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[PyGame] Beginners to share pygame project?
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[PyGame] Beginners to share pygame project?
#1
Hi, I'm Michael and I live in Vancouver, Canada.

I'm pretty new to programming, but I've done some tutorials and understand many of the basics. I was wondering if there are any other people of novices who would like to work on a Pygame with me. I only mean for fun.

Specifically, I want to make a game inspired by some parts of "Star Control II". I like the early game where you warp from star system to star system to mine minerals. You use that money to buy upgrades.

If you want to work on it too, you can do whatever you want for it, lots or little. I really want to work on a basic randomly generated galaxy of stars with planets. No idea how I'll do it, but the rest of this I can figure out.

Here is a video of the programmers talking about writing this classic: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgN4Mta86OE

I want to make the basic working game, and then add features and art as interest dictates. Minimum for this is:

1) A "bridge" screen to look at map and pick where to warp to.

2) A planet scan screen where you look at individual planets and decide if to drop down.

3) A top down lander mode where you zip around picking up minerals and avoiding hazards.

4) A space station screen where you sell minerals and buy upgrades.

I've already decided to do this myself, I just thought another novice would like to play along. If you think that the game needs a outrageously detailed crew manifest, have at it. You want to do space combat, great. Time travel, story arcs, what ever you find interesting. I haven't done this before, but it should be fun.

Reply or PM me if you have thoughts. I look forward to hearing them

Michael
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#2
That sounds like a highly ambitious project for a beginner. Really, you should start off with atari clones. That way you can learn how to do things one by one. In my case, the first game I made is a snake clone. I was even able to work on it in steps. First, I made the game. Then, I made an ending screen to show your score. Then I made a start menu, and after that a continue prompt. I can still think of more things to add, such as actual instructions and maybe some options like difficulty or color palette.

What you're talking about doing sounds like something someone would undertake only after they have a years or more of experience with the language. I've already successfully made a game, and I am nowhere close to being able to help in such a project. I was never even thinking about attempting something THAT advanced. Maybe some retro computer rpgs, but that's it. The hardest thing I was thinking of making was a digital card game like MTG, but that's not something I plan to seriously do anytime soon. Even if I could figure out how to program the AI (card game AI is the most infamously difficult thing to program), there's also the development side of it (coming up with actual cards and decks).

Long story short, you're not going to get much help from beginners in this project. You need to set your sights lower for the time being (preferably at things that have features you can later recycle for this project). Don't seriously expect to be able to make anything more advanced than atari-era games for the time being. Now, I could perfectly see a small team making a game like you want, but not when the whole team is made up of beginners!
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#3
(Dec-04-2019, 05:46 AM)xBlackHeartx Wrote: You need to set your sights lower for the time being (preferably at things that have features you can later recycle for this project).

I already do games with graphics and sound. It's doesn't take a year to learn how to import an sound file and play it. The required parts I listed could be put together mostly from stuff I DO already have. That's why I said when this gets knocked together I'm onto star map generation.

1) A "bridge" screen to look at map and pick where to warp to. <- It's basically a menu. That is a beginner project.

2) A planet scan screen where you look at individual planets and decide if to drop down. <- an info screen with a couple key options.

3) A top down lander mode where you zip around picking up minerals and avoiding hazards. <- pygame sprites 101

4) A space station screen where you sell minerals and buy upgrades. <- keyboard control and some basic arithmetic.

This is all pretty beginner stuff. That's why it's a "basic minimum". It's not very polite to say something is too hard for someone just because you don't know how to do it.
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#4
I have yet to figure out how to do menus. For some reason, I keep having issues with getting 'button press' menus to work. Right now my snake game only takes keyboard inputs. Either way, this sounds like a pretty big project.

And yeah, getting a pygame program to play sounds or use images isn't exactly complicated. The hard part is GETTING images and sound files. It literally took me months to figure out how to make a program that I could use to make sound files. And it does NOT use pygame. I had to resort to numpy and scipy to make this thing. And I still have no way to make image files; even if I do know how to save and load images. The whole art program part is the biggest problem for me. I can't even figure out how to get mouse inputs to work right; there's obviously no way I could make a drawing program. If you looked at my own thread, right now I'm just using an algorithm to generate a sprite from a list. And until I get advanced enough to make my pixel art program, that's what I'm going to be relying on for the forseeable future. And no, I'm not interested in making cheap stuff with ms paint. Never could get the hang of the program anyway. I want a grid-based art program where I can make pixel art. For now though, I'm going to be making more atari clones, and making my music program a bit more convenient to use. I only recently found out how to make a sound file that can play more than one note (yes, progress has been slow, partially because I can't see the source code for any of the functions I'm using).
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#5
MS Paint does do pixel art. A .bmp is a grid. I use this www.pixilart.com/draw

As for music, it sounds like you're programming in QBasic. lol. The internet is awash with free game art, music and effects. Or draw it by hand and take picture, make some "bleeps" and "bloops" into computer mic and use that. I also like to use BFXR for sound effects. Or find a midi mapper that you like. I only plan to use keyboard in this game.

Pygame exist precisely for the reasons you are struggling with. And Pygame is precisely what this thread is about.
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