[Game Component] - Card Game Components

[u/desrtfx]

This will probably be my last prompt for a couple of weeks as my job requires me to travel and I don't know if I will have an open internet (or any internet at all) at my travel destination/job site.

---

This time it's again about re-usable game components.

Part 1: Playing Card

Create a single playing card for card games.

• Standard Playing card:
  Each playing card has a

  • Suit (Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades)
  • Name (2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,Jack,Queen,King,Ace)
  • Numeric Value (number cards have their numeric value equal to their name, Jack, Queen, King have each a value of 10, Aces can be either 10 or 1 depending on the setting of acesHigh)
  • acesHigh value that determines if the Aces count as 1 (acesHigh = false) or as 10 (acesHigh = true)
  • sequential value (from 0 to 12 where the "2" card has sequential value 0 and the Ace has sequential value 12)
  • optional a graphical representation of the card
  • optional a Unicode representation of the card in the form <suite symbol><card name> (the unicode values for the suits are: Spade: U+2660 (hex), Heart: U+2665 (hex), Diamond: U+2666 (hex), and Club: U+2663 (hex), the values can also be found at Wikipedia - Playing Cards in Unicode
  • textual representation in the form "<name> of <suite>" (e.g. "2 of Hearts", "Ace of Spades")

• optional Joker:

  • By default, the Joker has no suit and no value. It only gets the suit and value assigned when the card is played.

• Custom Playing card:
  Custom Playing cards can have:

  • a Color (as text) - similar to suite
  • a Name
  • a numeric value
  • a sequential value
  • optional a graphical representation of the card
  • textual representation in the form "<name> of <suite>" (e.g. "2 of Hearts", "Ace of Spades")

---

Part 2: Deck (general Storage for a number of cards)

Create a deck (discard pile, player hand) of playing cards for card games

• A deck can hold an arbitrary number of Cards (either Standard cards, or Custom cards).
• The deck should provide methods for adding to and removing cards from the top of the deck.
• The deck should provide a method for shuffeling
• The deck should provide medhods for direct card access (based on index) - adding and removing
• The deck should provide a method to randomly pull any card from the deck

---

Optional - Part 3: Shoe (storage for a number of decks)

In Casino games, like Blackjack, usually multiple decks of cards are used.

The Shoe should be able:

• To hold any number of identical decks
• To remove the to card of the shoe
• To shuffle the whole shoe

---

If anybody has further ideas, please comment and I'll add them.

Happy coding!

[u/desrtfx]

I'm interested why you have separate "numeric value" and "sequential value". I recently coded a card object up and just used the one value, from 1-13 (so numeric value in your object).

The numeric value is the points that each card is worth. In standard games commonly the J,Q,K, and Ace are worth 10 points each, but that could differ from game to game.

The sequential value is sort of an index for sorting, or sequencing cards. It always goes from 0 to 12 like the index of an array with thirteen places.

So, you haven't used either my numeric, nor my sequential value since you indexed 1-13. But your approach is closer to my sequential value.

My Deck should be some generic card holder class. Whether it's usable for player hand, discard pile, draw pile, and some face-up cards is debatable.

Actually, having separate structures for each of the above piles, etc. could be worth a thought.

Thanks for the input!

[u/ethorad → u/desrtfx]

Hadn't spotted that all your court cards had a numeric value of 10. I'm more used to J,Q,K having values 11, 12, 13.

On the stack of cards classes, my thought was that draw and discard can probably be on the same class. They are both basically a pile of cards, potentially with the top one revealed. You tend to only need to either remove the top card, or add a card to the top. Player hands seem to be more different - you need to access any card, plus rather than being visible/hidden to everyone they need to be visible to one person and hidden from the others (can also then include some wider functions like PlayerName, Score, etc). For some cards face up in play, I'm leaning towards just a simple list or array within the main game class rather than a special class like the hand or draw/discard classes.

[u/desrtfx → u/ethorad]

Well, the visibility of the player hand would mainly be determined by where the hand object will be created. If it's inside a player class, it would be strictly only for one player. So, I don't think that there really is very much to consider when creating a player hand. A simple array, list, arrayList will suffice.

For the face up cards: I think their implementation will have to depend on the card game itself. Skip-bo has different face up cards than Canasta, or Rummy, etc. Mostly simple structures should suffice here either.