This program will give you more practice with generating random values, branching, looping, and playing with character input's clever applications. (There may also be a chance to use functions to clean up the program and ease development or even to use more advanced input features. See the Options section below.)
To refresh your memory of basic gamer statistics, you normally pick a size of die (die being the singular of dice; size determined by number of sides; common sizes are 4, 6, 8, 12, and 20 — the Platonic solids — as well as 2, 10, and 100) and a number of dice to roll. Normally gamers represent a dice roll with the notation [N]dS[+A], where N is the number of dice, S is the size of each die, and A is a one-time adjustment.
For more information on dice used in games beyond Monopoly™ or 'craps', you should check out dice notation at the Wikipedia. You may also want to look at this entry at the Dice-Play site or Dungeons & Dragons' own D&D Dice Roller.
The N and the +A are in brackets to indicate that they are optional quantities. If the N is left off, it is assumed to be 1. If the +A is left off, it is assumed to be +0.
As for the statistics of such a die roll, the minimum value is N+A (since each die has a minimum value of 1, there are N of them, and A is to be added to the total of the dice). The maximum value is N*S+A (since the maximum value on each die is S, there are N of them, and A is to be added to the total of the dice). The average of such a roll is the quantity:
minimum + maximum
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2
Believe it or not!
Write a program that helps the user determine the statistics on a common die roll. First read in the user's desired die roll. This is made programmatically interesting by the gamers' idea of 'optional' pieces of information. You will have to be able to accept entries of d6, 1d6, d6-0, 1d6-0, d6+0, and 1d6+0 — all of which mean the same thing; they are simply entered in a different way! Dealing with optional parts of input, of course, will entail determining (aka deciding) whether the upcoming input is or is not ...something. (As you recall, upcoming input can be seen by peeking into cin's buffer.)
Then the simple part: calculate the three basic statistics for the user's roll and report them in a 'nice way'.
Finally, it would be nice to give the user a sample roll of what might possibly come up during an actual roll. In order for you to make the sample roll statistically accurate, though, you can't simply apply the general formula we developed in lecture to the roll's minimum and maximum. Were you to naïvely use that formula, you would give the user a value that would certainly be in the proper range — but uniformly distributed! (That is, each value would be equally likely to occur. Hence, if we rolled the d6 mentioned above, we'd find that each of the faces has a 0.16666666666666666666... — or 1 in 6 — chance of being 'up'.)
Of course, that simply isn't the case ...in general... Look at something as simple as 2d4 (two four-sided dice):
| Die 1 | Die 2 | Total | Die 1 | Die 2 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 4 | |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 5 | |
| 1 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 6 | |
| 1 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 7 | |
| 2 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 5 | |
| 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 6 | |
| 2 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 7 | |
| 2 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 8 |
| Dice Total | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ways to get It | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
The first table shows all possible rolls and totals for the dice. The second table shows the possible totals and the number of ways each can be achieved. Notice that a total of 5 is 4 times as likely to occur as either a 2 or an 8 total.
Although we could use some rather twisted statistics to model this behavior, it would be far easier to roll the dice individually and add up their respective values. Since each die taken alone is uniformly distributed, we can use our standard formula for that bit of randomness.
Then, repeating the roll of an individual die a number of times equal to the number of dice to be used and adding them up will get us a result 'just like' the one the user would get by rolling real dice. (It's so 'just like' theirs, of course, because that's exactly what they would do if they hadn't spent 80¢ [apiece!] on the extra dice because they were too lazy to add the single die result over the course of several rolls.) (Recall from above that the roll of a single die has a minimum of 1 and a maximum of the number of sides on the die: S.)
As an example, you might have the program interaction look something like (the parts in this color are typed by the user):
$ ./dicestatproj.out
Welcome to the Dice Statistics Program!!!
What is your dice roll? 3d12
Thank you!! Calculating... Done.
When rolling 3d12 (3 size-12 dice), your statistics will be:
Minimum: 3
Average: 19.5
Maximum: 36
A typical dice roll might result in 23.
Thank you for using the DSP!!
Endeavor to have an extemporaneous day!
$
Note how the average is a decimal value even though there is no possible way to roll a 19.5 on a standard die. (That's statistics for ya'!)
Don't forget to make sure the typical roll is different each time you run the program with the same die roll.
This assignment is (Level 4).
Dice Statistics Menu
1) Enter Die Roll
2) Force Platonic Sizes Only [NO]
3) Quit
The first option (chosen by the user entering 1,
E, e, D, d, R, or r) acts as the
program currently does. The second option (chosen by the user entering
2, F, f, P, p, S, s, O, or o) controls an option that only allows the user to
enter die rolls that are the Platonic sizes (4,
6, 8, 12, 20) or the standard
gamer sizes (2, 10,
100). In brackets after the menu choice text is
listed the current option state. It defaults to such sizes
not being enforced. If the user choses this option, the
state will change to YES and the die roll
input will have to check that the die size entered is one of the 8 allowed
values. If it isn't, the user will get no statistics or roll and be told
to check their dice — no shaving corners to get weird sizes.
(Note that this program option subsumes the
'repeat as desired' option so you get credit for that option's level,
too!)
(This option does not subsume the validation option, however. You can take
that option and this option independent of one another. Their levels stack
together normally.)