Programming

I am having problems with another exercise from a website to learn Java.
I am supposed to create classes for a game called cat and mouse.

Basically, there is a grid 5x5 (representing the island) surrounded by water and has 6 bridges off the grid. The cat is hungry and wants the mouse, but the mouse can escape if he finds a bridge or dies if he goes into the water. The cat and mice are placed randomly on the grid at the beginning of the game. Bridges are evenly-spaced, 2 on each side.

There are a lot of parts for this exercise, but I'll just start with the first one right now. I want to create an Animal abstract class with a protected attribute of type Point (the location on the map) and a private String attribute (the animal name). A few more attributes would be: String getName(), Point getLocation(), void setStartLocation(). It will also have one constructor that takes a String (the animal's name) and a Random object. It'll store these values as instance variables (attributes).

Animal( String name, Random rng )

It'll also declare an abstract method:

void move()

I understand what it wants me to do, but it doesn't ask me to create the grid so am I not supposed to? I am not sure how to start this. There are also other classes to be created. Any help and guidance would be appreciated.

The grid is context, but you should make a 2d arrray or collection of classes that rep the squares and the ref and nature of 4 (assuming no diagonal movement) adjacent squares (die, square, bridge).

2 per side is 8 bridges.

Of course, displaying it all is a second puzzle.

Okay, I'll just create the classes. What does it mean by: create an Animal abstract class with a protected attribute of type Point (the location on the map) and a private String attribute (the animal name)? Can you give me a layout on how to do this in general?

This is what I have so far:

Code:

public abstract class Animal
{
   public class Point
   {
      public int x,y;
   }  
   public class Animal
   {
      protected Point loc;
      protected String name;
      protected Random rng;
      String getName()
      {return name;}
 
      Point getLocation()
      {return loc;}
 
      void setStartLocation(Point p)
      {
      }  
      Animal( String name, Random rng )
      {
         this.name = name;
         this.rng;
      }  

      void move()
      {
      }  
   }

The Animal needs to be a child/friend of the Grid object, so movement can be determined from the nature of the current 4 walls.

Code:

char Grid[5][5][4] = {{ // North, East, South, West is Grid, Water, Bridge
{ 'G', 'G', 'W', 'W' }, // Bottom left
{ 'G', 'G', 'B', 'G' },   // moving right ( x increments before y )
 .
 .
 .
 .
} };

Of course, there are other ways to encode the grid, but the more compact, the more work to figure out what happens with a direction choice.