Mancala Game Implementation for CMSC 201 Assignment Sample

This assignment sample presents a structured Python-based implementation of the Mancala game for CMSC 201, covering game mechanics, functional design, validation logic, and coding standards to support learning and project development.

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1. Introduction: Mancala Game Implementation for CMSC 201

The Mancala Game project is an attempt to design and develop a computerized version of the Mancala board game using Pycharm software platform and Python programming language. This work encompasses setup and rules of execution of play, validation of a move, implementation of capture, and identification of end game.

Mancala Game Implementation for CMSC 201 Assignment Sample
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2. Game Rules and Mechanics

2.1 Board Setup

Mancala comprises two series of six cups each, and two large mancalas placed at the ends in each Board. Initially it arranged four seeds that are put in each of twelve normal cups, the mancalas are empty at the start (Hunter et al.2021). The cup numbering starts from 0 on the second player’s mancala and continues to 13 in a clockwise manner.

2.2 Turn Mechanics

Players take turns choosing a non-empty non-mancala cup from its side. All stones it removes from it and divide it in a clockwise manner, with deliverance one by one cups as well for mancalas. In the scenario where the last stone falls in the player’s own mancala, then the player gets an opportunity to make another move. It is also significant to note that no provided mancala can be selected to have the stone removed from it.

2.3 Winning Conditions

The game is won when one among the series of cups number 1 to 6 or 8 to 13 is empty. At this point, the player with the most stones in its mancala wins. The stones in each of the player’s mancala are then tallied and the total in each player’s Mancala and the pits above establish the winner of the Mancala game.

3. Implementation Requirements

3.1 Player Name Input

It states that before the game starts, the program asks the player its , it does it in order to fit the six characters, as the game board is composed of blocks. If the is more than two words or any that needs modification, the user is given a prompt again (Zhang et al.2023). The obstacles are represented by the s and are stretched to accommodate spaces in order to significantly display it on the Mancala board.

3.2 Board Initialization

The first layout consists of 12 regular cups, each holding four stones, and the two mancalas starting from zero. A cup 0 to 13 marker has stone count and 0, as well as 7, are mancala. The draw_board function provides this with the help of lists for the top and bottom cups and for the mancalas.

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3.3 Turn Execution

In a turn, a player has to pick an empty cup and toss it to neighboring cups counterclockwise except the mancalas where one was poured into each cup. This is done in the take_turn function since it manages the stone counts in the dictionary as well as calling the draw_board function to display the new changes once a move is made.

3.4 Move Validation

The validity of a move is achieved through checking if the chosen cup is non-empty, being a mancala and belonging to the right side of a player where Players 1 is from 1to 6 cups, and Players 2 is from 8 to 13 cups (Manjarrez et al.2024). Thus, any input of an inadmissible move forces the player to try again by inputting a valid one.

3.5 Extra Turn Logic

The Extra Turn Logic is applicable when a player gets one more turn depending on the conditions, including capturing an opponent’s piece or occupying a particular position. In this way, the logic is assuring the impartiality of the extra turn while improving the dynamics of the game within the system on a strategic level.

3.6 Game End Detection

The Game End Detection module is responsible for detecting the end of the game, using certain predefined criterions including a player reaching a winner’s moves, or when all the moves of the current game are over or draw state. This way it ensures that the game completes and provides the result and also prepares the system to either continue playing the game or even shut down.

3.7 Winner Determination

The winner determination logic describes the rules for detecting a player who owns the most amount of stones in the mancala at the end of the game. If all cups on one side are empty, stones on the opponent side of the board are transferred to the mancala of the player (Rajagede et al.2023). This implies that the player who manages to get the highest number of stones is declared the winner.

3.8 Board Display after Moves

Board Display after Moves is a feature of the game which gives a player an additional turn when it meets the conditions prevailing in the game such as getting a combination and capturing some pieces. This feature does not simplify the gameplay but instead leads towards deeper levels and encourages more active play because each particular move will require great strategy to execute. Setting a clear set of regulations helps to minimize its misuse and maintain the qualitative ratio for users’ positive interaction.

4. Function Design

4.1 run_game()

The function that will be overviewed here is the run_game(), which coordinates the game and is directly responsible for the game loop. It defines the game structure, and decides on whose turn it is, checks for the possibility to win and on whether to end the game or not. Through the use of other functions it preserved the assurance for a proper continuity of the game, making interactions between players and constantly managing the general states of the game.

4.2 get_player()

The get_player() function handles player identification and management. It exchanges bold and italics, the turn between it is passed to the correct player who has to make the next move. This function may also check player inputs and ensure when a player switches, and also keep track of the state in the course of the game playing session.

4.3 take_turn(player, game_cups)

The function take_turn(player, game_cups) is the function that is responsible for handling or processing the entire turn of a player (Danaci et al.2023). It helps to select cups, to distribute seeds according to the rules of the game, to check whether there are captures or other turns, in order to change the state of the board and respond to the new state.

4.4 Additional Helper Functions (Minimum 2)

Additional Helper Functions are useful to help increase code modularity and readability. Such functions are used to determine whether the game is over or not, the function in return produces a boolean value. Another helpful function is the display_board() function which adjusts and outputs the current board for the players to see, though it is a relatively minor function that is simple but adds to enhancing the fluency of the game and the ease of problem shooting.

5. Provided Resources

Assignment samples are offered to assist students in understanding coursework structure and key learning outcomes. Our UK assignment help emphasizes ethical learning support and original work. Mancala Game Implementation for CMSC 201 Assignment Sample explores programming, frameworks, and reflective practices. These materials are intended solely as study aids and reference guides.

5.1 Starter File Access

Specifically, the starter file serves as a starting point with abstractions of functions and classes, which contributes to the code optimization of the game. Consequently, it acts as a reference document to maintain cohesion and work in harmony across the institution (Nkongolo et al.2023). Thus, the usage of the starter file helps to concentrate on the improvements of the game logic and its performance while including all the necessary specifics into consideration.

5.2 draw_board(top_cups, bottom_cups, mancala_a, mancala_b) Usage

The draw_board() function presents the current game packages and mancalas so the real-time status of cups will be shown on the screen. All four parameters are required, the first two that are top_cups and bottom_cups represent the number of cups and the last two that are mancala_a and mancala_b represent the quantities in two Manacals (Fazlan et al.2023). It assists players to identify the specific setting of the board and improve on its choices as well as helping the users to interact with the game.

6. Coding Standards

6.1 Comments and Documentation

Documentation and some comments are crucial in helping to complete the code being written. Every function must have its description comment with the explanation of its function, parameters, and the returned value. In specific, inline comments must explain the operation of code’s elements or aspects of the program which are significant. Documentation can therefore help future developers who are bound to take up the mantle of changing, fixing and enhancing the program.

6.2 Constant Definitions

Constant Definitions that are made frequently are more comprehensible and reduce the amount of errors within the code, making it easier to maintain. Most importantly, constants must be written with uppercase s with underscores between the words as shown such as for example MAX_PLAYERS or INITIAL_CUPS (Oktaviani et al.2022). Using constants at the beginning of the program also makes it simpler to make changes that will affect all occurrences of that constant to be made, which discourages hard coding.

6.3 Variable Naming Conventions

Variable Naming Conventions for variables is crucial in terms of code readability and ease of making changes to the code as well. Names of variables should fully stress the goal of such changings within a scope of the game, these s should be clear and unambiguous (Garcia et al.2021). The use of consistent naming conveys certain identification when calling items of the game such as cups, players, scores, and turn. In this case, proper naming helps to improve collaboration between developers and code debugging.

6.4 White Space Usage

White space keeps the contents of the code well organized and improves its legibility. It includes indenting the code, use of spaces to separate the blocks of code with empty lines and adopting space before and after the operators and keywords respectively (Dengiz et al.2025). Proper indentation and blank line usage also contributes to readability and easy identification of bugs when changes are being done in the future.

7. Allowed and Forbidden Python Features

7.1 Permitted Built-ins and Methods

Allowed built-ins are the functions required for game implementation, which would be print, len, range, input, enumerate and sum. These include the ones for the user interaction, list movements, handling inputs and the aggregation (Silva et al.2022). These built-ins enable improved coding practices, increase effectiveness and increase the likelihood of coding as per the laid down coding conventions and protocols.

7.2 Restricted Built-ins and Methods

Some restricted built-ins and methods mainly include eval(), exec(), globals() and locals() which manipulate game logic, violate implementation standards and are very practical methods of simplifying the game. This is because the above can result in security weaknesses, actions not in line with necessary programming guidelines, and breach of constraints set down for the assignment, all of which go against the coding protocol and established learning objectives.

8. Sample Output

It states that an ideal interaction of the sample output includes Board update, Turn, Capture, Extra Turn, and Game Finished (Sakala et al.2023). It illustrates how moves affect the positions and how the winner is established in terms of captured stones thus giving a direction to the right functioning of a program.

9. Conclusion

In the implementation aspect, fundamental gameplay mechanics in the Mancala Game project are achieved besides the coding standard. Effective organizing and naming of variables and functions and logical documentation makes the code easier to manage. Thus the implementation provides few basic standards by following which the game is functional and even diverting but is set up for modifications in the further steps.

Reference List

Journals

  • Hunter, T.J., 2021. The exploration and analysis of mancala from an AI perspective.
  • Zhang, J., Liu, Y., Yin, Z., Abbas, S. and Qin, S., 2023. The role of mancala games in human evolution, cultural development, and education: An anthropological inquiry. Quality in Sport, 14, pp.23-36.
  • Manjarrez, D., Chen, C. and Krishnamurthy, S., 2024. Mancala Parallelization Using Minimax: Functional Programming Approach.
  • Rajagede, R.A. and Mahardhika, G.P., 2023, March. Gapoera: Application programming interface for AI environment of Indonesian board game. In AIP Conference Proceedings (Vol. 2508, No. 1). AIP Publishing.
  • Danaci, O., Zhang, W., Coleman, R., Djakam, W., Amoo, M., Glasser, R.T., Kirby, B.T., N'Gom, M. and Searles, T.A., 2023. ManQala: Game-inspired strategies for quantum state engineering. AVS Quantum Science, 5(3).
  • Fazlan, N.A.M.N.A. and Tan, C.C., 2023, September. The Development of Simultaneous Congkak Game with Intelligent Agents. In 2023 IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Engineering and Technology (IICAIET) (pp. 224-229). IEEE.
  • Garcia, D., Bezakova, I., Blank, A. and Terrell, N., 2021, March. Teaching Computer Science with Abstract Strategy Games. In Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 1232-1233).
  • Dengiz, A., Cetisli-Korkmaz, N. and Kitis, A., 2025. Effect of the strategy game Mangala on cognitive function, anxiety, depression, and fine motor skills in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease: A randomized controlled trial. Applied Neuropsychology: Adult, pp.1-8.
  • Silva, S.A., 2022. O potencial dos jogos da familia mancala para um ensino de matemática antirracista nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental.
  • Sakala, M., 2023. Indigenous games as part of school-based physical activity delivery programmes: prospects for optimum implementation for primary school learners’ holistic health outcomes. University of Johannesburg (South Africa).
  • Oktaviani, D., Dewi, D.A. and Hidayah, N., 2022. Character Development in Today's Children: The Impact of Modern vs. Traditional Games. Jurnal Kependidikan: Jurnal Hasil Penelitian Dan Kajian Kepustakaan Di Bidang Pendidikan, Pengajaran Dan Pembelajaran, 8(2), pp.417-427.
  • Nkongolo, M., 2023, January. Game theory based artificial player for morabaraba game. In 2023 5th International Conference on Smart Systems and Inventive Technology (ICSSIT) (pp. 1210-1218). IEEE.

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