OO vs Simplicity when it comes to user interaction

Question

Firstly, sorry if this question is rather vague but it's something I'd really like an answer to.

As a project over summer while I have some downtime from Uni I am going to build a monopoly game. This question is more about the general idea of the problem however, rather than the specific task I'm trying to carry out.

I decided to build this with a bottom up approach, creating just movement around a forty space board and then moving on to interaction with spaces. I realised that I was quite unsure of the best way of proceeding with this and I am torn between two design ideas:

1. Giving every space its own object, all sub-classes of a Space object so the interaction can be defined by the space object itself. I could do this by implementing different land() methods for each type of space.

2. Only giving the Properties and Utilities (as each property has unique features) objects and creating methods for dealing with the buying/renting etc in the main class of the program (or Board as I'm calling it). Spaces like go and super tax could be implemented by a small set of conditionals checking to see if player is on a special space.

Option 1 is obviously the OO (and I feel the correct) way of doing things but I'd like to only have to handle user interaction from the programs main class. In other words, I don't want the space objects to be interacting with the player. Why? Errr. A lot of the coding I've done thus far has had this simplicity but I'm not sure if this is a pipe dream or not for larger projects. Should I really be handling user interaction in an entirely separate class?

As you can see I am quite confused about this situation. Is there some way round this? And, does anyone have any advice on practical OO design that could help in general?

EDIT: Just like to note that I feel I lost a little focus on this question. I am interested in the general methodology of combining OO and any external action(command line, networking, GUI, file management etc) really.

Answer 1

Go with the first design. You'd have a Property class, and subclass the special properties, overriding the default behavior.

As far as interaction, you could have a Token class, and move an instance of that around the board. You have to give the user some options, but yes, from the responses, you should be calling methods on objects, not putting complex logic in the user events.

Sample classes:

• Property
  • name
  • price
  • baseRent
  • houseCount
  • hotelCount
  • mortgaged
  • getCurrentRent()
• RailRoad extends Property
• Utility extends Property
• Board
  • properties
• User
  • token
  • playerName
  • currentProperty
  • ownedProperties
  • buyProperty()
  • payRentOnProperty()
  • mortgageProperty()
  • move()

Answer 2

I agree option #1 seems better.

As for "user interaction" - it all depends. You could leave some of your code in another class. For example,

// in main class
user.landOn(space);
if (space.containsProperties()) doSomething(); // Option #1 for some user-interaction code

// in User.java
public void landOn(Space s) {
    // do some checks
    s.land(this);
    if (s.containsProperties()) {...} // Option #2
    // something else?
}

// in GetMoneySpace.java
@Override
public void land(User u) {
    u.awardCash(200);
    // Option #3 - no properties so nothing here
}

This is far more OOP-y (and better, in my opinion) than something like

if (space.isCashAwardSpace()) {
    user.awardCash(space.getAward());
}
if (user.something()) doSomething(); // Some user-interaction code

Answer 3

In the end, it is up to you. That is the beauty of OO, in that it is subject to interpretation. There are some patterns that should usually be adhered to, but in general it is your decision how to approach it.

However, you should carefully consider what each actor in the system should know about the rest of it. Should a property really know about the player, his account balance, and the other players? Probably not. A property should know what it costs, how much its rent is, etc.

On the other hand, should the main playing thread be concerned about trivial matters such as paying rent? Probably not. Its main concern should be the state of the game itself, such as dice rolling, whether each player wants to trade or buy or unmortgage/mortgage, things like that.

Think for a moment about the action of landing on a square. Once landed, the player has 3 options:

• Buy the property
• Ignore the property
• Pay rent

Now, which actor in the system knows all the information required to complete that. We have the Game class, which isn't concerned with such tedium. We have the Property, which doesn't really care about the players. But the Player object knows all this information. It keeps a record of what each player owns, and can easily access the proper data.

So, if it were me, I would make a Player.performMove(Die d) method. It has easy access to the accounts. This also allows for the least coupling among classes.

But in the end, it's up to you. I'm sure people have created Monopoly clones in perfect OO, as well as Functional or Procedural languages too. In the end, use what you know and keep refactoring until you're happy with the end design.

Answer 4

I am not entirely sure if I understand it correctly. You have always such choice when designing software. I would personally go for the first choice. One argument is personal experience with small games (Scrabble), which prooved to me that good design matters for smaller projects as well. The point of OOP is that you can think differently about your design and you get some design benefits. For example imagine how hard it will be to add new field, change existing one, reuse behaviour of one field in multiple fields.

Answer 5

Your first approach is the one I'd go for. It encapsulates the behaviour where it's needed. So, you'd have Space subclasses for Utilities, Properties, GotoJail, FreeParking - basically all the different cateogires of spaces. What groups a category is it's common behaviour.

Your properties spaces may themselves have a group object as a member, e.g. to group all the dark blue properties together.

As to interaction with the user, you pass a Board (or better a GameController) instance to each space, so it knows which Game it is part of and can influence the game. The Space can then invoke specific actions on the board, such as, moving a piece, asking the user a question etc. The main point is that there is separation - the user interaction is not happening inside each Space - but the space is allowed to request that some interaction happens, or that a piece is moved. It's up to your GameController to actually do the interaction or move pieces etc. This separation makes it easy to test, and also provide alternative implementations as the need may arise (E.g. different game rules in different editions/countries?)

Answer 6

Option 2 doesn't make much sense, or at least it's not as clear to me as option 1. With option 1 you don't need to handle user interaction inside your space object. You could have in your main class or a separate class dedicated to handle user interaction:

public void move(Player p, int spaces){
    Space landingSpace = board.getLandingSpace(p,spaces);
    landingSpace.land(p); //apply your logic here
}

As you can see, the Space class is responsible for checking the Player p that intends to land on that space. It applies any custom logic, checks if it has enough money, if it's something that the player owns, etc. Each subclass of Space will have its own set of rules, as you described in option 1.

Answer 7

Part of the point of object-oriented design is to simplify the representation of the problem within the solution space (i.e., modeling the system in the computer). In this case, consider the relationships between objects. Is there enough functionality in a Space to warrant abstracting that into a class, or does it make more sense for there to be discrete Property and Utility classes unrelated to Space because of the unique features of both? Is a Property a special kind of Space, or merely a field within Space? These are the kinds of problems you probably will need to grapple with in designing the game.

As far as interaction, it's generally bad news for a design when you have a 'god class' that does all the work and merely asks the other classes for information. There are plenty of ways to fall into this trap; one way to determine whether you are dealing with a god class is to look for a class name including Manager or System. Thus, it's probably not the best idea to have some sort of "game manager" that asks all the other objects for data, makes all the changes, and keeps track of everything. Eliminate these as much as possible.

God classes violate the concept of encapsulation, which involves more than data hiding (though that's certainly a big part of it). Good encapsulation means that related methods and data are part of a single object. For example, a Property doesn't need to make requests of its owner, so a field containing a reference to the Player could violate encapsulation. Some of these encapsulation violations aren't obvious at all, and can be hard to spot. When designing the object, try to determine the smallest amount of information about the object that needs to be shared with external objects. Trim out anything unnecessary.

You can obviously go about this in a lot of ways, but my design would be something like this (iteration could certainly prove it wrong):

• Space class that contains basic data and methods that are common to all spaces (such as their position on the board, occupied or not, etc.).
• Subclasses moving from most common (Property and Utility) to most unique (Go, Jail, FreeParking, and so on; probably singletons) with fields and methods related to each.
• Player class to contain player information.
• GameState class that is concerned with game state; whose turn it is, how many houses are left in the bank, and so on.

Good luck with the game and your continued studies.

Naturally, Google is your friend, but here's a sampling of things I would recommend reading:

• ATM simulation (this idea is also discussed in Rebecca Wirfs-Brock's book below)

• Object-Oriented Design Heuristics - Arthur Riel

• How Designs Differ (PDF), Designing Object-Oriented Software - Rebecca Wirfs-Brock