ROCK PAPER SCISSORS LIZARD SPOCK Project

Arguably, the greatest game ever invented is Rock-Paper-Scissors. If governments would only use this game to manage disputes, the world would be a better place. Thanks to the TV show, "Big Bang Theory", it may be that even the greatest game can be improved:

We are going to write Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock in this project.

To do this, we need to associate numbers with each object type. Note that the objects are ordered for a reason; we will use this ordering:

Here is a table that shows all of the possible RPSLS outcomes. The numbers in parentheses are (computer - human + 5) % 5, where % is the remainder function.

Cells are colored by who wins (ORANGE for human, BLUE for computer):

Notice how we can see who wins by using these numbers. 1 or 2 means computer wins. 3 or 4 means human wins. 0 is a tie.

To write this program, we will need functions that:

• Convert objects to numbers (so we can use this formula on the numbers)
• Convert numbers to objects (so we can display names of objects instead of the numbers)
• Get a random object from the computer (so the computer is not predictably boring)
• Play the actual game by taking an object as input and reporting who wins

Here is some sample output. The computer is generating choices randomly, so your output may be different, but it should tell you the following:

• Which object each player used in the game
• Who won the game

> (rpsls 'scissors)
(Human went scissors! Computer went lizard! Human wins!)
> (rpsls 'paper)
(Human went paper! Computer went lizard! Computer wins!)
> (rpsls 'lizard)
(Human went lizard! Computer went scissors! Computer wins!)
> (rpsls 'spock)
(Human went spock! Computer went scissors! Human wins!)
> (rpsls 'rock)
(Both players went rock! Tie game!)

Below is code, with directions, that you can directly copy into the Scheme editor. Have fun!

(load "/Applications/PLT/scheme/simply.scm")

; Write name-to-number that takes an RPSLS object as its input and returns the
; number that corresponds to the object.  Use the following correspondences:
; ROCK: 1, SPOCK: 2, PAPER: 3, LIZARD: 4, SCISSORS: 5

(define (name-to-number thing)
  (cond ...
    
; Write number-to-name that takes a number as an input and returns the object
; to which the number refers.  Use the same correspondences as above

(define (number-to-name num)
  (cond ...
  
; Write computer-choice that returns a number between 1 and 5.  Use the
; procedure random, which takes one input, n, and returns a number between
; 0 and n-1.

(define (computer-choice) ; No input!
  YOUR_CODE_HERE)

; Write rpsls that takes an object as its input.  It then generates a random
; selection for the computer, determines who wins, and returns a sentence

(define (rpsls thing)
  (let ((player (name-to-number thing))
        (computer (computer-choice)))
    ; Clearly if the two inputs are the same it is a tie.
    ; What's interesting is that if the objects are ordered
    ; rock-spock-paper-lizard-scissors, then modular arithmetic
    ; can be used to determine the winner.  The difference of
    ; (- computer player) modulo 5 tells us all we need to know.
    ; 5 is being added to (- computer player) because remainder
    ; has two positive numbers in its domain and (- computer player)
    ; would be negative 2/5 of the time.
    ;
    ; Here's the magical formula (the % sign means modulo)
    ;   (computer - player + 5) % 5
    ; If this is equal to zero, we have a tie
    ; If this is less than three, then the computer wins
    ; If this is greater than two, then the human wins
    ; 
    YOUR_CODE_HERE.  USE A cond, NOT A BUNCH OF if STATEMENTS.
    ))