How to design programatically a game map like Risk?

Question

I'm making a quiz-game based on map territories with a system similar to the Risk game (except there are no tanks but tickets).

The map isn't the world but a custom map that I designed and I'll finish in the future, I just made the logic links among territories.

There are 10 territories who represent 10 different matters. The game I'm developing is for Android (Java), but I'm writing a prototype of the map in C# with Visual Studio to see if the idea of the map is good.

Now, I'm not asking for C# code to use in my app, I'm asking for a programming strategy I should use to implement my map in Code.

I wrote the class Zone to define each territory. I also wrote the class GameMap which implements 10 different Zones.

In the game logic, it's expected that just as risk, to attack 1 territory, you must have one near it. How can I implement at best this concept, of near and far territories in a dynamic and not long-static way?

The final result of what I want would be: I decide which territory attack in order to my owned territories. How can I proceed being as much as dynamic as I can and not write really long and in-efficient code?

EDIT: I'm no more looking for C# help. I'm directly implementing the map in Java and Javascript in both Client and Server sides.

Answer 1

Like @Anko suggested, you should use a graph as data structure for your game map. If you use the this implementation of a graph in Java as a starting point you can represent your map as follows:

Graph<Zone> gameMap = new Graph<>();

Zone zone1 = new Zone("Zone1");
Zone zone2 = new Zone("Zone2");
Zone zone3 = new Zone("Zone3");
Zone zone4 = new Zone("Zone4");
Zone zone5 = new Zone("Zone5");
Zone zone6 = new Zone("Zone6");
Zone zone7 = new Zone("Zone7");
Zone zone8 = new Zone("Zone8");
Zone zone9 = new Zone("Zone9");
Zone zone10 = new Zone("Zone10");

gameMap.addEdge(zone1, zone2);
gameMap.addEdge(zone2, zone3);
gameMap.addEdge(zone2, zone4);

If you want to check if you can attack zone2 from zone1 you can just do

// can attack zone2 from zone1
gameMap.hasEdge(zone1, zone2);

Edit: I reimplemented the Java version in Javascript. You can use it like the Java version.

Here you can find the complete implementation of the above example in Java and Javascript.

Answer 2

I think you would have to manually define which zones are neighbouring each other - unless you can programmatically parse your map to figure this out automatically.

For example with a class attribute like int neighbouringZonesIds[]; that you have to fill.

Answer 3

Here's an alternative to the graph approach, if your map is made up of large grids (I've never heard of Risk played similar games to what you've described).

Have a World containing Zone objects. Each Zone has an X and Y coordinate. This saves you the trouble of having to add edges.

If Zone 1,1 only has the neighbour Zone 1,2 then the player may only cross between these two - you get the idea.