Project: Guess The Number Game

The Game

Thinking like a programmer

Example — Guess the number game

Source: Mozilla, https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/JavaScript/First_steps/A_first_splash
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Your Task

Let's imagine your boss has given you the following brief for creating this game:

I want you to create a simple guess the number type game. It should choose a random number between 1 and 100, then challenge the player to guess the number in 10 turns. After each turn the player should be told if they are right or wrong, and if they are wrong, whether the guess was too low or too high. It should also tell the player what numbers they previously guessed. The game will end once the player guesses correctly, or once they run out of turns. When the game ends, the player should be given an option to start playing again.

Upon looking at this brief, the first thing we can do is to start breaking it down into simple actionable tasks, in as much of a programmer mindset as possible:

1. Generate a random number between 1 and 100.
2. Record the turn number the player is on. Start it on 1.
3. Provide the player with a way to guess what the number is.
4. Once a guess has been submitted first record it somewhere so the user can see their previous guesses.
5. Next, check whether it is the correct number.
6. If it is correct:
   1. Display congratulations message.
   2. Stop the player from being able to enter more guesses (this would mess the game up).
   3. Display control allowing the player to restart the game.
7. If it is wrong and the player has turns left:
   1. Tell the player they are wrong and whether their guess was too high or too low.
   2. Allow them to enter another guess.
   3. Increment the turn number by 1.
8. If it is wrong and the player has no turns left:
   1. Tell the player it is game over.
   2. Stop the player from being able to enter more guesses (this would mess the game up).
   3. Display control allowing the player to restart the game.
9. Once the game restarts, make sure the game logic and UI are completely reset, then go back to step 1.

Let's now move forward, looking at how we can turn these steps into code, building up the example, and exploring JavaScript features as we go.

Initial Setup

Adding Variables

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This section of the code sets up the variables and constants we need to store the data our program will use. Variables are basically containers for values (such as numbers, or strings of text). You create a variable with the keyword let (or var) followed by a name for your variable (you'll read more about the difference between the keywords in a future article). Constants are used to store values that are immutable or can't be changed and are created with the keyword const. In this case, we are using constants to store references to parts of our user interface; the text inside some of them might change, but the HTML elements referenced stay the same.

You can assign a value to your variable or constant with an equals sign (=) followed by the value you want to give it.

In our example:

• The first variable — randomNumber — is assigned a random number between 1 and 100, calculated using a mathematical algorithm.
• The first three constants are each made to store a reference to the results paragraphs in our HTML, and are used to insert values into the paragraphs later on in the code (note how they are inside a <div> element, which is itself used to select all three later on for resetting, when we restart the game):

   

  <div class="resultParas"> <p class="guesses"></p> <p class="lastResult"></p> <p class="lowOrHi"></p> </div>
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• The next two constants store references to the form text input and submit button and are used to control submitting the guess later on.

   

  <label for="guessField">Enter a guess: </label>
 <input type="text" id="guessField" class="guessField">
 <input type="submit" value="Submit guess" class="guessSubmit">

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• Our final two variables store a guess count of 1 (used to keep track of how many guesses the player has had), and a reference to a reset button that doesn't exist yet (but will later).

Adding a Function

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Functions are reusable blocks of code that you can write once and run again and again, saving the need to keep repeating code all the time. This is really useful. There are a number of ways to define functions, but for now we'll concentrate on one simple type. Here we have defined a function by using the keyword function, followed by a name, with parentheses put after it. After that we put two curly braces ({ }). Inside the curly braces goes all the code that we want to run whenever we call the function.

When we want to run the code, we type the name of the function followed by the parentheses.

Let's try that now. Save your code and refresh the page in your browser. Then go into the developer tools JavaScript console, and enter the following line:

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After pressing Return/Enter, you should see an alert come up that says I am a placeholder; we have defined a function in our code that creates an alert whenever we call it.

Adding Conditionals

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This is a lot of code — phew! Let's go through each section and explain what it does.

• The first line declares a variable called userGuess and sets its value to the current value entered inside the text field. We also run this value through the built-in Number() constructor, just to make sure the value is definitely a number.
• Next, we encounter our first conditional code block. A conditional code block allows you to run code selectively, depending on whether a certain condition is true or not. It looks a bit like a function, but it isn't. The simplest form of conditional block starts with the keyword if, then some parentheses, then some curly braces. Inside the parentheses we include a test. If the test returns true, we run the code inside the curly braces. If not, we don't, and move on to the next bit of code. In this case the test is testing whether the guessCount variable is equal to 1 (i.e. whether this is the player's first go or not):

   

  guessCount === 1
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  If it is, we make the guesses paragraph's text content equal to Previous guesses: . If not, we don't.

• Line 6 appends the current userGuess value onto the end of the guesses paragraph, plus a blank space so there will be a space between each guess shown.
• The next block does a few checks:
  • The first if(){ } checks whether the user's guess is equal to the randomNumber set at the top of our JavaScript. If it is, the player has guessed correctly and the game is won, so we show the player a congratulations message with a nice green color, clear the contents of the Low/High guess information box, and run a function called setGameOver(), which we'll discuss later.
  • Now we've chained another test onto the end of the last one using an else if(){ } structure. This one checks whether this turn is the user's last turn. If it is, the program does the same thing as in the previous block, except with a game over message instead of a congratulations message.
  • The final block chained onto the end of this code (the else { }) contains code that is only run if neither of the other two tests returns true (i.e. the player didn't guess right, but they have more guesses left). In this case we tell them they are wrong, then we perform another conditional test to check whether the guess was higher or lower than the answer, displaying a further message as appropriate to tell them higher or lower.
• The last three lines in the function (lines 26–28 above) get us ready for the next guess to be submitted. We add 1 to the guessCount variable so the player uses up their turn (++ is an incrementation operation — increment by 1), and empty the value out of the form text field and focus it again, ready for the next guess to be entered.

Handling Events

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Here we are adding an event listener to the guessSubmit button. This is a method that takes two input values (called arguments) — the type of event we are listening out for (in this case click) as a string, and the code we want to run when the event occurs (in this case the checkGuess() function). Note that we don't need to specify the parentheses when writing it inside addEventListener().

Try saving and refreshing your code now, and your example should work — to a point. The only problem now is that if you guess the correct answer or run out of guesses, the game will break because we've not yet defined the setGameOver() function that is supposed to be run once the game is over. Let's add our missing code now and complete the example functionality.

Finishing the Game

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• The first two lines disable the form text input and button by setting their disabled properties to true. This is necessary, because if we didn't, the user could submit more guesses after the game is over, which would mess things up.
• The next three lines generate a new <button> element, set its text label to "Start new game", and add it to the bottom of our existing HTML.
• The final line sets an event listener on our new button so that when it is clicked, a function called resetGame() is run.

Now we need to define this function too! Add the following code, again to the bottom of your JavaScript:

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This rather long block of code completely resets everything to how it was at the start of the game, so the player can have another go. It:

• Puts the guessCount back down to 1.
• Empties all the text out of the information paragraphs. We select all paragraphs inside <div class="resultParas"></div>, then loop through each one, setting their textContent to '' (an empty string).
• Removes the reset button from our code.
• Enables the form elements, and empties and focuses the text field, ready for a new guess to be entered.
• Removes the background color from the lastResult paragraph.
• Generates a new random number so that you are not just guessing the same number again!

At this point you should have a fully working (simple) game — congratulations!

All we have left to do now in this article is talk about a few other important code features that you've already seen, although you may have not realized it.

Adding a Loop

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What happened? The numbers 1 to 20 were printed out in your console. This is because of the loop. A for loop takes three input values (arguments):

1. A starting value: In this case we are starting a count at 1, but this could be any number you like. You could replace the letter i with any name you like too, but i is used as a convention because it's short and easy to remember.
2. A condition: Here we have specified i < 21 — the loop will keep going until i is no longer less than 21. When i reaches 21, the loop will no longer run.
3. An incrementor: We have specified i++, which means "add 1 to i". The loop will run once for every value of i, until i reaches a value of 21 (as discussed above). In this case, we are printing the value of i out to the console on every iteration using console.log().

Now let's look at the loop in our number guessing game — the following can be found inside the resetGame() function:

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This code creates a variable containing a list of all the paragraphs inside <div class="resultParas"> using the querySelectorAll() method, then it loops through each one, removing the text content of each.