Printing a randomly chosen variable in Python

Question

I'm making a dice roller for the game Heroscape (So we can play with offshore friends). The dice for heroscape have 6 sides. 3 sides show skulls, 1 side has a symbol and 2 sides have a shield.

I've made it randomly generate 1 of those sides, but i'd like it to list off the results at the end (ie You rolled 6 skulls, 2 symbols and 4 shields).

Heres my current code:

loop = 1
while loop == 1:
    diceChoose = raw_input('Pick your dice. (Press 1 for a D20 roll, and 2 for attack /defense dice.) ')
    if diceChoose == ('1'):
        import random
        for x in range(1):
            print random.randint(1,21),
            print
        raw_input("YOUR DICE ROLL(S) HAVE COMPLETED. PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE.")
    elif diceChoose == ('2'):
        diceNo = int(raw_input('How many dice do you need? '))
        testvar = 0
        diceRoll = ['skull', 'skull', 'skull', 'symbol', 'shield', 'shield']
        from random import choice

        while testvar != diceNo:
            print choice(diceRoll)
            testvar = testvar + 1
            if testvar == diceNo:
                print ('YOUR DICE ROLLS HAVE COMPLETED')

        raw_input("PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE.")

    else: loop = raw_input('Type 1 or 2. Nothing else will work. Press 1 to start the program again.')

What i've tried is a bunch of if statements, but i've realised that if I try print ('diceRoll') all I get is the whole array instead of the randomly selected dice roll.

I'm not sure how to save each diceRoll as it happens, so I can print that number later on.

(My thinking is something like

if diceRoll == 'skull' skullNo +1 
print('skullNo'))

Answer 1

I think a good data structure for you to use for this problem would be the Counter from the collections module in the standard library. It works a little like a dictionary, mapping objects to an integer count. However, you can add values to it and that will increment their count.

So, I'd do this:

from random import choice
from collections import Counter

diceNo = int(raw_input('How many dice do you need? '))
diceValues = ['skull', 'skull', 'skull', 'symbol', 'shield', 'shield']

counter = Counter()
counter.update(choice(diceValues) for _ in range(diceNo))

print("Rolls:")
for value, count in counter.items():
    print("{}: {}".format(value, count))

print ('YOUR DICE ROLLS HAVE COMPLETED')
raw_input("PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE.")

The key line is counter.update(choice(diceValues) for _ in range(diceNo)) . This calls counter.update with a "generator expression", which produces diceNo random roll results. If you haven't learned about generator expressions yet, I suggest checking them out, as they can come in really handy.

Answer 2

Welcome to SO. I changed a few parts of your code to make them more similar to my style - feel free to change them back if that helps.

Change your loop code to simply:

while True:

This accomplishes the same thing, except that it is more pythonic.

Then, tab in one and tell set number values for the skull, symbol and shield . In this case, we set it to 0.

skull = 0
symbol = 0
shield = 0

Next, change the code below the diceNo = int(raw_input('How many dice do you need? ')) to this. It should be indented by one.

    for x in xrange(diceNo):
        import random
        choice = random.randint(1,6) 

        if choice == 1:
            skull +=1
        elif choice == 2:
            skull +=1
        elif choice == 3:
            skull +=1
        elif choice == 4:
            symbol =+ 1
        elif choice == 5:
            shield += 1
        elif choice == 6:
            shield += 1

This code repeats for the number of dice rolls needed. I then adds 1 to the variable associated with that name.

Directly below that, we display the info to the user.

print "You rolled %d skulls, %d symbols, and %d shields. Congrats." % (skull, symbol, shield)

Since you seemed to be having issues with the code, I decided to post it in its entirety.

while True:

    #Here we set the variables

    skull = 0
    symbol = 0
    shield = 0

    diceChoose = raw_input('Pick your dice. (Press 1 for a D20 roll, and 2 for attack /   defense dice.) ')
    if diceChoose == '1':
        import random
        for x in range(1):
            print random.randint(1,21),
            print
        raw_input("YOUR DICE ROLL(S) HAVE COMPLETED. PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE.")
    elif diceChoose == '2':
        diceNo = int(raw_input('How many dice do you need? '))

        for x in xrange(diceNo):
            import random
            choice = random.randint(1,6) 

            if choice == 1:
                skull +=1
            elif choice == 2:
                skull +=1
            elif choice == 3:
                skull +=1
            elif choice == 4:
                symbol =+ 1
            elif choice == 5:
                shield += 1
            elif choice == 6:
                shield += 1

        print "You rolled %d skulls, %d symbols, and %d shields. Congrats." % (skull, symbol, shield)

        raw_input("PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE.")

    else: loop = raw_input('Type 1 or 2. Nothing else will work. Press 1 to start the program again.')