Words Guesser

Table of Contents

• Words Guesser
  • Table of Contents
  • Introduction
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
  • Words file
  • Usage
  • Contributing
  • Contact
  • License

Introduction

Words Guesser is a .NET console application written in C# and built using the Visual Studio 2022, that allows you to play a word guessing game. It combines simplicity with readability, maintainability and extensibility, and has a user-friendly interface that is really easy to use. You can also easily add your own words to the game (see words file section).

This makes it a great, easy to add tool to include in your application as a fun little game for your users. For example, when the user is waiting for something to load.

This project was created targeting Windows. It has not been tested on other operating systems.

Prerequisites

Before you use the Words Guesser, make sure that you have the following prerequisites:

• Visual Studio 2022 (version 17.6.3 or later)
  • ".NET desktop development" workload installed.

Installation

1. Clone this repository to your local machine using Git, or download the ZIP file and extract it to a directory of your choice:

   git clone https://github.com/JakubKorytko/words-guesser.git

2. Change to the project directory:

   cd words-guesser

3. Open the WordsGuesser.sln solution file in Visual Studio.

4. Install the NuGet packages:

   • Automatically:

     • Make sure that in the Tools -> Options -> NuGet Package Manager -> General (toolbar) the following options are selected:

       • Automatically check for missing packages during build in Visual Studio
       • Allow NuGet to download missing packages during build

       If they are not, select them and click OK

   • Manually:

     • Select Tools -> NuGet Package Manager -> Package Manager Console from the toolbar

     • In the console, type the following command and press Enter:

       Update-Package

5. Rename words.example.json to words.json or provide your own words file.

6. Build or run the project in Visual Studio:

   • Run the project in the Visual Studio

     • F5 / Ctrl + F5 by default
     • or Debug -> Start Debugging / Start Without Debugging on the toolbar

   • or Build project executable

     • Ctrl + B / Ctrl + Shift + B by default
     • or Build -> Build Solution / Build WordsGuesser on the toolbar

   The executable will be available in the build directory in both cases.

Words file

For the program to work, you need to provide a words.json file in the root directory of the project.

The file should contain a JSON array of objects (categories) with the following properties:

• categoryName - the name of the category (e.g. animals)
• words - an array of words in the category (e.g. ["cat", "dog", "mouse"])

For example:

[
    // (...),
    {
        "categoryName": "currencies",
        "words": [
            "yuan",
            "euro",
            "dollar",
            "yen",
            "pound"
        ]
    },
    // (...)
]

There is a words.example.json file in the repository. You can rename it to words.json and use it as a template.

Usage

Using the application is straightforward. It doesn't use any menus (except for the choice to play again or exit the app after the game) or command-line arguments.

When you run the app, it loads the words.json file and starts the game automatically.

You can now guess the letters of the word one by one. If you guess a letter correctly, it will be revealed in the word. If you guess incorrectly, you will lose a turn.

You have limited number of tries, so be careful! It is determined by the private const int GuessesLimit field in the Game class (Components/Game/GameLogic.cs)

The game ends when you guess the word correctly or when you run out of tries.

After the game ends, you can choose to play again or exit the application.

Contributing

If you find issues or have suggestions for improvements, feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request. Contributions are welcome!

Contact

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at jakub@korytko.me.

License

This project is released under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.