elif not letter.isalpha():
	mainScreen()
	elif letter in usedLetters:
	mainScreen()
	else:
	usedLetters.append(letter)
	if not letter in chosenWord:
	lives = lives - 1
	mainScreen()

	mainScreen()

view raw hangmanv3.py hosted with

by GitHub

Step 4 – Display the used letters

We now need to show the letters that have been used. Fortunately this is super easy! Just swap you function for this one!

	def showUsedLetters():
	print(" ".join(usedLetters)) #Join up the letters in the usedLetters list
	#into one long string and print it! Easy :-)

view raw hangmanshowusedletters.py hosted with

by GitHub

Version 4

Step 5 – Fill in the blank letters

We now need to fill in the blanks. This is nice and easy, just create empty list. For each letter in the chosenWord, if the letter is in the list of usedLetters, append the letter to the word list, otherwise append an underscore _.

Finally print out a cleaned up version of the new list.

	def drawTheWord():
	word = [] #Create a temporary list to add either letters or an underscore
	for letter in chosenWord:
	if letter in usedLetters:
	word.append(letter)
	else:
	word.append("_")
	print(" ".join(word)) #Combine the letters and underscores and print them out.
	# The string.join(list) method is easy to use and powerful! :-)

view raw hangmandrawtheword.py hosted with

by GitHub

Version 5 Demo

Step 6 – Checking if the player has won or lost

Finally we just need to have mechanism where the game ends, dependent on one of two conditions:

The player runs out of lives
The player correctly guesses the entire word

The game needs to end and display a suitable message.

Here is the check win /lose script.

	def checkWinLose():
	global lives #These variables need to global so that they save outside of the function
	global chosenWord
	global usedLetters
	if lives == 0: #If you have no lives the you have lost!
	os.system('clear')
	print("\n\nYou lose!!!!!")
	input("\n\nPress enter to start again")
	chosenWord = random.choice(wordsList)#After here reset lives,empty usedLetters and pick a new word.
	lives = 6
	usedLetters = []
	else:
	won = True #Assume that the user has won....
	for letter in chosenWord:
	if letter in usedLetters:
	continue
	else:
	won = False # Unless you can't find the letter from the hidden word in the userLetters list!
	if won:
	print("\n\nYou win!!!!")
	input("\n\nPress enter to start again.")
	chosenWord = random.choice(wordsList)#This code features some duplication so should really be in a separate function.
	lives = 6
	usedLetters = []

view raw hangmancheckwinlose.py hosted with

by GitHub

You will also need to add the checkWinLost function to the top of your mainScreen() function

	def mainScreen():
	checkWinLose() # Add me to the mainScreen function!
	#rest of function here....

view raw hangmancheckwinloseinmainscreen.py hosted with

by GitHub

Version 6 Demo

Code a hangman game.

Step 1 – Make a plan.

Step 2 – Create the framework

Step 3 – Display the hangman graphic

Combining the hangman graphics

Step 4 – Get letter inputs

Step 4 – Display the used letters

Step 5 – Fill in the blank letters

Step 6 – Checking if the player has won or lost