Creating a 2-Player Connect Four Game in JCreator: Setting Up the Board with BlueJ (2024)

Abstract: Learn how to create a 2-player Connect Four game using JCreator and the BlueJ canvas interface. In this tutorial, we'll set up the game board.

2024-05-17 by DevCodeF1 Editors

Creating a 2-Player Connect Four Game in BlueJ: Setting up the Board

In this article, we will focus on creating a 2-player Connect Four game using the BlueJ canvas interface. Connect Four is a classic game where two players take turns dropping colored discs into a vertical grid, with the goal of connecting four of their discs in a row, either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. We will begin by setting up the game board in BlueJ.

Creating the Board Class

To start, we will create a new class called Board that will represent the game board. The board will be a 2D array of Cell objects, where each cell can contain a disc of one of two colors.

public class Board {private Cell[][] cells;public Board(int width, int height) {cells = new Cell[height][width];for (int y = 0; y < height; y++) {for (int x = 0; x < width; x++) {cells[y][x] = new Cell();}}}// Other methods will go here}

Creating the Cell Class

Next, we will create a new class called Cell that will represent a single cell on the board. Each cell will have a reference to a disc, if any, and a method to check if it contains a disc of a certain color.

public class Cell {private Disc disc;public Cell() {disc = null;}public void setDisc(Disc disc) {this.disc = disc;}public boolean containsDisc(DiscColor color) {return disc != null && disc.getColor() == color;}}

Creating the Disc Class

We will also create a new class called Disc that will represent a disc on the board. Each disc will have a color, which will be an enumerated type with two possible values: RED and YELLOW.

public enum DiscColor {RED,YELLOW}public class Disc {private DiscColor color;public Disc(DiscColor color) {this.color = color;}public DiscColor getColor() {return color;}}

Setting up the Board in BlueJ

Now that we have created the necessary classes, we can set up the board in BlueJ. To do this, we will create a new instance of the Board class with the desired width and height, and then create a new Canvas object that will display the board.

Board board = new Board(7, 6);Canvas canvas = new Canvas("Connect Four Board", board.getWidth(), board.getHeight());

Next, we will add a method to the Board class that will draw the board on the canvas. This method will iterate over each cell in the board, and if the cell contains a disc, it will draw the disc on the canvas.

public void draw(Graphics g) {for (int y = 0; y < height; y++) {for (int x = 0; x < width; x++) {Cell cell = cells[y][x];if (cell.containsDisc()) {Disc disc = cell.getDisc();drawDisc(g, x, y, disc.getColor());}}}}private void drawDisc(Graphics g, int x, int y, DiscColor color) {// Code to draw the disc on the canvas goes here}

Finally, we will add a method to the Board class that will handle mouse clicks on the canvas. This method will determine which cell was clicked, and if the cell is empty, it will add a disc of the current player's color to the cell.

public void handleMouseClick(int x, int y) {int column = x / (width / width);int row = y / (height / height);Cell cell = cells[row][column];if (!cell.containsDisc()) {Disc disc = new Disc(currentPlayer.getColor());cell.setDisc(disc);currentPlayer = currentPlayer.getOpponent();}}

• We have created a new class called Board that represents the game board. The board is a 2D array of Cell objects.
• We have created a new class called Cell that represents a single cell on the board. Each cell can contain a disc of one of two colors.
• We have created a new class called Disc that represents a disc on the board. Each disc has a color, which is an enumerated type with two possible values: RED and YELLOW.
• We have set up the board in BlueJ by creating a new instance of the Board class with the desired width and height, and then creating a new Canvas object that displays the board.
• We have added a method to the Board class that draws the board on the canvas, and a method that handles mouse clicks on the canvas.

References

• BlueJ: https://www.bluej.org/
• Connect Four: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_Four

Explore the process of creating a 2-player Connect Four game using JCreator and the BlueJ canvas interface. In this part, we'll focus on setting up the game board.

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