So, I got this idea stuck in my head the other day, this “hung men” thing. Sounded like a bit of a challenge, you know, something to get my hands dirty with. I figured, why not? Let’s see what I can cobble together.
Getting Started
First off, I just sat down and thought, what’s the bare minimum for this to even work? I needed a word, obviously, a secret one. And then a way for someone to guess it, letter by letter. Simple enough, right? Well, that’s what I thought at first.
I grabbed a piece of paper – yeah, old school – and just jotted down the main bits I’d need to build. Like, how to pick a word, how to show the blanks, and what happens when you guess right or wrong. It felt like I was mapping out a treasure hunt, but with more drawing involved, eventually.
The Wordy Part
The first real task was getting the words. I thought about making a super complex system, but then I was like, nah, let’s keep it simple for now. I just typed up a list of words myself. Not too many, just enough to test things out. Stuff like “apple”, “banana”, “computer” – you get the gist. Picking one at random was the next step. I had to look up how to do that properly, make sure it wasn’t always picking the first word or something silly.
Then, showing the word as blanks. That was a fun little puzzle. If the word was “HELLO”, I needed to show “_ _ _ _ _”. And when someone guessed ‘L’, it had to become “_ _ L L _”. I fiddled around with that for a bit until it clicked.
Guessing and Checking
Alright, so I had a secret word, displayed as blanks. Next up: letting the player guess. I needed to get a letter from them. And then, the big moment – is that letter in the word or not?
If it was, great! I updated those blanks. If not, well, that’s where the “hung men” part starts to come in. I needed to keep track of wrong guesses. That was crucial. I decided on a limit, say, 6 wrong guesses. After that, game over, pal.
I also made a list to keep track of all the letters already guessed, both right and wrong. There’s nothing more annoying than guessing the same wrong letter twice and having it count against you again, or forgetting what you’ve already tried.
Drawing the “Man”
This was the bit I was sort of dreading and looking forward to at the same time. How do you draw a man, step by step, based on wrong guesses? I didn’t go for fancy graphics. Nope. I just used text characters.
- First wrong guess: Draw the head (O).
- Second: Draw the body ().
- Third: One arm (/).
- Fourth: The other arm ().
- Fifth: One leg (/).
- Sixth: The other leg (). And that’s it, game over.
It was a bit fiddly to get the display right, making sure the parts appeared in the correct order and looked somewhat like a stick figure. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked! That’s the main thing, right?
Winning and Losing
So, the game needed to know when it was over. Two ways for that to happen: either the player guesses all the letters in the word – yay, you win! Or, they use up all their wrong guesses – boo, you lose, and the “man” is complete.
I had to put in checks after every single guess. Is the word complete? Are there any underscores left? Or, has the wrong guess count hit the limit? It felt like being a referee in a very slow game.
Making it Play Again
Once a game ended, I didn’t want the whole thing to just stop. That’d be a bit anticlimactic. So, I added a little prompt: “Play again? (y/n)”. If ‘y’, then we’d pick a new secret word and reset everything – the guessed letters, the wrong guess count, the drawing. Back to a clean slate.
Wrapping Up
And that was pretty much it for this “hung men” practice run. It started as a vague idea, and I just poked at it, bit by bit, until it became a thing. There were definitely moments where I scratched my head, thinking “how am I gonna do THIS part?”. But I just broke it down. One step, then the next. It’s amazing what you can build if you just start. It’s not the fanciest thing in the world, but I made it, and it actually works. Pretty chuffed with that, to be honest.
