Too many 'if' statements?

Question

The following code does work how I need it to, but it's ugly, excessive or a number of other things. I've looked at formulas and attempted to write a few solutions, but I end up with a similar amount of statements.

Is there a type of math formula that would benefit me in this instance or are 16 if statements acceptable?

To explain the code, it's for a kind of simultaneous-turn-based game.. two players have four action buttons each and the results come from an array (0-3), but the variables 'one' & 'two' can be assigned anything if this helps. The result is, 0 = neither win, 1 = p1 wins, 2 = p2 wins, 3 = both win.

public int fightMath(int one, int two) {

    if(one == 0 && two == 0) { result = 0; }
    else if(one == 0 && two == 1) { result = 0; }
    else if(one == 0 && two == 2) { result = 1; }
    else if(one == 0 && two == 3) { result = 2; }
    else if(one == 1 && two == 0) { result = 0; }
    else if(one == 1 && two == 1) { result = 0; }
    else if(one == 1 && two == 2) { result = 2; }
    else if(one == 1 && two == 3) { result = 1; }
    else if(one == 2 && two == 0) { result = 2; }
    else if(one == 2 && two == 1) { result = 1; }
    else if(one == 2 && two == 2) { result = 3; }
    else if(one == 2 && two == 3) { result = 3; }
    else if(one == 3 && two == 0) { result = 1; }
    else if(one == 3 && two == 1) { result = 2; }
    else if(one == 3 && two == 2) { result = 3; }
    else if(one == 3 && two == 3) { result = 3; }

    return result;
}

Answer 1

Thanks to @Joe Harper as I ended up using a variation of his answer. To slim it down further as 2 results per 4 were the same I slimmed it down further.

I may come back to this at some point, but if there's no major resistance caused by multiple if-statements then I'll keep this for now. I will look into the table matrix and switch statement solutions further.

public int fightMath(int one, int two) {

    if       (one == 0) {

        if       (two == 2) {
            result = 1;
        } else if(two == 3) {
            result = 2;
        } else {
            result = 0; }

    } else if(one == 1) {
        if       (two == 2) {
            result = 2;
        } else if(two == 3) {
            result = 1;
        } else {
            result = 0; }

    } else if(one == 2) {

        if       (two == 0) {
            result = 2;
        } else if(two == 1) {
            result = 1;
        } else {
            result = 3; }

    } else if(one == 3) {

        if       (two == 0) {
            result = 1;
        } else if(two == 1) {
            result = 2;
        } else {
            result = 3; }
    }

    return result;
}

Answer 2

1. Use constants or enums to make the code more readable
2. Try to split the code into more functions
3. Try to use the symmetry of the problem

Here is a suggestion how this could look like, but using an ints here is still kind of ugly:

static final int BLOCK_HIGH = 0;
static final int BLOCK_LOW = 1;
static final int ATTACK_HIGH = 2;
static final int ATTACK_LOW = 3;

public static int fightMath(int one, int two) {
    boolean player1Wins = handleAttack(one, two);
    boolean player2Wins = handleAttack(two, one);
    return encodeResult(player1Wins, player2Wins); 
}



private static boolean handleAttack(int one, int two) {
     return one == ATTACK_HIGH && two != BLOCK_HIGH
        || one == ATTACK_LOW && two != BLOCK_LOW
        || one == BLOCK_HIGH && two == ATTACK_HIGH
        || one == BLOCK_LOW && two == ATTACK_LOW;

}

private static int encodeResult(boolean player1Wins, boolean player2Wins) {
    return (player1Wins ? 1 : 0) + (player2Wins ? 2 : 0);
}

It would be nicer to use a structured type for the input and the output. The input actually has two fields: the position and the type (block or attack). The output also has two fields: player1Wins and player2Wins. Encoding this into a single integer makes it harder to read the code.

class PlayerMove {
    PlayerMovePosition pos;
    PlayerMoveType type;
}

enum PlayerMovePosition {
    HIGH,LOW
}

enum PlayerMoveType {
    BLOCK,ATTACK
}

class AttackResult {
    boolean player1Wins;
    boolean player2Wins;

    public AttackResult(boolean player1Wins, boolean player2Wins) {
        this.player1Wins = player1Wins;
        this.player2Wins = player2Wins;
    }
}

AttackResult fightMath(PlayerMove a, PlayerMove b) {
    return new AttackResult(isWinningMove(a, b), isWinningMove(b, a));
}

boolean isWinningMove(PlayerMove a, PlayerMove b) {
    return a.type == PlayerMoveType.ATTACK && !successfulBlock(b, a)
            || successfulBlock(a, b);
}

boolean successfulBlock(PlayerMove a, PlayerMove b) {
    return a.type == PlayerMoveType.BLOCK 
            && b.type == PlayerMoveType.ATTACK 
            && a.pos == b.pos;
}

Unfortunately, Java is not very good at expressing those kinds of data-types.

Answer 3

I hope I understand the logic correctly. How about something like:

public int fightMath (int one, int two)
{
    int oneHit = ((one == 3 && two != 1) || (one == 2 && two != 0)) ? 1 : 0;
    int twoHit = ((two == 3 && one != 1) || (two == 2 && one != 0)) ? 2 : 0;

    return oneHit+twoHit;
}

Checking one hit high or one hit low is not blocked and the same for player two.

Edit: Algorithm was not fully understood, "hit" awarded when blocking which I did not realize (Thx elias):

public int fightMath (int one, int two)
{
    int oneAttack = ((one == 3 && two != 1) || (one == 2 && two != 0)) ? 1 : (one >= 2) ? 2 : 0;
    int twoAttack = ((two == 3 && one != 1) || (two == 2 && one != 0)) ? 2 : (two >= 2) ? 1 : 0;

    return oneAttack | twoAttack;
}

Answer 4

static int val(int i, int u){ int q = (i & 1) ^ (u & 1); return ((i >> 1) << (1 ^ q))|((u >> 1) << q); }

Answer 5

I don't like any of the solutions presented except for JAB's. None of the others make it easy to read the code and understand what is being computed.

Here's how I would write this code -- I only know C#, not Java, but you get the picture:

const bool t = true;
const bool f = false;
static readonly bool[,] attackResult = {
    { f, f, t, f }, 
    { f, f, f, t },
    { f, t, t, t },
    { t, f, t, t }
};
[Flags] enum HitResult 
{ 
    Neither = 0,
    PlayerOne = 1,
    PlayerTwo = 2,
    Both = PlayerOne | PlayerTwo
}
static HitResult ResolveAttack(int one, int two)
{
    return 
        (attackResult[one, two] ? HitResult.PlayerOne : HitResult.Neither) | 
        (attackResult[two, one] ? HitResult.PlayerTwo : HitResult.Neither);
}    

Now it is much more clear what is being computed here: this emphasizes that we are computing who gets hit by what attack, and returning both results.

However this could be even better; that Boolean array is somewhat opaque. I like the table lookup approach but I would be inclined to write it in such a way that made it clear what the intended game semantics were. That is, rather than "an attack of zero and a defense of one results in no hit", instead find a way to make the code more clearly imply "a low kick attack and a low block defense results in no hit". Make the code reflect the business logic of the game.

Answer 6

The first thing that occurred to me was essentially the same answer given by Francisco Presencia, but optimized somewhat:

public int fightMath(int one, int two)
{
    switch (one*10 + two)
    {
    case  0:
    case  1:
    case 10:
    case 11:
        return 0;
    case  2:
    case 13:
    case 21:
    case 30:
        return 1;
    case  3:
    case 12:
    case 20:
    case 31:
        return 2;
    case 22:
    case 23:
    case 32:
    case 33:
        return 3;
    }
}

You could further optimize it by making the last case (for 3) the default case:

    //case 22:
    //case 23:
    //case 32:
    //case 33:
    default:
        return 3;

The advantage of this method is that it is easier to see which values for one and two correspond to which return values than some of the other suggested methods.