So I am making a hangman game. I am trying, at the moment, to make an accumulator for how many wrong guesses the user gives (after 6 wrong guesses, they lose); However, my strikeCounter keeps getting set to 0 and I don't know why (thus printing out that there is always 1 strike no matter how many wrong guesses the user gives). Can someone help me see where my error is? Thank you!
//imports:
import java.util.Scanner; //import scanner class
import java.lang.StringBuilder; //Import StringBuider class
public class P3A1_Doron_3918410 { //create class
public static void main (String[] args){ //create main method
System.out.println("Hello and welcome to Hangman!"); //Welcome the user
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize code
System.out.println("These are the instructions for the game:"); //Introduce instructions
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize code
System.out.println("You will be tasked with guessing a secret word, which is" +
" represented by blank underscores. For each round of the game, you will" +
" guess a letter. If that letter is in the word, it will appear among the underscores and" +
" you continue until you guess the entire word, thus winning the game. If a" +
" letter is not in the secret word, then you lose that round and gain a" +
" strike. Once you accumulate more than six strikes, the game is over and you lose.");
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize
System.out.println("Now let's begin. Here is your secret word:"); //Notify user game will now start
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize code
//create secret word that user sees
StringBuilder blanks = new StringBuilder("___"); //create initial, blank guessed word
System.out.println(blanks);//print out hiddenWord's initial, blank state
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize code
//Begin guessing portion of game
Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in); // Create Scanner object called keyboard
int strikes = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++){
while(blanks.charAt(i) == '_'){
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize code
System.out.println("Please guess a letter."); //Ask user to guess a letter
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize code
String letterGuess = keyboard.nextLine(); //Assign letter user guesses to variable letterGuess
letterCheck(letterGuess, blanks, strikes);//send guess to letterCheck method
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize code
System.out.println(blanks);
}
}
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize code
System.out.println("Congratulations! You win!");
} //End of main method
public static String letterCheck(String existance, StringBuilder updatedWord, int strikeCounter){//create method that checks whether or not letter exists in secret word
String secretWord = "cat";
int index;
if(secretWord.contains(existance)){
char letter = existance.charAt(0); //convert string to char
index = secretWord.indexOf(letter); // return index within this string of the first occurrence of specified char
updatedWord.setCharAt(index, letter);
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize code
System.out.println("Correct!");
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize code
}
else{
System.out.println(); //Leave space to organize code
System.out.println("Incorrect.");
System.out.println(); //Leave room to organize code
strikeCounter += 1; //add a strike
System.out.println("You have " + strikeCounter + " strike(s).");
if(strikeCounter > 5){ //if they have more than 6 strikes
updatedWord.append("///");
System.out.println("You have six strikes. Game over.");
}
String holdStrikes = Integer.toString(strikeCounter);
System.out.println(holdStrikes);
return holdStrikes;
}
return updatedWord.toString();
} //End of letterCheck method
} //End of class
