Python Beginner - Basic Hangman Game Using Turtle

Question

I built upon a previous beginners' class' hangman game to do graphics with Turtle. It should work with any .txt list of words in whatever location you specify at the top of the code (in my case on Windows, E:/My Documents/Programming/Projects/Hangman/words.txt). Alternatively you can uncomment the commented line containing #COMMENT AFTER TESTING and comment the line containing #UNCOMMENT AFTER TESTING at the start of Main to use test as the word to be guessed.

How did I do? What can/should I improve upon?

EDIT to add: I neglected to mention which code was borrowed from the lesson. I've added a comment where the code becomes mine.

import random

WORDLIST_FILENAME = "E:/My Documents/Programming/Projects/Hangman/words.txt"

def loadWords():
    """
    Returns a list of valid words. Words are strings of lowercase letters.
    """
    print("Loading word list from file...")
    # inFile: file
    inFile = open(WORDLIST_FILENAME, 'r')
    # line: string
    line = inFile.readline()
    # wordlist: list of strings
    wordlist = line.split()
    print("  ", len(wordlist), "words loaded.")
    return wordlist

def chooseWord(wordlist):
    """
    wordlist (list): list of words (strings)

    Returns a word from wordlist at random
    """
    return random.choice(wordlist)

end of lecturer's code

def isWordGuessed(secretWord, lettersGuessed):
    '''
    secretWord: string, the word the user is guessing
    lettersGuessed: list, what letters have been guessed so far
    returns: boolean, True if all the letters of secretWord are in lettersGuessed;
      False otherwise
    '''
    secretWordList = list(secretWord)
    return all(elem in lettersGuessed for elem in secretWordList)


def getGuessedWord(secretWord, lettersGuessed):
    '''
    secretWord: string, the word the user is guessing
    lettersGuessed: list, what letters have been guessed so far
    returns: string, comprised of letters and underscores that represents
    what letters in secretWord have been guessed so far.
    '''
    secretWordList = list(secretWord)
    lettersGuessedList = list(set(lettersGuessed))
    for letter in secretWordList:
        if letter not in lettersGuessedList:
            secretWordList[secretWordList.index(letter)] = '_ '
    return ''.join(map(str, secretWordList))



def getAvailableLetters(lettersGuessed):
    '''
    lettersGuessed: list, what letters have been guessed so far
    returns: string, comprised of letters that represents what letters have not
    yet been guessed.
    '''
    import string
    alphaList = list(string.ascii_lowercase)
    for char in lettersGuessed:
        if char in alphaList:
            alphaList.remove(char)
    return ''.join(map(str, alphaList)) 
    
#-----Setup-----
import turtle
wordlist = loadWords()
version = "v0.1"
gameTitle = "Basic Hangman "+version
window = turtle.Screen()
window.title(gameTitle)
window.bgcolor("black")
window.setup()
window.tracer(0)
tMessage = "Welcome to "+gameTitle+"!"
bMessage = "Input 'new' for a new game or 'quit' to quit."
font = ("Share Tech Mono", 24, "normal")

#TopText
tText = turtle.Turtle()
tText.speed(0)
tText.color("darkgreen")
tText.penup()
tText.hideturtle()
tText.goto(0,-260)
tText.write(tMessage, align="center", font=(font))

#BottomText
bText = turtle.Turtle()
bText.speed(0)
bText.color("darkgreen")
bText.penup()
bText.hideturtle()
bText.goto(0,-290)
bText.write(bMessage, align="center", font=(font))

#Creating the noose
noose = turtle.Turtle()
noose.width(10)
noose.hideturtle()
noose.color("darkgreen")
noose.penup()

#Drawing the noose
def drawNoose():
    noose.penup()
    noose.goto(-200,-200)
    noose.pendown()
    noose.goto(200,-200)
    noose.goto(150,-200)
    noose.goto(100,-150)
    noose.goto(50,-200)
    noose.penup()
    noose.goto(100,-200)
    noose.pendown()
    noose.goto(100,200)
    noose.goto(0,200)
    noose.penup()
    window.update()

#Creating the man
man = turtle.Turtle()
man.width(10)
man.hideturtle()
man.color("darkgreen")
man.penup()

#Drawing the man
def newLimb(limbs):
    if limbs == 6: #Draw rope
        man.goto(0,200)
        man.pendown()
        man.goto(0,150)
        man.penup()

    elif limbs == 5: #Draw head
        man.goto(0,100)
        man.pendown()
        man.circle(25)
        man.penup()        

    elif limbs == 4: #Draw body
        man.goto(0,100)
        man.pendown()
        man.goto(0,25)
        man.penup()
    
    elif limbs == 3: #Draw left leg
        man.goto(0,25)
        man.pendown()
        man.goto(-30,-40)
        man.penup()
    
    elif limbs == 2: #Draw right leg
        man.goto(0,25)
        man.pendown()
        man.goto(30,-40)
        man.penup()

    elif limbs == 1: #Draw left arm
        man.goto(0,75)
        man.pendown()
        man.goto(-30,15)
        man.penup()

    elif limbs == 0: 
        #Draw right arm
        man.goto(0,75)
        man.pendown()
        man.goto(30,15)
        man.penup()

guessedLetterRaw = turtle.textinput("Input", ' ')
guessedLetter = guessedLetterRaw.lower()

# --- Main ---
while guessedLetter == 'new':
    drawNoose()
    man.clear()
    lettersGuessed = []
    #secretWord = "test"                                                                #COMMENT AFTER TESTING
    secretWord = chooseWord(wordlist).lower()                                          #UNCOMMENT AFTER TESTING
    guessesLeft = 7
    tText.clear()
    bText.clear()
    tMessage = "Welcome to "+gameTitle+"!"

    while guessesLeft > 0:
        # Window Updating
        bMessage = 'Remaining letters: ' + getAvailableLetters(lettersGuessed)
        window.update()
        bText.clear()
        bText.write(bMessage, align="center", font=(font))
        tText.clear()
        tText.write(tMessage, align="center", font=(font))
        
        # Guessing
        guessedLetter = turtle.textinput("Input", 'Please guess a letter:')

        if guessedLetter in lettersGuessed:
            tMessage = "Oops! You've already guessed that letter: " + getGuessedWord(secretWord, lettersGuessed) 
        else:
            lettersGuessed.append(guessedLetter)

            if guessedLetter in secretWord:
                if isWordGuessed(secretWord, lettersGuessed):
                    noose.clear()
                    tText.clear()
                    man.clear()
                    for n in range(0, 6):
                        newLimb(n)
                    tMessage = 'Congratulations, you won!'
                    tText.write(tMessage, align="center", font=(font))
                    guessedLetter = turtle.textinput("Input", "Input 'new' for a new game or 'quit' to quit.")
                    break
                else:
                    tMessage = 'Good guess: ' + getGuessedWord(secretWord, lettersGuessed)
            else:
                guessesLeft -= 1
                newLimb(guessesLeft)
                if guessesLeft < 1:
                    tText.clear()      
                    tMessage = 'Sorry, you ran out of guesses. The word was ' + secretWord + '.'
                    tText.write(tMessage, align="center", font=(font))
                    guessedLetter = turtle.textinput("Input", "Input 'new' for a new game or 'quit' to quit.")
                else:
                    tMessage = 'Oops! That letter is not in my word: ' + getGuessedWord(secretWord, lettersGuessed)

Answer 1

Relative file paths

WORDLIST_FILENAME = "E:/My Documents/Programming/Projects/Hangman/words.txt"

should be modified so that it's relative. The easy thing to do is make it relative to the current directory and assume that the current directory is that of the project, but that's a little fragile. The more reliable thing to do is make this relative to the location of the current Python file, for which you can use __file__. Either way, using pathlib will make this relative-operation easy.

Context management for file handles

inFile = open(WORDLIST_FILENAME, 'r')

first of all, this does not have a corresponding close(), which is important. Beyond that, though, a close as implied by a with open() is safer than an explicit close, so do the latter.

File format

It seems that your file assumes a word list all on one line, separated by spaces. The more usual, marginally easier, and potentially (?) more performant thing to do is separate by line breaks. Python has more built-in machinery to do this - you can simply treat the file handle itself as an iterable over the file's lines, and would not need a call to split.

Formatting

print("  ", len(wordlist), "words loaded.")

is probably better-represented as

print(f'{len(words)} words loaded.')

Also note that words is a slightly simpler name for that variable, and the list part can be conveyed using a type hint. The type hint needn't even be list if you yield from the file handle, i.e.

def load_words() -> Iterable[str]:
    with open(WORD_LIST_FILENAME) as f:
        yield from f

Unnecessary casts

secretWordList = list(secretWord)
return all(elem in lettersGuessed for elem in secretWordList)

does not need the first line, since it's assumed that secretWord (which should be secret_word) is iterable. Also, this is better-represented by a set:

def is_word_guessed(secret_word: str, letters_guessed: Set[str]) -> bool:
    return set(secret_word) <= letters_guessed

getGuessedWord

Consider representing this as a join on a generator rather than an intermediate list:

def get_guessed_word(secret_word: str, letters_guessed: Set[str]) -> str:
    return ''.join(
        c if c in letters_guessed else '_'
        for c in secret_word
    ) 

Avoid local imports

Move this import:

def getAvailableLetters(lettersGuessed):
    import string

to the top of the file.

Set subtraction

Consider rewriting getAvailableLetters to use set subtraction:

def get_available_letters(letters_guessed: Set[str]) -> str:
    return ''.join(set(ascii_lowercase) - letters_guessed)

Global code

You have a bunch of it, starting at

#-----Setup-----

Move this into functions.