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https://github.com/sabarnett/timewasters

A time wasters compendium - simple games for simpler times.
https://github.com/sabarnett/timewasters

Last synced: 5 months ago
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A time wasters compendium - simple games for simpler times.

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# A Time Wasters Compendium

I've never been one for games on computers. The sad fact is I have arthritis in my thumbs so the moders shoot-em-up games hold little interest for me. That said, there are alternatives that require some level os skill without super-human dexterity.



The purpose of this app is to get some practice in creating simple to play games. The kind of thing we used to play before computers became graphic processing work-horses.



At present, this Mac app contains seven games;



* Minesweeper

* WordCraft

* Snake

* Pyramid of Doom

* Number Combinations

* Tic Tac Toe

* Othello

* Matched Pairs



These are a mixture of games I have adapted and games I have written myself. 



* Minesweeper and WordCraft were created by [Paul Hudson in his Hacking with Swift+ live streams]( https://www.hackingwithswift.com/plus ). I have 'messed' with them to extend the games. 



* Snake, Number Combinations, Tic Tac Toe, Othello and Matched Pairs are mine. I've picked up the basic logic from web articles but have written the code myself.



* Pyramid of Doom is a Stott Adams game from way back when the TRS-80 was still cool - this is my port of that game, taken from the original C code and ported to Swift. I then added a SwiftUI front end as the original game was a console line game.



More will be added at some point, as and when I come across something I like the look of.



The opening screen animates a button for each game we have created:



![timeWaasters](./Images/timeWasters.gif)



If you click on one of the buttons, the game will open.



## Minesweeper



Minesweeper is the classic game from the early days of computing. You are presented with a grid of buttons that hide a number of mines. Your job is to click on a square to clear it without clicking on any of the mines. The game ends when you have identified all of the mines and have cleared all of the non-mine cells.



![timeWaasters](./Images/minesweeper.png)



10-Dec-2024: There is a leader board for this game now. It displays a leader board for each of the three game board sizes.



## WordCraft



Wordcraft is, on the face of it, a simple game. It can, however, be frustratingly difficult. You are given a grid of letters from which you select letters to create words. The twist is that you have to comply with a rule for each word. That may be something as simple as the word has to start with a specific letter or the word has to have an even or odd number of letters.



You also cannot use the same word twice!



![timeWaasters](./Images/wordCraft.png)



04-Dec-2024: Since the original development, I have increased the work count from around 60,000 words to over 102,000 words, giving you a getter chance to match a word. It would be very difficult to create a complete word list for all english words, so the 102,000 count is a compromise.



## Snake



This is a very old, low res, style of game where you have to move the snake around the board. Your objective is to grow the snake by eating food. Starts out easy, but becomes increasingly complicated as the snake grows. You must remain within the game board and you cannot cross the snake body. If you run into the snake body, you lose the game.



![timeWaasters](./Images/snakeGame.png)



10-Dec-2024: I have added a leader board to this game that displays the length of the snake based on the game play board size.



## Pyramid of Doom



Decades ago, when I was coding in Z80 assembler on the TRS-80, Scott Adams created some text adventure games. None of your fancy graphics here - you type commands, they get interpreted and the console updates with the results. The original code was written in C and has been stable for a very long time. As far as I know, nothing has happened to it in all that time. 



This is my variant, written in Swift/SwiftUI. It took a long time to translate the original C code to Swift and a lot of debugging to makwe sure I was loading the original game files correctly. The result is Pyramid of Doom:



![timeWasters](./Images/pyramidOfDoom.png)



This is currently a work in progress. It has some minor glitches (such as the game continues when you die!) and it needs some UI changes. However, it is very playable and quite difficult to master at first.



#### To do?



* There are commands to save and restore the game that the user can enter. Right now, these are ignored in favour of using the save and restore icons. I should probably reinstate the command line options.



## Number Combinations



Number Combinations is a pretty straight forward game. Given four numbers and a result, work out the formula you need to generate the result. you must use all four digits and you can use + - * or / operators to achieve the result. You can force the order of calculation using brackets if you need to.



![timeWaasters](./Images/numberCombinations.png)



There is an option to display the formula if you're really stuck. 



The main failing of the game at the moment is that divisions are integer divisions so, dividing 3 by 2 results in 1. This isn't ideal and can be used to solve most formulae. I want to address this at some point, but it's not a priority right now.



10-Dec-2024: I haver added a leader board to the app that displays the amount of time (in seconds) each puzzle takes to complete.



## Tic Tac Toe



Better known to some of us oldies as 'Noughts and Crosses', Tic-Tac-Toe is a classic game that has been played for centuries. It is a simple game that can be played by two people or, in our case, one player against a a fiendish computer.



The game is played on a 3x3 grid, and each player takes turns placing their mark in a square. The player who gets three in a row horizontally, vertically, or diagonally wins the game.



The game is simple, but quite hard to win against the AI built into the computer. Can you beat the computer?"



![Tic Tac Toe](./Images/TicTacToe.png)



This is a relatively simple game, but includes an AI that calculates the computers move. This is a simplease but very effective AI that leaves just enough space to allow the player to occasionally win. Draw's tend to be the usual result.



Scores are saved across invocations of the app, but can be reset using the reset icon on the tool bar.



## Othello



Othello is a strategy board game for two players (you and the computer), played on an 8 by 8 board. The game traditionally begins with four discs placed in the middle of the board. The computer will randomly select who goes first. The player always plays black and the computer white. There is no advantage to the colour of the pieces.



You must place a disc on the board, in such a way that there is at least one straight (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) occupied line between the new disc and another of your discs, with one or more contiguous computer pieces between them.



After placing the disc, the opposition discs flip lying on a straight line between the new disc and any existing discs. All flipped discs are now yours. Now the computer plays. This computer operates under the same rules, with the roles reversed: it lays down a disc, causing your discs to flip.



Where there are no moves available, you or the computer skips their move and control reverts to the other player. The game ends when the board is full or neither player can move. At this time, the winner is determined by who has the most face up discs.



![Tic Tac Toe](./Images/othello.png)



The game is deceptively simple to play but quite hard to win at. The computer will favour capturing corners where it can and will go for the highest scoring move after that. It's not a perfect algorithm, but it makes for a difficult game but not an unbeatable one. No one wants a game where they always lose.



## Matched Pairs



I have logic games, numerical games and word game, so it seemed about time I had a memory game. Matched Pairs is it.



![Matched Pairs](./Images/matchedPairs.png)



The premise of the game is simple. You are presented with a grid of face down playing cards and your job is to match pairs of cards. Click ona card and it turns face up. Click a second card and that turns face up too. If they match, the cards are removed from the game. If they don't match, they remain face up until you click a third card. At that point, the previous two turn face down. 



All you have to do is remember what card was where in the grid.



As an added fun factor, the game can be configured such that the cards will automatically be turned face down after a set time (between 2 and 20 seconds). There are also easy, medium and hard levels where the number of cards changes, so testing your memory.



There is a leader board for all three levels which is based on the time it takes to match all of the cards.



## Overviews



When you hover over the buttons on the home screen, the clock face will change to an information icon. If you click the information icon, you get an overview of the game.



![timeWaasters](./Images/gameInstructions.png)



While playing a game, you can get game play instructions by clicking the question mark icon.



![timeWaasters](./Images/minesweeperGameplay.png)



Typos to be fixed in review!