Match Game Lesson, Lists and Dictionaries

New lesson on a match game with lists and dictionaries.

The code for this lesson is available on bit bucket here.

Lesson #4: Mouse and Touchscreen Control (taught by middle school student)

Middle school student, age 13, teaches you how to get mouse control working on the moving square.

• Goes through event queue to check for the mouse button. event.type == MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
• Checks for point collision with a rectangle: collidepoint(mouse_pos)

import pygame, sys ## Statement that allows users to acess pygame specific commands from pygame.locals import * pygame.init() FPS = 30 clock = pygame.time.Clock() size = (480, 320) screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size) # define color using Red, Green, Blue values # 0 is blank # 255 is maximum RED = (255, 0, 0) # all red. no other color BLACK = (0, 0, 0) ## set colors for the up/down rectangle GREEN = (0, 255, 0) BLUE = (0, 0, 255) # left edge of rectangle, top, width height player_rect = pygame.Rect(0, 0, 64, 64) ## Create rectangles that will detect direction up_rect = pygame.Rect(300, 100, 50, 50) down_rect = pygame.Rect(300, 180, 50, 50) direction = "down" while True: for event in pygame.event.get(): if event.type == pygame.QUIT: pygame.quit() sys.exit() ## Check to see if the mousebutton is pressed if event.type == MOUSEBUTTONDOWN: mouse_pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() ## Check if the mouse_pos is within the rectangle if up_rect.collidepoint(mouse_pos): direction = "up" if down_rect.collidepoint(mouse_pos): direction = "down" screen.fill(BLACK) pygame.draw.rect(screen, RED, player_rect) ## draw the rectangles that will detect direction pygame.draw.rect(screen, GREEN, up_rect) pygame.draw.rect(screen, BLUE, down_rect) if direction == "down": player_rect.centery += 5 elif direction == "up": player_rect.centery -= 5 if player_rect.bottom > size[1]: direction = "up" if player_rect.top < 0: direction = "down" clock.tick(FPS) pygame.display.update()

Lesson #3 - The Moving Square

Lesson number three teaches movement in the Y axis.

The main concepts:

• Add 1 to the y axis to move down;
• Subtract 1 to the y axis to move up;
• Bounds checking to detect when the square reaches the edge of the screen;
• Conditional to change direction;
• Clock to set the maximum Frames Per Second (FPS) that the game runs at

import pygame, sys pygame.init() FPS = 30 clock = pygame.time.Clock() size = (480, 320) screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size) # define color using Red, Green, Blue values # 0 is blank # 255 is maximum RED = (255, 0, 0) # all red. no other color BLACK = (0, 0, 0) # left edge of rectangle, top, width height player_rect = pygame.Rect(0, 0, 64, 64) direction = "down" while True: for event in pygame.event.get(): if event.type == pygame.QUIT: pygame.quit() sys.exit() screen.fill(BLACK) pygame.draw.rect(screen, RED, player_rect) if direction == "down": player_rect.centery += 1 elif direction == "up": player_rect.centery -= 1 if player_rect.bottom > size[1]: direction = "up" if player_rect.top < 0: direction = "down" clock.tick(FPS) pygame.display.update()

Lesson #2 - The Stationary Square

This lesson focuses on drawing a stationary red square.  

Main concepts:

• Colors are set by a three number tuple (red, green, blue).  Each value ranges from 0 to 255
• Each point on the phone screen has two numbers associated with it, the x and the y coordinate.  A single point is a pixel.  The phone screen is 480 pixels wide and 320 pixels high.
• The rectangle is initially set by the upper left corner.  The example uses (0, 0).
• The width and height of the rectangle are measured in pixels, 64 pixels wide and 64 pixels tall.

Bonus concepts:

• Graphics such as a cartoon girl are loaded with image.load("filename");
• The graphic is displayed on the phone screen with blit;
• The position of the graphic on the screen is established with a rectangle.

import pygame, sys pygame.init() size = (480, 320) screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size) # define color using Red, Green, Blue values # 0 is blank # 255 is maximum RED = (255, 0, 0) # all red. no other color # left edge of rectangle, top, width height player_rect = pygame.Rect(0, 0, 64, 64) # player = pygame.image.load("girl.png") while True: for event in pygame.event.get(): if event.type == pygame.QUIT: pygame.quit() sys.exit() pygame.draw.rect(screen, RED, player_rect) # screen.blit(player, player_rect) pygame.display.update()

Lesson #1 - The Blank Screen

This is the first lesson in the Python and Pygame series.   It teaches the blank screen.   It is the basic foundation of all games.  This requires Python, Pygame, and a text editor.

This lesson was designed for middle school students.

Main concepts:

1. Load and initialize the Pygame library;
2. Set the size of the main screen;
3. Create an infinite loop that runs the game until the player quits the game;
4. Process the event queue;
5. Handle the QUIT event;
6. Update the screen.

  import pygame, sys pygame.init() size = (480, 320) screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size) while True: for event in pygame.event.get(): if event.type == pygame.QUIT: pygame.quit() sys.exit() pygame.display.update()