How can I increment a variable without exceeding a maximum value?

Question

I am working on a simple video game program for school and I have created a method where the player gets 15 health points if that method is called. I have to keep the health at

Answer 1

I am just going to offer a more reusable slice of code, its not the smallest but you can use it with any amount so its still worthy to be said

health += amountToHeal;
if (health >= 100) 
{ 
    health = 100;
}

You could also change the 100 to a maxHealth variable if you want to add stats to the game your making, so the whole method could be something like this

private int maxHealth = 100;
public void heal(int amountToHeal)
{
    health += amountToHeal;
    if (health >= maxHealth) 
    { 
        health = maxHealth;
    }
}

EDIT

For extra information

You could do the same for when the player gets damaged, but you wouldn't need a minHealth because that would be 0 anyways. Doing it this way you would be able to damage and heal any amounts with the same code.

Answer 2

Most simple way using the modulus operator.

health = (health + 50) % 100;

health will never equal or exceed 100.

Answer 3

You don't need a separate case for each int above 85. Just have one else, so that if the health is already 86 or higher, then just set it directly to 100.

if(health <= 85)
    health += 15;
else
    health = 100;

Answer 4

I think an idiomatic, object oriented way of doing this is to have a setHealth on the Character class. The implementation of that method will look like this:

public void setHealth(int newValue) {
    health = Math.max(0, Math.min(100, newValue))
}

This prevents the health from going below 0 or higher than 100, regardless of what you set it to.

---

Your getHealed() implementation can just be this:

public void getHealed() {
    setHealth(getHealth() + 15);
}

Whether it makes sense for the Character to have-a getHealed() method is an exercise left up to the reader :)

Answer 5

I know this is a school project, but if you wanted to expand your game later on and be able to upgrade your healing power, write the function like so:

public void getHealed(healthPWR) {
    health = Math.min(health + healthPWR, 100);
}

and call out the function:

getHealed(15);
getHealed(25);

...etc...

Furthermore you can create your max HP by creating a variable that is not local to the function. Since I don't know what language you're using, I will not show an example because it might have the wrong syntax.

Answer 6

I believe this will do

if (health >= 85) health = 100;
else health += 15;

Explanation:

• If the gap for healing is 15 or less, health will become 100.

• Otherwise if the gap is bigger than 15, it will add 15 to the health.

So for example: if the health is 83, it will become 98 but not 100.