This tutorial is the second tutorial in a series of five Pygame tutorials:

• Tutorial 1 – Getting Started with Pygame
• Tutorial 2 – Creating Sprites using Pygame
• Tutorial 3 – How to control your sprites
• Tutorial 4 – Adding More Sprites
• Tutorial 5 – Pygame – How-To’s

Learning Objectives

Consider a sprite as an object. An object can have different properties (e.g. width, height, colour, etc.) and methods (e.g. jump(), hide(), moveForward(), etc.). Like in the industry an object is built from a mould. In computing the mould is called a Class.

So by creating our first sprite we will implement OOP (Object Orientated Programming). We will create our first Class and derive our first object from this class.

Context: Car Racing Game

The main car will be an object called playerCar. It will derive from a Class called Car.

Our first Class

import pygame
WHITE = (255, 255, 255)

class Car(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    #This class represents a car. It derives from the "Sprite" class in Pygame.
    
    def __init__(self, color, width, height):
        # Call the parent class (Sprite) constructor
        super().__init__()
        
        # Pass in the color of the car, and its x and y position, width and height.
        # Set the background color and set it to be transparent
        self.image = pygame.Surface([width, height])
        self.image.fill(WHITE)
        self.image.set_colorkey(WHITE)
 
        # Draw the car (a rectangle!)
        pygame.draw.rect(self.image, color, [0, 0, width, height])
        
        # Instead we could load a proper pciture of a car...
        # self.image = pygame.image.load("car.png").convert_alpha()
 
        # Fetch the rectangle object that has the dimensions of the image.
        self.rect = self.image.get_rect()

Later on we will add more properties and methods to this class. But before doing so we will look at how we can use it to create our first object: the car of the player (playerCar)

So let’s save our class as a python file called car.py.

Our first Object

Let’s go back to our main.py file (from previous tutorial) to edit its content.

First let’s add at the top of the code an import statement to import our Car class.

#Let's import the Car Class
from car import Car

Then we need to create our sprite in our main program using the following line of code:

playerCar = Car(RED, 20, 30)

Per dafult your car will be on position (0,0) (top left og the screen). You can change the x and y properties of your car as follows:

playerCar.rect.x = 200
playerCar.rect.y = 300

You can see how easy it would be to create another car:

player1Car = Car(RED, 20, 30)
player1Car.rect.x = 200
player1Car.rect.y = 300
player2Car = Car(PURPLE, 20, 30)
player2Car.rect.x = 400
player2Car.rect.y = 400

However, because we are creating a fully working game we are going to do a few more things with this object.

Let’s reuse the code from the first tutorial. We have made a few amendments since to draw the backdrop of our game: A green screen with a grey straight road!

On line 3 notice how we are using the import command to link to our Car Class python file (car.py).

On line 20 we are declaring a list called all_sprites_list that will store all the sprites we will create in our game. (For now just one sprite, the player car.)

On line 22 we are creating our first sprite/object using the Car Class. Notice how when declaring our first object we use the parameters from its constructor (__init__()), in this case, the colour, x, y, width and height of the car we want to create.

Now that we have created our first sprite we need to add it to our list of spites: all_sprites_list. This is what happens on line 27.

Finally, within the main program loop, on line 49 we are refreshing the screen and drawing all the sprites from our list: all_sprites_list.

Here is the full code:

import pygame, random
#Let's import the Car Class
from car import Car
pygame.init()

GREEN = (20, 255, 140)
GREY = (210, 210 ,210)
WHITE = (255, 255, 255)
RED = (255, 0, 0)
PURPLE = (255, 0, 255)
        
SCREENWIDTH=400
SCREENHEIGHT=500

size = (SCREENWIDTH, SCREENHEIGHT)
screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size)
pygame.display.set_caption("Car Racing")

#This will be a list that will contain all the sprites we intend to use in our game.
all_sprites_list = pygame.sprite.Group()

playerCar = Car(RED, 20, 30)
playerCar.rect.x = 200
playerCar.rect.y = 300

# Add the car to the list of objects
all_sprites_list.add(playerCar)

#Allowing the user to close the window...
carryOn = True
clock=pygame.time.Clock()

while carryOn:
        for event in pygame.event.get():
            if event.type==pygame.QUIT:
                carryOn=False
                
        #Game Logic
        all_sprites_list.update()

        #Drawing on Screen
        screen.fill(GREEN)
        #Draw The Road
        pygame.draw.rect(screen, GREY, [40,0, 200,300])
        #Draw Line painting on the road
        pygame.draw.line(screen, WHITE, [140,0],[140,300],5)
        
        #Now let's draw all the sprites in one go. (For now we only have 1 sprite!)
        all_sprites_list.draw(screen)

        #Refresh Screen
        pygame.display.flip()

        #Number of frames per secong e.g. 60
        clock.tick(60)

pygame.quit()

That’s it… You are now ready to move to our third tutorial to learn how to control your sprites using the arrow keys.
PyGame Tutorial 3/5Control your sprite using the arrow keys

This tutorial is the first tutorial in a series of five Pygame tutorials:

• Tutorial 1 – Getting Started with Pygame
• Tutorial 2 – Creating Sprites using Pygame
• Tutorial 3 – How to control your sprites
• Tutorial 4 – Adding More Sprites
• Tutorial 5 – Pygame – How-To’s

Learning Objectives

Now that you have learned the basics of Python you are most likely willing to start creating your own games. Pygame is one of the best libraries to create mainly 2D retro arcade games such as Tetris, PacMan or Space Invaders.

Let’s see what are the first few steps needed to create your first game in Python.

Installing Pygame

Step 1: Importing and initialising the Pygame library

# Import the pygame library and initialise the game engine
import pygame
pygame.init()

Note that you will first need to install the Pygame library on your computer. Alternatively you can complete this challenge online using the following Trinket/Pygame IDE

Step 2: Define the colours you will use in your game

# Define some colors
BLACK = ( 0, 0, 0)
WHITE = ( 255, 255, 255)
GREEN = ( 0, 255, 0)
RED = ( 255, 0, 0)

Step 3: Open a new window

# Open a new window
size = (700, 500)
screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size)
pygame.display.set_caption("My First Game")

Step 4: The main program loop

The main program loop will contain 3 main sections:

• Capturing Events: Used to constantly “listen” to user inputs and react to these. It could be when the user uses the keyboard or the mouse.
• Implementing the Game Logic. What happens when the game is running? Are cars moving forward, aliens falling from the sky, ghosts chasing you, etc.
• Refreshing the screen by redrawing the stage and the sprites.

The main program loop will also use a frame rate to decide how often should the program complete the loop (& refresh the screen) per second. To implement this we will use the clock object from the pygame library.

The main program loop will use a timer to decide how many times it will be executed per second.

# The loop will carry on until the user exits the game (e.g. clicks the close button).
carryOn = True

# The clock will be used to control how fast the screen updates
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

# -------- Main Program Loop -----------
while carryOn:
    # --- Main event loop
    for event in pygame.event.get(): # User did something
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT: # If user clicked close
              carryOn = False # Flag that we are done so we can exit the while loop

     # --- Game logic should go here

     # --- Drawing code should go here
     # First, clear the screen to white. 
     screen.fill(WHITE)
     #The you can draw different shapes and lines or add text to your background stage.
     pygame.draw.rect(screen, RED, [55, 200, 100, 70],0)
     pygame.draw.line(screen, GREEN, [0, 0], [100, 100], 5)
     pygame.draw.ellipse(screen, BLACK, [20,20,250,100], 2)


     # --- Go ahead and update the screen with what we've drawn.
     pygame.display.flip()
     
     # --- Limit to 60 frames per second
     clock.tick(60)

#Once we have exited the main program loop we can stop the game engine:
pygame.quit()

Your Challenge

Complete the code to draw the following background:

Next Step?