Greed Specification
Revised: September 15, 1989
Provided by Reed Phillips and Tom Love. source 
Greed is a dice game played between two or more players. The object of the game is to tally points from the dice rolls and be the first player to score 5000 points. There are five dice in the game that are rolled from a cup.
To "enter the game" a player must score at least 300 points on the first roll of his turn, otherwise the player is considered "bust". If he goes "bust" he must wait his turn to roll again. If this first roll produces 300 or more points, then the player has the option of stopping and keeping the initial score or continuing.
To continue, the player rolls only the dice that have not yet scored in this turn. If all the dice score, in one or multiple roles, the player may continue by rolling all five dice.
A player may continue rolling as long as a score is made on each roll. With the exception of the entry roll, a "bust" is when an individual roll produces no points.
During his turn the player may stop and keep his score after any roll as long as he is not "bust".
When a player is "bust" the only points lost are those accumulated during the turn in which the "bust" occurs. In other words he gets no points for that turn.
Each dice roll is tallied as follows:
- Threes of a kind score 100 * face value of one of the three die. If the face value = 1, then it is scored as 1000.
- Single 1's and 5's score 100 and 50 points, respectively.
- Examples (Rolls to "enter the game"): 44446 = 400 points total and would have the option to roll the 4 & 6 if the player chose to role the 4&6 and they did not score the player would be bust and would have to try to "enter the game" on his next turn. If the 4&6 score then the player could continue by rolling all five dice. 11115 = 1000 +100 +50 points = 1150 points and would have the option to roll all five dice again 12315 = 100 + 0 + 0 + 100 + 50 points = BUST
Finally, the winner is determined after a player collects a total score of 5000 or more and all players have had an equal number of turns. If, for example, a player scores over 5000 points, he may still lose if a subsequent player ends up with a final score greater than his.
Getting Started
For design purposes, we should assume that the rules, strategies and scoring algorithms can be changed. For this reason, the design should be cleanly factored.
Rules are not expected to change during play. The designer is also encouraged to play the game a few times before beginning the design. The following sections give a suggested basic object breakdown for the design. There can easily be more objects involved.
Game Object
The greed game itself can be considered an object. The game consists of players, dice, a cup, and rules. The game object should also know who started first, who's turn it is, and what the rolls are for the current turn. It should be playable 'by itself' and independent of the type of interface used.
For example, the object should respond to request (messages) like:
roll the dice,
go to next player,
restart game,
add a new player, etc.
The game object should be flexible enough to easily allow for different game parameters such as:
different numbers of dice,
different minimum score to enter,
different high score,
different dice scoring rules, etc.
Die Object
Each die can be considered an object. It should know how to roll and display itself. It needs to randomly choose and keep track of its value. The die object would probably need an undefined state which would represent it being shaken or sitting in the cup.
A die in an undefined state would also display itself differently (i.e. rolling or spinning).
We will assume the die is a cube but the design should be flexible enough to account for die with different numbers of faces (i.e. a die with 11 sides).
Player Object
Players participate in the greed game and keep track of their score. Their score tracking should also reflect the scoring history. A player should at least know what his score was for each turn of the game. Players have names. This player object expects an external source (user) to make the decisions (i.e. when to continue rolling or stop).
Computer Player Object
The computer player object is a subclass of player object that makes his own decisions about whether to roll or stop. The computer player allows a user to play greed with the computer. The intelligence about whether or not to roll should be represented by a 'degree of risk' or greediness factor. The computer player can also take into account things like how far behind he is, is this his last turn, his history of busts vs. rolls, etc. Any number and combination of players (users) and computer players should be allowed.
Interface Model Object
This object is determined by your interface design. Its roll is to orchestrate the game and players and to reflect player decisions and game state. As a minimum, the interface should:
- show the dice graphically for current turn and roll
- allow players to be added and removed
- allow players to provide roll/stop decisions
- graphically display the scoring history of the players.
This could take the form of a monotonically increasing curve for each player.
The designer is encouraged to use creativity when designing the interface. This could be anything from animating the cup and dice to giving the computer players or game a personality.