BA 371 VB.NET Assignment 1: Noughts & Crosses aka Tick-Tack-Toe

Program the game of Noughts and Crosses, aka Tick-Tack-Toe, the game played on a 3 x 3 board of squares where two players alternately claim a square by putting a nought or a cross in it. The player who gets three crosses or noughts in a row, either horizontally, vertically or diagonally, wins the game. In case all spaces are taken and there is no winner, the game stops.

Demo

Requirements

The program should exibit the following behavior and structure:

• Your program must run as a Console Application; i.e., do not!! implement it as a Windows Application.
• Before each move, the board and the currently free and occupied fields must be displayed. This should be abstracted in a subroutine display_board(ByRef the_board(,) as Short). (Note that display_board() gets a two-dimensional array the_board passed in).
  

• A move is specified by typing the number 1 - 9 indicating the square to be occupied. Squares are numbered by row; i.e.,
  

  
    ------------- 
    | 1 | 2 | 3 | 
    ------------- 
    | 4 | 5 | 6 | 
    ------------- 
    | 7 | 8 | 9 | 
    ------------- 
      
  

  A move is only valid if the square is not occupied and if the typed number is larger than 0 and smaller than 10. In case of an invalid move, generate an error and prompt for a new move. Make sure that your program does not accept nonnumeric input.
• After each move, check to see if there is a winner using a function

  check_for_winner(ByRef the_board(,) as Short) as Short

  that returns either a winner or no winner.

• The program itself does not play! The program merely prompts for moves, keeps track of the board and diagnoses the validity and results of moves. For each move, the program prompts the player on turn.
• Player names are NOUGHTS and CROSSES.

• !!! The board must be held in memory as a 3 x 3 2-dimensional array of integers !!!

Please Note!!

• You are expected to use some standard 'good programming' practices:

• Always have Option Strinct On and Option Explicit On set.

• Include sufficient commenting in your code so that others who are not familiar with your application can comfortably read your code and understand what it does.

• Use mnemonic variable names; i.e., use names that represent what they mean (i and j for loop indexes are fine, however).

• Introduce a function/subroutine naming convention that makes it easy for people reading your code to distinguish between functions and subroutines that you wrote versus the ones that come supplied with VB.NET; e.g., start all your functions and subroutines with an underscore; e.g., _myFunction(). (There exists a sizable literature on naming conventions, name spaces, etc. We do not need to detail any of this here, but it makes sense to introduce at least a few, simple conventions that increase the readability of your code). Make sure that you include your naming conventions in a comment block (no point in having the convention if you don't tell your reader what it is!).

• Religiously check for errors and exceptions. Colleagues reviewing your code will be asked to try and 'break it.' Make sure they cannot.