keeping track of how many attempts player takes in mastermind?

Question

I have this code that should run a virtual game called mastermind and I'm having problems trying to code in a way to keep track of how many attempts the player takes.

I've added in attempts as a variable but it has no value except for 0 and I would like a way to increment the value each time the function display feedback is run. Is there a better way to achieve this?

Here is my code:

import random

def getGuessFromUser(guess):
    player_guess.clear()
    for g in guess:
        player_guess.append(g)
    return player_guess

#the players code does not match up to the color code
def displayFeedback():

    while attempts < 10 and player_guess != color_code:
        for i in range(4):
            if player_guess[i] == color_code[i] and player_guess != color_code:
                feedback[i] = color_code[i]
            if player_guess[i] != color_code[i] and player_guess[i] in color_code and player_guess[i] not in feedback:
                feedback[i] = 'W'
            if player_guess[i] != color_code[i] and player_guess[i] in colors and player_guess[i] not in color_code:
                feedback[i] = '_'
        print(printNicely(feedback))
        #getGuessFromUser(input('Guess: ' + '\n'))
        guessD()
    else:
        finalScoreCodebreaker()

#while the players guess is not valid
def errorMessage():

    if len(player_guess) != len(color_code):
        getGuessFromUser((input('Error ' + '\n')))
    if printNicely(player_guess) != printNicely(player_guess).upper():
        getGuessFromUser((input('Error ' + '\n')))
    for x in range(4):
        if player_guess[x] not in colors:
            getGuessFromUser((input('Error ' + '\n')))
    else:
        displayFeedback()
        #attempts(attempts)

#if player guesses on first try or if they run out of attempts
def finalScoreCodebreaker():
    if attempts >= 10:
        print("Color code was: " + str(printNicely(color_code)))
        print('Score: -' + str(10 - attempts))
    if player_guess == color_code:
        print("Score: -" + str(10 - attempts))

#returns as string
def printNicely(self):
    return ''.join(self)

def guessD():
    guess = getGuessFromUser(input('guess: '))


colors = ["R", "G", "Y", "P", "B", "O"]
attempts = 0
color_code = random.sample(colors, 4)
feedback = ['_', '_', '_', '_']
player_guess = []

guessD()
print(printNicely(color_code))
errorMessage()

Answer 1

You were on the right track by adding a global variable ( attempts = 0 ). The next step is to add a line in the function of interest that increments attempts . Before doing this, however, since attempts is out of scope for the function of interest, you must declare it as a global variable within the function before you increment it.

To summarize, add the following two lines to the top of displayFeedback :

global attempts
attempts += 1
...