As I worked through this lab and the video, I became more aware of
the thought process that goes into tic-tac-toe. However, it was not
until I saw all the reward possibilities for the initial state of the
board, and then made the computer play itself that I appreciated how
complex the game is and how many possibilities there are on a relatively
simple board. I am also wondering when the computer plays itself,
does the game always end in a tie? I suppose I could write a program for
this that plays the game a set number of times and makes a list of the
outcomes and then counts the wins, losses, and ties for a particular
player.
To decide on a winner, the game needs to check each of the winning
combinations on the board for either x symbols or o symbols and
then return the correct winner. To do this, I utilized 2 functions, a
check_winning_combo, which checked each index in each combination to see
if an x or o symbol was present, and then a check_winner which sent each
possible winning combination through check_winning combo. If the combo
did not have all x's or all o's (a mix of x's and o's and/or blanks)
the check_winning combo returned false otherwise it returned true.
The docstrings (along with the video) really helped me to make sense of
the code. I'm finding myself more familiar with how to read the code, but
it still takes some searching to find the different functions that certain
parts of each class refer back to. Having all of the different programs
open in different tabs also helped me to make sense of the program, as I
could look from class to class to see where the function I may have been
looking for could be found.
Chris Mekelburg
cmekelburg