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up vote 6 down vote favorite

I'm new to programming, and I would like to know if this is the right way to layout code. If anyone has any tips, please share them.

import random
import time

def displayIntro():
    print("You are in a land full of dragons. In front of")
    print("you are two caves. In one cave the dragon is")
    print("friendly and will give you his treasure. In the")
    print("other, the dragon is greedy and hungry and will")
    print("eat you on sight")
    print()

def chooseCave():
    cave = ""
    while cave != "1" and cave != "2":
        print("Which cave will you choose? (1 or 2)")
        cave = input()
   return cave

def checkCave(chosenCave):
    print("You approach the cave...")
    time.sleep(2)
    print("It is dark and spooky...")
    time.sleep(2)
    print("A large dragon jumps out in front of you. He opens his jaws and...")
    print()
    time.sleep(2)

    friendlyCave = random.randint(1,2)

    if chosenCave == str(friendlyCave):
        print("gives you his treasure")
    else:
        print("gobbles you down in one bite")


playAgain = "yes"
while playAgain =="yes" or playAgain == "y":

    displayIntro()

    caveNumber = chooseCave()

    checkCave(caveNumber)

    print("Would you like to play again? (yes or no)")
    playAgain = input()
share|improve this question
    
General rules for code layout in Python are stated in PEP 8 -- Style Guide for Python Code. –  Changaco Aug 28 '13 at 21:47
    
This is one of the most suspenseful code examples I've come across. My main bits of advice would be to use a main function instead of the raw script style execution and to store the chosen cave as an int instead of as a string, and then do int comparison instead of string comparison though. –  scott_fakename Aug 29 '13 at 4:20

2 Answers 2

up vote 11 down vote

(1) For variable and function names, check_cave (underscore) rather than checkCave (camelcase) are standard in python.

(2) The line def chooseCave needs to be unindented

(3) Your main game loop could probably be neatened up:

while True:
    display_intro()
    check_cave(choose_cave())
    print("Would you like to play again? (yes or no)")
    if input() not in ('yes', 'y'):
        break

(4) conventionally you should put the main game loop in a function called main() and add

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

at the end.

(5) More a matter of taste, but I'd find it more elegant to write choose_cave like this:

def choose_cave():
    while True:
        print("Which cave will you choose? (1 or 2)")
        cave = input()
        if cave in ('1', '2'):
            return cave
share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

In addition to other answers you can use 'in' to compare for more than one value.

So

while cave != "1" and cave != "2":
    ...

becomes

while cave not in ["1", "2"]:
    ...
share|improve this answer

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