[Paco Joe]

I am making a tic tac toe game and i came to a problem i don't understand...

I am trying to make a click sensor to allow an x or an 0 to appear in a label box but since im new to programming i not sure how you would make it appear

I will post my code of the label to see if someone can help

Thanks!

Dim player1 As Char
        Dim player2 As Char

        If Label1.Text = player1 Then
            Label1.Tag = 1
            Label1.Text = "X"
            Label1.Enabled = False
        ElseIf Label1.Text = player2 Then
            Label1.Tag = 1
            Label1.Text = "0"
            Label1.Enabled = False 

[raziel_]

uhm your talking about Label_Click event? You want to make when you click on a label to appear X or O?
Your code dose not make any sense.
By the way your using VB.NET i`ll ask the mods to move it in the right section

This post has been edited by raziel_: 08 June 2012 - 08:06 AM

[tlhIn`toq]

You're obviously making a Tic-tac-toe game.

Search for tic-tac-toe: There are DOZENS of tic-tac-toe threads that should give you plenty of help. (Pages and pages of TTT in every language)

Are you sure you're doing this in VB6 and not VB.NET? VB6 is pretty much dead except for legacy applications. I can't think of a reason to start learning it now.

I don't mean for this to seem rude, but if you're not familiar enough with the coding language to handle a .Click event then you probably should go back to your text book from the beginning. We can't make up for weeks of lost education in a thread: Its not feesible for us to answer all the ultra-introductory basics for every student in the country. It is incumbent upon the student to cover that material in class, the thousands of "Intro to VB" tutorials and numerous "Learn {language} in 21 days" books.

[BobRodes]

Easiest way to distinguish between player1 and player2 is to remember that they alternate turns.

This post has been edited by BobRodes: 08 June 2012 - 08:50 AM

[Paco Joe]

raziel_, on 08 June 2012 - 08:03 AM, said:

uhm your talking about Label_Click event? You want to make when you click on a label to appear X or O?
Your code dose not make any sense.
By the way your using VB.NET i`ll ask the mods to move it in the right section

Haha ya i said im beginning programming with this so bare with me
and ya thats what im trying to do so, i am trying to make X appear in the label when you click on it then disable the label click so the next player can't click it.

and btw, i changed the code and removed the tag thing it didn't make anysense to me...

[tlhIn`toq]

So do you know how to make a handler method for the .Click event?
Select the label
See the yellow lightening bolt in the properties pallet: Click it
Come down to Click - double click in the field to the right.

Do you understand that controls have properties? You see them in the Properties pallet of Visual Studio. All you have to do is change the controls .Enabled property to false.

This post has been edited by tlhIn`toq: 08 June 2012 - 11:56 AM

[Paco Joe]

tlhIn`toq, on 08 June 2012 - 11:55 AM, said:

So do you know how to make a handler method for the .Click event?
Select the label
See the yellow lightening bolt in the properties pallet: Click it
Come down to Click - double click in the field to the right.

Do you understand that controls have properties? You see them in the Properties pallet of Visual Studio. All you have to do is change the controls .Enabled property to false.

Actually i was trying to figure that out. And is the property pallet the thing you see when you do this, [Label1.???] and ya i know how to do the .enabled=flase code but i don't know where to put it so it doesn't screw up the code when i test it.
thats kind of why i experimented with the tags all thought i don't exacly know what they do

[tlhIn`toq]

You are describing the Intellisense contextual menu.

The properties pallet is the pallet marked Properties.



You can open it from here:




I'm sorry how this might come across, but you can't really expect to have a forum teach you all the ultra-basic stuff like how to work your IDE. Microsoft has tons of tutorials for this. There are dozens of YouTube videos. Numerous books. We simply cannot hand-hold every new coder every time they open Visual Studio for the first time. You have to take responsibility for yourself and your introduction to all this. There is just WAY too much info out there on all of this already for us to repeat it in 1,000 threads for every new user.

STOP trying to make this new program from scratch. You lack an understanding of Visual Studio. You lack an understanding of basic .NET language concepts such as events and properties. Pick up a book like "Learn VB.NET in 30 days" and just do the tutorials from cover to cover. That will teach you Visual Studio and give you a basis for the language.

There are three routes people seem to take when learning programming.

• Just start trying to create programs
  
• Start taking apart other programs and try to figure out the language by reverse engineering
  
• Follow a guided learning course (school or self-teaching books)

For the life of me I can't figure out why people try 1 & 2.
Sure, 35 years ago the only way I could learn BASIC as a kid was to type programs from a book into a TRS-80 model 1 or Commodore VIC-20, then figure out the commands and syntax by watching the results as the program ran. There simply wasn't any courses for a kid back then.

But now, you can't help but to trip over "Learn {coding language} in 3 weeks" type books and the entire internet is at your disposal for tutorials.

I strongly suggest taking the guided learning approach. Those book authors go in a certain order for a reason: They know what they're doing and they know the best order to learn the materials.

Quote

Where do I start?

You start by learning a coding language FIRST.
Learn to plan before you type.
THEN you start designing software with a purpose.


If this sounds like you

Newbie/Rookie said:

I have a little programming experience but I need to write ...

read this section

Spoiler

You need to start there. I can't say "I have little experience in speaking Russian, but I have been assigned to write a mystery novel in Russian. Can you help me?"

We can help you by saying "First learn basic programming and the language of C#. Then take on assignments." Could someone here write this program for you? Sure. Could someone here map out all the processes you need to follow and do the Software Design part of this in the slim hope you could code it from there? Sure. But we don't volunteer to do the job that you're either getting paid for, or getting a grade for. You may want to read this.

For now, just work on the lessons. Do a self-teaching book from cover to cover. Then consider writing a program.

Don't try to create a useful working program to fit a need of yours (or a for-pay contract) as your introduction to coding project. When you are learning to code you don't know enough to code a program, let alone know how to engineer the architecture of a program. It would be like saying "I don't know how to read sheet music, or play an instrument. I think I'll write a 3 act opera as my first learning experience."

I don't say this to be mean. We've seen lots of new coders take this approach and we know it doesn't work. Trying to design your own programs before you understand the basics of the code language you've chosen just leads to problems, frustrations, and 'swiss-cheese' education (lots of holes).

Otherwise, you can just jump to the resources here:
Some of the tutorials below are for C# or Java not C, C++, VB.NET [...]. But the conceptual stuff of classes, object oriented design, events etc. are not language specific and should give you enough guidance in theory of program development for you to be able to look-up specific code example in your chosen coding language.

---

Resources, references and suggestions for new programmers. - Updated Mar 2012

---

Spoiler

Quote

I already have a background in programming from this other software/technology/lanugage so I don't think I need to do tutorials

Here's how I look at doing tutorials even if one has a coding background that makes one think they don't need to do tutorials:

• If one's background really is enough to not need the tutorials, then they won't take long - So what's the harm?
  
• If the tutorials do take a while, then it might be time to re-think how much of one's old experience really applies to the new technology.
  
• There's no down-side. Every tutorial/series teaches something in a new way. Maybe you pick up a neat trick or a different approach to something that you already knew.

The stages of asking for homework help on a forum



But honestly, just typing away and seeing what pops up in Intellisense is going to make your self-education take 20 years. You can learn by trying to reverse engineer the language through banging on the keyboard experimentation - or you can learn by doing the tutorials and following a good "How to learn C#" book. There are so many great "How do I build my first application" tutorials on the web... There are dozens of "Learn C# in 21 days", "My first C# program" type books at your local book seller or even public library.

Beginner:

Java

Spoiler

Best beginner books
Reading and writting a file in Java

C#

Spoiler

C# Reading list by Eric Lipert

C# Fundamentals: Development for absolute beginners (video series)
Build a Program Now! in Visual C# by Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-7356-2542-5 is a terrific book that has you build a Windows Forms application, a WPF app, a database application, your own web browser.

Martyr2's mega project ideas list is a great place to start on developmental projectst that you can learn from; rather than trying to make something complex like a game as a self-teaching tool {that never works for anyone}

Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts

D.I.C. C# Resource page Start here
Intro to C# online tutorial then here...
C# control structures then here.
MSDN Beginner Developer video series
MSDN video on OOP principals, making classes, constructors, accessors and method overloading
MSDN Top guideline violations, know what to avoid before you do it.
Design patterns as diagrams

I hate sending people to another site when we have such good tutorials here, but this series shouldn't be overlooked.
Programming OOP in C# - Part 1
Programming OOP in C# - Part 2
Programming OOP in C# - Part 3
Programming OOP in C# - Part 4
Programming OOP in C# - Part 5

Writing a text file is always one of the first things people want to do, in order to store data like high-scores, preferences and so on.
Writing a text file tutorial.
Reading a text file tutorial.
.Split()ing a string

Have you seen the 500+ MSDN Code Samples? They spent a lot of time creating samples and demos. It seems a shame to not use them.

Intermediate:
Microsoft Events (webcasts and podcasts)
The tutorials below walk through making an application including inheritance, custom events and custom controls, object serialization and more.
Quick and easy custom events
Bulding an application - Part 1
Building an application - Part 2
Separating data from GUI - PLUS - serializing the data to XML
WPF version (WPF-MVVM data binding)
Passing values between forms/classes
Decouple your multi-threaded work from the GUI so forms don't hang

Working with environmental variables
'Why do we use delegates?' thread
And everyone always wants to connect to a database, right out of the gate so Database tutorials right here on DIC

C# Cookbooks
Are a great place to get good code, broken down by need, written by coding professionals. You can use the code as-is, but take the time to actually study it. These professionals write in a certain style for a reason developed by years of experience and heartache.

Everyone:
Debugging tutorial
Debugging tips
Debugging in detail
Great debugging tips
It still doesn't work, article

I urge you to work through the C# learning series here on DIC, and to work a self-teaching book from cover to cover before you even think about designing your own applications.
Microsoft Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your productivity, Microsoft press, ISBN 0-7356-2640-5 Has many, many great, real-world tips that I use all the time.

These are just good every-day references to put in your bookmarks.
MSDN C# Developers Center with tutorials
Welcome to Visual Studio
Free editions of Visual Studio 2010
Student editions of Visual Studio


Windows Presentation Foundation:
Create Animations Programmatically

Some of my common tips (some may apply more than others to your specific style):

• You have to program as if everything breaks, nothing works, the cyberworld is not perfect, the attached hardware is flakey, the network is slow and unreliable, the harddrive is about to fail, every method will return an error and every user will do their best to break your software. Confirm everything. Range check every value. Make no assumptions or presumptions.
  
  
• Take the extra 3 seconds to rename your controls each time you drag them onto a form. The default names of button1, button2... button54 aren't very helpful. If you rename them right away to something like btnOk, btnCancel, btnSend etc. it helps tremendously when you make the methods for them because they are named after the button by the designer.btnSend_Click(object sender, eventargs e) is a lot easier to maintain than button1_click(object sender, eventargs e)
  
  
• You aren't paying for variable names by the byte. So instead of variables names of a, b, c go ahead and use meaningful names like index, timeOut, row, column and so on. You should avoid 'T' for the timer. Amongst other things 'T' is commonly used throughout C# for Type and this will lead to problems. There are naming guidelines you should follow so your code confirms to industry standards. It makes life much easier on everyone around you, including those of us here to help. If you start using the standards from the beginning you don't have to retrain yourself later.
  You might want to look at some of the naming guidelines. Its a lot easier to start with good habits than to break bad habits later and re-learn.
  
  
  • Guidelines for names
    
  • Naming guidelines
    
  • Design guidelines for classes
  
  
  
• Try to avoid having work actually take place in GUI control event handlers. It is better to have the GUI handler call other methods so those methods can be reused and make the code more readible.
  
  Spoiler

  
  

  btnSave(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveMenuItem(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveContextMenu(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  FormMain_Closing(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      if (IsDirty) SavePreferences();
  }
  

  
  
  
• Don't replace lines of code that don't work. Instead comment them out and put your new attemps below that. This will keep you from re-trying the same ideas over and over. Also, when you come back to us saying "I've tried this 100 different ways and still can't get it", we can actually see what you tried. So often a failed attempt is very very close and just needs a little nudge in the right direction. So if we can say "See what you did in attempt 3... blah blah" it helps a lot
  
  
  Spoiler

  // Try #1 - May 1, 0900hrs
  //    code
  //    code  
  //    code
  // Try #2 - May 2, 1700hrs   Okay, plan B.  What if I do it *this* way
  //    code
  //    code  
  //    code
  // Try #14 - May 3, 0500hrs after 5 cans of RedBull.  Maybe I should get some sleep. I can't think of anything else but this last idea
      code
      code  
      code
  
  

  
  If you are using Visual Studio you can select a block of lines and hit control+k control+c (Kode Comment) to comment it out. control+k control+u (Kode Uncomment) to uncomment a selected block.
  
  
  
• I strongly suggest installing VMware or some other virtualization technology on your development PC so you can create a couple virtual computers for testing. This would allow you to debug and test inside: WinXP32, XP64, Vista, Win7x32, Win7x64... etc. without having to actually have 5 physical PC's. Visual Studio will let you send the debug directly into one of these virtual machines so you can watch it operate, check its variables, see the crashes and so on just as if it were debugging on your real machine.
  
  
• This can't be stressed enough in today's world of cell phone messaging:
  Don't use txt/sms/leet/T9 speak like: u no, u r, dnt, wut i m do-n, coz, al gud, b4, ny1, some1, plz and so on like this guy:
  
  
  Spoiler

  dis not b d'hood dawg... You are sitting at a real keyboard with a real monitor, not a cell phone. You are not here texting your high school posse to come to your kegger after their shift at Taco Bell. You are here asking for help from senior coding professionals who graciously donate their valuable time to helping the next generation of coders with their chosen craft. Please try to show them, yourself and the industry some respect by writing at least at an eighth grade level. (IE: English not ebonics or SMS, real words, punctuation and so on). If you can't take your own problem/question seriously enough to write like an adult, then why would you expect anyone else to take it seriously?
  
  When you write a post you are presenting yourself. Your writing style is all you have to show others who you are and what you stand for. When I see posts filled with lack of capitalization, SMS text like 'Urself', lack of punctuation and so on; what I see is someone who just doesn't care to make even an eighth grade presentation of themselves. I also see that you feel we are not worth the effort. Posts that look like this show that you don't feel the person you are talking to is worth speaking to as an adult. If you show this level of contempt or apathy towards someone you are asking for help how can you expect to be taken seriously or expect to receive that expert's fullest attention and time to help you?

[Paco Joe]

Ok well... thanks for the help i'll keep that in mind