Consider the below game of ‘pub darts’:

You can open it in our Javascript-based IDE by clicking here

If you hover over the various primitives in the editor, a popup will tell you what they do.

The game consists of three main parts: the dartboard, the darts and the game itself.

The dartboard is constructed primarily using the ringarc primitive and a number of repeat loops. It uses the oddp boolean to decide which color each segment of each ring should be, allowing us to match the colors of a standard dartboard.

The numbers around the outside of the dartboard are created using the inscribe and orbitleft primitives. We offset the numbers as required to center them on their relevant wedges. We also use the orbit / pullin / pullout functionality to create the wire frame overlaid on the dartboard.

The darts are assembled using cylinders, cones, cutcones and poilyspots (for the fletchings).

The game itself consists of a setup section and the main game loop. Inside the game loop we have the aiming section and the scoring section. Every three darts we switch between players. If one of the players score exceeds 301 then they are declared the winner and the game ends.

The setup section creates the dart ‘room’, draws and ‘freezes’ the board (breaks it off into its own ’turtle track’) and creates the dart models using the dart procedure. Default containers (variables) are created using surnames (container classes), one for each player. Surnames enable us to use the same code for each player without needing to use lists or tables.

The main game loop moves the dart according to the mouse position. The dart moves up and down and side to side to simulate shaky hands, in an exaggerated fashion to make the game more challenging. The player pushes the left mouse button to launch the dart. The camera follows the dart in a method dictated by a random number.

Once the dart reaches the wall / board, we calculate if the dart hit the board or the wall by checking its distance from the center of the dart board [0 0 0]. If it actually hit the board then we ‘stamp’ the model in place.

We use the towards primitive (an original Apple Logo II primitive!) to determine the number of degrees the landed dart (which is in reality pointed upwards toward the ceiling, the dart ‘descending’ towards the board along the Z axis) would have to turn to face [0 0]. This, combined with the distance from the center allows us to calculate the dart’s score.

Logo code is like poetry! It’s easy to read and describes what the computer is doing in fairly broad terms. This is why it has always been great as a first text-based coding language.