Translated from French:
Hello, I'm programming a game in LabVIEW which is a 9-piece Supreme Tic-Tac-Toe game. The goal is as follows: when a player plays in square X, the opposing player must play in Tic-Tac-Toe X... the first player to align 3 symbols in any of the Tic-Tac-Toe boards wins.
My question is this: I want to implement a visual cue so that when it is a player's turn, the specific 3x3 board where they are required to play lights up. Once the player clicks inside that board to make their move, it should turn off, and the opposing player's designated board should then light up for their turn.
To achieve this, I tried using nine Boolean LED controls, which I placed over my nine large Tic-Tac-Toe boards. I created a "Build Array" containing these nine Boolean values, stored it as a Local Variable, and passed it into a For Loop. Inside the loop, I compare the coordinates indicating the opponent's required move (for example, if they must play in board #4) against the loop's iteration index (*i*). If the condition evaluates to TRUE, the corresponding board (e.g., board #4) should light up; once the player has made their move, that board should subsequently turn off.
I am currently stuck on how to ensure that the TRUE state is applied specifically to the intended board, and—crucially—how to make that specific board turn off again *after* the player has made their move.
Finally—and this may be an obvious fix—since I am using Boolean LED controls, they currently appear *on top* of my background graphics and grid lines. I would like to send them to the back (behind the other elements) so that the "lighting up" effect appears to glow from *behind* the Tic-Tac-Toe board itself.
Thank you for providing your code. There are multiple "problems" with it that make it difficult to evaluate (unless we make some effort to "clean it up" -- the Block Diagram looks like it requires about 25 "laptop screens" in a 5-by-5 grid arrangement to fit the code you submitted. I got it down to almost fit in a single laptop screen by a combination of using the "Clean-up" tool (the "Broom" symbol on the Block Diagram Toolbar), and deleting most of the Frame Sequences (except for the pair within the While loop, which I left intact for now).
Here are some ideas to consider:
- One way to design a Tic-Tac-Toe Board is as a 3x3 Array of "TTT Square" (Tic-Tac-Toe Square), something that can take on 3 possible values -- <Blank> (not marked), "X" (marked with an X) or "O" (marked with an O). The Board would be initialized to all "Blank". Each Player can only select a blank Square, with Player 1's selection changing to "X", and Player 2's to "O". Make this 3x3 Array into a Type Definition (TypeDef) called TYPE TTT Board (in French, of course).
- For your game, you make a 3x3 Array of TTT Boards and create another TypeDef (I don't have a good name, maybe "Super TTT Board") that contains a TTT Board (defined above as a 3x3 Array of TTT Square) and a "Solution" code, <Blank>, "X", or "O" set after X or O makes a move in that board.
- My friend Altenbach probably has a very nice algorithm to detect after X or O makes a move whether their move creates a Solution. But you can just check each row (3 choices), each column (3 choices) and each diagonal (2 choices) for three X's or 3 O's. If "Yes", then the "Solution" code is marked on the specific Super TTT Board. If three such Boards have Solutions, the game ends with X (or O) the Winner. If nobody can play (all squares filled without three "solved" Boards), nobody wins (when my mother taught me to play, we called this "The Cat wins").
Speaking of Altenbach, have you studied his code to see how he "chooses" which square X or O has chosen on his (or her) term? [I must confess I have not studied it carefully ...]
Some suggestions that will help you in learning LabVIEW and developing clean code.
- Try to keep your wires running horizontally left-to-right with as few bends as possible.
- Data (wires) should (almost) always come in on the left and go out on the right, with as few bends as possible.
- Structure your Data to fit the problem. A Tic-Tac-Toe board has three rows and 3 columns, a 2D Array of "something". If you call the "something" Blank, X, and O (I just thought of a name -- Cell Type), then a Board is a 3x3 Array of Cell Type.
- Before building your Super Tic-Tac-Toe game, build (using the ideas above) the simple one-board game and get the bugs out.
- I just realized when discussing the 3x3 Array of Boards, that the Solution code is wrong -- I forgot to add "C", for "Cat" (all squares chosen, but neither X or O has a win.
- So now there are three "endings" -- X wins 3 Boards, Y wins 3 Boards, or the Cat wins enough Boards that neither X nor Y can win 3.
Thank you for a very entertaining "Super Tic-Tac-Toe" game idea.
Bob Schor
