A fully shuffled deck of cards is split evenly among up to four players, who take turns revealing their cards while counting from Ace to King. When the pattern of cards satisfies a certain rule, players must race to use the 'slap' action represented by a key on the keyboard, with the goal of being faster than other players. The slowest player takes all cards from the current round, and the winner is the first player to get rid of all their cards. Players interact with the game through 'flips' and 'slaps' that are represented by unique keys on the keyboard. After a game, players may save their name to the leaderboard, where they can view all players' total wins and number of games played. They can also retrieve game data stored from the previous session.
Built Using: Java, Swing, JUnit
- Objective: to get rid of all your cards
- Last player to slap must collect all cards from the current round
- Players who slap incorrectly must collect all cards from the current round
- There is no penalty if all players miss a slap
- In ascending order, players count from Ace to King every time a card is flipped. The count starts over when a round ends
- Winner is determined by whoever gets rid of all their cards first
- On Jacks
- The card value (i.e. the number) matches the current count
- Doubles: Two cards with the same value. Examples:
- 3 + 3
- Queen + Queen
- Sandwiches: Two cards of the same value with any card in between. Examples:
- 1 + 7 + 1
- King + 3 + King
| Player | Slap | Flip |
|---|---|---|
| Player 1 | B | M |
| Player 2 | Z | C |
| Player 3 | 2 | A |
| Player 4 | L | 0 |
| Enter Players | End Screen | Leaderboard |
|---|---|---|
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Player names above are used for demonstration purposes only
This project is of interest to me because Slap Jack is one of my favorite card games. I have always wanted to make some sort of interactive game, and this project is the perfect opportunity to do so. This was such a rewarding and fun project to work on. I used Java and core principles of object-oriented programming (OOP) to develop a console application. From there, I transformed the console game to a graphical user interface, designed with Java Swing, to allow user-friendly interactions. Furthermore, I used the test-driven approach by writing comprehensive test cases with JUnit to ensure app stability. The data from previous sessions are stored using JSON serialization and can be accessed in future sessions if desired.
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As a user, I want to be able to add an account to a list of accounts by saving a game.
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As a user, I want to be able to view the list of accounts saved.
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As a user, I want to be able to slap a card.
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As a user, I want to be able to remove (i.e. flip) a card.
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As a user, I want to be able to quit a game.
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As a user, when I finish the game, I want to be given the option to save the leaderboard to file.
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As a user, when I start the application, I want to be given the option to load the leaderboard from file.
- You can generate the first required action related to adding Xs to a Y by pressing the 'Save Game' button after a game.
- You can generate the second required action related to adding Xs to a Y by clicking the 'Sort By Name' button in the leaderboard panel.
- You can locate my visual component by starting the application.
- You can save the state of my application by clicking the 'Store Data' button when a game ends.
- You can reload the state of my application by clicking the 'Load Game' button when the application starts.
Sat Apr 08 00:10:58 PDT 2023 New account added to leaderboard: ivan
Sat Apr 08 00:10:58 PDT 2023 Account updated: ivan
Sat Apr 08 00:10:58 PDT 2023 New account added to leaderboard: kobe
Sat Apr 08 00:10:58 PDT 2023 Account updated: kobe
Sat Apr 08 00:10:58 PDT 2023 Account updated: alan
Sat Apr 08 00:11:01 PDT 2023 Leaderboard has been sorted by name.
If I had more time to work on the project, I would add a method in the CardDeck class that can return a list of cards that have been played in the game so far. Doing this will remove the association arrow between the Game class and the Card class, which improves cohesion. Instead of keeping track of a list of cards throughout the Game class, I would instead delegate that task to CardDeck and make it their responsibility since CardDeck must already have an association to the Card class as it represents a deck of cards.
Furthermore, the code in the Game class is quite long and many aspects can be refactored to make it shorter and more readable. I could extract classes from the Game class which handles displaying the user interface for different aspects of the game, then call its methods from the Game class. Another example is the duplication of the cardCountInt and cardCount. They should work in tandem and changes to one must be reflected in the other, so this can be refactored by adjusting the code so that it is possible to remove one of these variables. This will reduce coupling since it is difficult to maintain both of them at the same time and make sure they are aligned with the same Card.Value.
Another design aspect I wish to change is using a hashmap for the Leaderboard class to represent a collection of accounts instead of using an array list. I believe this fits the methods in the code better and the functionality that I was looking for in that class. For instance, I would be able to quickly locate an account by their username instead of looping through the list to find it, which might be more useful for the class.