Search⌘ K
AI Features
Home
Courses
Learning to Program in Ruby: By Example

Declare That the Player Has Lost

Understand how to program the losing condition in a Ruby-based hangman game by counting incorrect guesses. Learn to update error counters, use conditional checks to end the game after seven wrong attempts, and reveal the hidden word to the player. This lesson helps you enhance game functionality and user feedback.

We'll cover the following...

Define the rules of the game

Let’s now include a condition for the player to lose the game if they haven’t guessed the word in seven tries. Let's have a look at the updated implementation for this requirement.

Ruby
require_relative "word_info"
hidden_word = "fuchsia"
found_letters = []
wrong_letters = []
errors_counter = 0
loop do
  if errors_counter > 6
    puts "You lost the game, BANANE!!! The word was #{hidden_word}"
    break
  end
  info = word_info(hidden_word, found_letters)
  puts info
  puts
  unless info.include?('_')
    puts "You win, PATATE!"
    break
  end
  print "Wrong letters: "
  puts wrong_letters.sort.uniq.join(" ")
  puts
  print "Give me a letter: "
 
  answer = gets
  answer = answer.chomp.downcase
  if answer == 'stop'
    exit
  end
  if answer.length > 1
    puts "You must give only one letter!"
  elsif answer.empty?
  elsif hidden_word.include?(answer)
    puts "The letter is part of the hidden word"
    if found_letters.include?(answer)
    else
      found_letters << answer
    end
  else
    puts "Invalid letter"
    wrong_letters << answer.upcase
    errors_counter = errors_counter + 1
  end
end

Count errors

We must count the number of errors. Therefore, we assign the name errors_counter to zero (the value) at line 8.

When we conclude that the proposal is wrong, we recall the value associated with the errors_counter ...