Design doc for Nim

Overview

Nim is a two-player game. There are multiple (how many?) piles of matchsticks (how high?). Each player takes a turn removing some number of matchsticks from one of the piles. The player who removes the last matchstick wins the game.

State

• Piles of matchsticks; represented as an int[], with each element being the number of matchsticks in that pile
• The total number of piles; represented as an int
• The maximum and minimum number of matchsticks in each pile; each represented by an int
• The current player; represented by an int

Functions

• printPiles: To display the current board
• setupGame: To set up a new game board
• done: To determine whether the game is done
• validMove: To determine whether a player’s move is valid
• promptMovePile: To ask the player which pile they want to remove matchsticks from
• promptMoveNum: To ask the player how many they want to remove from a pile

Procedure

The game operates as follows.

1. Set up the game.
2. Choose the starting player.
3. Start the game.
   1. Ask the current player `promptMovePile`
   2. Ask the current player `promptMoveNum`
   3. Determine if this is a `validMove`
   4. If yes, update board
   5. If no, go back to a.
   6. Flip the player.
   7. Are we `done`? If not, go to a.
4. Flip the player again
5. Tell the current player that they won