What simple game is good to learn OO principles?

Question

I have to come up with a project propsal for my students, here are some details:

1. The design should be gove over OO concepts: encapsulation, interfaces, inheritance, abstract classes
2. Idealy a game, to keep interest high
3. No GUI, just the console
4. Effective time to finish this: ~ 6 days (1 person per proj)

I have found one nice example of a game with carnivore and herbivore cells in a drop of water (array), it's a game of life twist. It is a bit too simple.

Any ideeas?

Aditional info: - language is C# - no AI and no complex rules

Answer 1

You could try battleships. Should allow for some OO concepts and could easily be done on the console.

You could have it a 1 player vs the CPU (and implement different AI algorithms), or do 2 player.

Answer 2

A simple text adventure.

It's fun, and object orientation is all over the place. You might provide your class with a framework for parsing the input etc, so they can concentrate on designing the actual OO aspects of the game.

Answer 3

BlackJack with betting on each hand. Console would be relatively simple. Overall project would not be that large in scope.

Answer 4

I don't have an answer, but did get inspired by your question and am thinking about creating my own assignment in C#, that's not very interesting off course but I would like to share my first thoughts on how to get there. For inspiration I would use three sources. All of which aren't answers to your question because they aren't in C#, don't have the desired depth or aren't doable in six days. But they might give you some idea's so I thought I would share them anyway.

• The book "Head first Object-Oriented Anysis & Design" on page 284 starts using a framework for a turn based strategy game
• an old way of learning OOP is DontFearTheOOP with writing a western novel text here, ppt here
• internally at my employer we use a simulation of a parking garage, this is nice for thinking about responsibilities of objects and their communication, not so much for inheritance, polymorphism etc. (Googling for "Object Oriented" Parking lot) gives a lot of hits that are similar to our assignment

Answer 5

Single player card games work well for learning OOP. Solitaire or 5 Card Draw are good options, and would cover the scope you describe.

If you pick games the students are familiar with and don't add an AI element, you allow the focus to be just on the OOP aspect, not so much on understanding the game rules or developing the best opponent.

Answer 6

In my University the "programming 101" class asks its student to implement a game of poker.

Cards are perfect for abstractions and encapsulation.

Is your double pair, a multiple interface of a single pair? How do you deal with full house?

Heck, how do you shuffle your deck?

Answer 7

In college we created a console version of monopoly to test our OO. Fun & everyone knows it.

Answer 8

This isn't so much a game - As a simulation.

Answer: "Grow a garden"
Its mostly well understood how things grow and what is needed, and allows for each person to be creative in what they do. It can not only teach inheritance, encapsulation, and such, but teach how to do it well such that a way that things can be easily extended and reused.

Start simple and get things working where they can plant seeds, water and watch them grow over time. Then add new things: pick tomatoes, pull carrots ... weeds grow, now pull the weeds, and so on. Keep adding new things over time and they can watch the project literally grow over time.

Answer 9

There's something fundamentally wrong with this question. If you gotta ask, it's not obvious, and if it's not obvious, it can't be simple. You gotta keep it simple.