Let's play Tic-Tac-Toe

Welcome to the TicTacToe game. This repository is for the Final Project for the BIOSTATS821 course - Software Tools for Data Science at Duke University. We are building a Tic-Tac-Toe game using Python. The user can play either against another user or against the computer using the command line prompt.

How to Play

The Board

[['', '', ''],

  ['', '', ''],
  
  ['', '', '']]

The board is a 3x3 grid as represented above. The first player will always have an 'X' mark, and the second player will always have an 'O' mark. Each player can place their mark during their respective turns by entering the number corresponding to the position they want to place the mark on. Please refer to the grid below to see which number corresponds to which place on the grid.

[[ 1,  2, 3],

  [4, 5, 6],
  
  [7, 8, 9]]

For example, if a user wants to play their turn in the top right corner, they enter the number 3 into the command prompt and their corresponding mark will be placed there. If the position on the grid is already occupied, an INVALID MOVE error will appear and the player will be asked to enter a number on the grid again. Throughout the game, if the player types an input that is not acceptable i.e. an input that is not an integer between 1-9, an INVALID INPUT error will appear; the player will be shown what the acceptable inputs are and they will be asked to try again.

Players Selection

When the game is loaded, the user needs to select the players. The user can choose to play against another player or against the computer. When the game begins, the user is prompted to choose between the two options by entering the appropriate value (1 for Player vs. Player and 2 for Player vs. Computer). The player who plays first is selected randomly for both options.

Player versus Player

If two human players are playing, the command prompt will display which Player's turn it is. To play their turn, each corresponding user must specify the position to be played on the 3x3 grid. The inputs range between the number 1-9 as displayed in the grid in The Board section.

Player versus Computer

If the user is playing against the computer, the command prompt will display whether it is the Computer's turn or the User's turn. To play their turn, the user must specify the position to be played on the 3x3 grid. After that the computer will perform its move.

Game Over

Once the game has a winner or there is a tie, the prompt will display the respective outcome of the game. From here the user can choose to either quit the game or start a new game by answering the prompt, Do you want to play again? (Answer Y/N)

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Getting up and running

This project is built with Python 3. In order to play the game, please follow the following steps:

Step 1: Git clone the repo on your local machine

git clone https://github.com/aarushi-vermaa/Biostat821_Final_Project.git

This will clone all the files on Github to your local machine

Step 2: Install required packages

pip install -r requirements.txt

Running this command will install the packages used to build the game. This will allow you to play the game seamlessly

Step 3: Run the game on your local machine

python3 tictactoe_game.py

Running this command will begin the game. Follow the instructions displayed to play the game.

We hope you enjoy the game!

Testing

To test the functions in the game:

pytest test_ttt.py -s

To test the coverage of the tests:

pytest test_ttt.py -s -cov

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Future Work

Our current game allows a user to play with another player or against the computer. For the game with the Computer, we have built our functions using the Minimax Algorithm. The rewards for reinforcement learning are calculated using the algorithm, and the function learns the optimal moves by playing the game through recursion.

Since we are using recursion, to optimize our game, we incorporated caching memoization. The code to this game can be found here. However, when the game is played with caching the computer takes around 30 seconds to play its first move. On the other hand, it is faster when the game is played without caching. We want to optimize our code so that the computer is more effecient and faster when using caching for recursion.

Currently our testing coverage is at 67%. We are exploring ways to test our remaining functions since they require a series of inputs and do not return a specific value, but only print outcomes. Covering these functions (TicTacToe.game() and TicTacToe.play_again()) will significantly improve our testing coverage

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Authors

Mohammad Anas, Sydney Donati-Leach, Aarushi Verma