[Tutor] Help with Dice game

[Alan Gauld]

On 10/11/14 20:57, coryloghry at yahoo.com.dmarc.invalid wrote:

> I wrote the following code as a simulation for the table top game
> x-wing.

I don;t know it so can only give some general comments below...

> import random
> print("X-wing dice simulator")
> x = int(input("How many dice will the offensive player be rolling?\n"))
> y = int(input("How many dice will the defensive player be rolling?\n"))

Might be better to use more descriptive names like 'offense_turns'
and defense_turns'?

> hits = 0
> crits = 0
> dodges = 0
> offense = 0
> defense = 0

> while offense < x:
>      odie = random.randint(1,8)

Is it really an 8 sided dice?

>      if odie <= 4:
>          hits = hits + 1
>          offense = offense + 1
>      if odie == 4:
>          crits = crits + 1
>          offense = offense + 1
>      else:
>          continue

You don't need the else: continue, the loop does that by itself.
Also by not incrementing the offense counter you effectively let the 
player have unlimited misses - is that really what you want?

Finally, the Pythonic idiom for incrementing a counter, n, is

n += 1

It saves a few keystrokes...

> while defense < y:
>      ddie = random.randint(1,8)
>      if ddie <= 3:
>          dodges = dodges + 1
>          defense = defense + 1
>      else:
>          continue

Same comments as above

To help you debug this it might be worth adding a few print statements 
inside the loop, like so:

while offense < x:
    odie = random.randint(1,8)
    print('odie is: ',odie)
    if odie <= 4:
        hits = hits + 1
        offense = offense + 1
        print('hits, offense = ',hits,offense)

> print("The offensive player lands", hits,"hits and", crits,"crits\n")
> print("The defensive player dodges", dodges, "hits\n")
> print("The offensive player deals", int((hits + crits) - dodges), "to
> the defensive player")

Doing all the printing after the loop finishes gives you a
very limited view of what's happening inside.

hth
-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos