Need help displaying output for Golf Game - vb.net

Question

I need some help, I don't know how I would display the players and the hole that they won in this program.
Public Class GolfGame
Private Sub btnPlay_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles btnPlay.Click
Dim array(3, 8) As Integer
Dim intLow As Integer = 0
Scores.Items.Add(vbTab & "Hole 1" & vbTab & "Hole 2" & vbTab & "Hole 3" & vbTab & "Hole 4" & vbTab & "Hole 5" & vbTab & "Hole 6" & vbTab & "Hole 7" & vbTab & "Hole 8" & vbTab & "Hole 9")
Randomize()
For outer = 0 To 3
For inner As Integer = 0 To 8
array(outer, inner) = Int((8 * Rnd()) + 1)
Next
Scores.Items.Add("Player " & outer + 1 & vbTab & array(outer, 0) & vbTab & array(outer, 1) & vbTab & array(outer, 2) & vbTab & array(outer, 3) & vbTab & array(outer, 4) & vbTab & array(outer, 5) & vbTab & array(outer, 6) & vbTab & array(outer, 7) & vbTab & array(outer, 8))
Next
For i As Integer = 0 To 8
For j As Integer = 0 To 3
If array(j, i) < intLow Then
intLow = array(j, i)
If j = 0 And i = 0 Then
P1.Text = "Player 1 has won this hole."
ElseIf j = 1 And i = 0 Then
P2.Text = "Player 2 has won this hole."
ElseIf j = 2 And i = 0 Then
P3.Text = "Player 3 has won this hole"
ElseIf j = 3 And i = 0 Then
P4.Text = "Player 4 has won this hole."
End If
End If
Next
intLow = 9
Next
End Sub
End Class
The If statement does not seem to be working within the loop. Any ideas to tackle this? Should the output just be one big if statement, or is there something simpler that I am just missing?

Answer 1

It looks like you're just learning, so I'll try to help you out.
First of all, you don't say how Scores and P1 through P4 are defined. It looks like Scores might be a List(Of String) and P1 through P4 are text boxes or labels of some sort. I'll make those assumptions for now. You begin by sending output to Scores, but then you use the text boxes instead. You need to settle on how you're going to display your output and go with one option.
You begin by assigning a random integer from 1 to 8 for each player/hole combination. That part looks OK.
Then you've attempted to write an algorithm to determine which player won each hole. What you've written is very confused and won't work. There are multiple problems.
intLow is 0 when you attempt to find the winner of the first hole. Then you set it to 9 for holes 2 through 9 (outer 1 through 8). That can't work. You need to be consistent.
When intLow is 0, your main If statement:
If array(j, i) < intLow Then
...will always fail, because the values you've stored in Scores will never be less than zero.
On subsequent iterations, your main If statement will always succeed because intLow has been set to 9 and the maximum score is 8. However, by this time, i will not be 0 and all your inner If statements will fail.
intLow contains the wrong information. You want to store the player who won the hole, not what the low score was. If intLow contains the index of the player who won the hole, then you can easily get the score.
So your program essentially does nothing. You need to adjust the algorithm to properly determine which player won a hole. This would do it:
For i As Integer = 0 To 8
intLow = 0
For j As Integer = 1 To 3
If array(j, i) < array(intLow, i) Then
intLow = j
End If
Next j
' At this point, you know that player intLow+1 won hole i+1 with a score of
' array(intLow, i). Ties always go to the first player who made that score.
Next i
In this revision, notice that we compare players to one another rather than to a constant value like 9. When determining the minimum or maximum in a list, this is a better practice. Granted, the scoring range for a hole of golf is always 1 - 8, but most minimums and maximums tend to have a way of changing over time. You want your algorithm to work no matter what.
I'll leave the output part up to you. This looks like an assignment and I've probably given too much away already.
Other suggestions:
Scores is a poorly named variable. It contains output, so Output might be a better name.
array is not descriptive. It contains scores. Once Scores is renamed, a good name for array would be Scores.
i could be called hole and j could be called player. That would help you keep things straight.
intLow could be called winner, which implies that the variable contains the index of the winner. intLow could mean low score or player with the lowest score. This ambiguity might have confused you. It definitely confused me.
There are native .Net methods for truncating the decimal portion of a number and for generating random numbers. There are even ways to generate random integers directly. You are using a legacy way of doing it, which VB.net provides for backward compatibility with VB6. That's 1990s technology. Programmers unfamiliar with VB6 will look at your code will find this very confusing, which is why it's generally better to use the native features of the .Net framework.