Restarting a game

Question

I am creating a simple game of TicTacToe, but I got stuck in restarting the game whenever the game ends and when I click the restart button. I just did the first horizontal buttons. When you press them a window will pop-up and tell you that there is a winner. I just did it for testing. But how do I restart the game when I press restart?I'm just new to java, and I'm trying to make games on my own to improve. Here are some parts of my code:

public class TicTacToe extends javax.swing.JFrame implements ActionListener{
int i=0;
boolean win = false;
String player[]={"You","Comp"};
/**
 * Creates new form TicTacToe
 */
public TicTacToe() {
    super("TicTacToe (LeeMinHu-bag)");
    initComponents();
    setResizable(false);
    setLocationRelativeTo(null);
    b1.addActionListener(this);
    b2.addActionListener(this);
    b3.addActionListener(this);
    b4.addActionListener(this);
    b5.addActionListener(this);
    b6.addActionListener(this);
    b7.addActionListener(this);
    b8.addActionListener(this);
    b9.addActionListener(this);

}
//If a button is pressed, its text will become "X"
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
   if(e.getSource() == b1){
       b1.setText("X");
       b1.setEnabled(false);
   }else if(e.getSource() == b2){
       b2.setText("X");
       b2.setEnabled(false);
   }else if(e.getSource() == b3){
       b3.setText("X");
       b3.setEnabled(false);
   }else if(e.getSource() == b4){
       b4.setText("X");
       b4.setEnabled(false);
   }else if(e.getSource() == b5){
       b5.setText("X");
       b5.setEnabled(false);
   }else if(e.getSource() == b6){
       b6.setText("X");
       b6.setEnabled(false);
   }else if(e.getSource() == b7){
       b7.setText("X");
       b7.setEnabled(false);
   }else if(e.getSource() == b8){
       b8.setText("X");
       b8.setEnabled(false);
   }else if(e.getSource() == b9){
       b9.setText("X");
       b9.setEnabled(false);
   }     
   i++;
   System.out.println(i);
    if(i%2==0){
       turn.setText(player[0]);
   }else{
       turn.setText(player[1]);
   }

   checkIfWin();

}
//check to see if there is a winner
 public void checkIfWin(){
     if(b1.getText()==b2.getText() && b2.getText()==b3.getText() && b1.getText()!=""){
         win = true;
     }else if(i==9 && win==false){
         JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,"Tie!","Game Over",JOptionPane.INFORMATION_MESSAGE);
     }else{
         win=false;
     }      
     ifWin(win); 
 }
 //if there is a winner
 public void ifWin(boolean w){
     if(w==true){
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,"WIN!","Game Over",JOptionPane.INFORMATION_MESSAGE);
        TicTacToe restart = new TicTacToe();
        restart.validate();
     }else{
         System.out.println("The game is still on!");
     }
 }

All the game states, variables etc. should be initialized just as when you run your game for the first time. — nullpotent, Aug 05 '12 at 14:13
You will want to learn about and use arrays as they will greatly simplify your code and help solve your problem in a much easier fashion than otherwise. — Hovercraft Full Of Eels, Aug 05 '12 at 14:30
Thank you for your notes. I haven't got used in arrays but I'm still working on it. — ickyrr, Aug 05 '12 at 15:04

Mikita Belahlazau · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-05T14:35:39.900

2

It seems that the only state you have is text on buttons. So to restart game you only need to set empty text (what was the initial text?) and enable buttons. Something like this:

JButton buttons[] = {b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7, b8, b9};
for (JButton button : buttons) {
    button.setText("");
    button.setEnabled(true);
}

Some additional notes:

All if in your actionPerformed method can be replaced with this:

JButton button = (JButtton) e.getSource();
button.setText("x");
button.setEnabled(false);

Also it's REALLY bad idea to check string equality using ==. So I advice you to replace all b1.getText() == b2.getText() with b1.getText().equals(b2.getText()). See this link.

edited Aug 05 '12 at 14:35

answered Aug 05 '12 at 14:30

Mikita Belahlazau

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Do this instead of creating a new instance ("`restart`") of the game. – Andreas Dolk Aug 05 '12 at 14:31
I have tried enabling the buttons and just making them null. But the result is after doing so, when you press a button, the winner dialog will show. I think it just restarts the buttons but not the game itself. Any other ideas? Thanks anyway for your answer, it gave me a new way to shorten my code. – ickyrr Aug 05 '12 at 14:39
@ickyrr Did you set empty text to buttons? In your code criteria of the winning is follow: buttons b1, b2 and b3 must have the same text and not empty. So to restart game you need to set empty text to all buttons. – Mikita Belahlazau Aug 05 '12 at 14:41
@Nikita I've set them initially as empty. "X" only appears when you click the button. – ickyrr Aug 05 '12 at 14:51

Restarting a game

1 Answers1