Learn to Program with Small Basic

To try out this concept, you’ll play Pepper Dare, an exciting game of
chance, against the computer. When the game starts, the player is handed
10 imaginary cards face down. One of those cards has a jalapeño pepper on
it; the rest are blank. The player picks a card and hopes for a blank one. If
the player picks the card with the jalapeño, the player has to eat a hot pepper
and the computer wins! If the player doesn’t get the pepper card, the
computer takes a turn. The game ends when either the player or computer
eats the pepper and runs for a drink of water. Enter the main program in
Listing 10-4 into Small Basic. You’ll add the subroutines in a moment.
1 ' PepperDare.sb
2 player = 1 ' 1 for player, 2 for computer
3 pepper = Math.GetRandomNumber(10) ' Which card has the pepper
4
5 Again:
6 Pick() ' Updates the two variables: card and name
7 If (card = pepper) Then
8 TextWindow.Write("Hot tamale, it's a pepper! ")
9 TextWindow.WriteLine(name + " wins!")
10 TextWindow.WriteLine("")
11 Else
12 TextWindow.Write("The card is blank. ")
13 TextWindow.WriteLine("You put it back in and shuffle the deck.")
14 TextWindow.WriteLine("")
15 player = 3 - player ' Switches the player
16 Goto Again
17 EndIf
Listing 10-4: Setting up Pepper Dare
The game starts by setting the player variable to 1 to give you the first
turn (line 2). It then randomly picks 1 of the 10 cards to be the card that
has the jalapeño pepper (line 3). Then it starts a loop (lines 5–17) to take
turns. In each round, the game picks one card at random for the player (or
the computer) by calling the Pick() subroutine (line 6). If the picked card
has a pepper on it (line 7), the game displays the winner’s name (line 9),
and the game ends because the program moves out of the If loop and
jumps from line 10 to line 17, bypassing the Goto loop on line 16.
Otherwise, it displays The card is blank. You put it back in and shuffle
the deck. (lines 12–13) to indicate that the player (or the computer) picked
a blank card. The game then switches to the next player (line 15) and goes
back to start a new round (line 16). This is how the statement on line 15
works: if player is 1 (you, the user), then 3 – 1 is 2 (switching to the computer’s
turn), and if player is 2 (the computer), then 3 – 2 is 1 (switching
back to the user’s turn).
Next, you’ll add the Pick() subroutine in Listing 10-5 to the bottom of
your program.
1 Sub Pick
2 If (player = 1) Then
3 name = "The computer"
136 Chapter 10