Gamming is one the hottest fields out there today and people are going crazy when it comes to gaming. With the emerging field of gamming, game programming is also growing nowdays and since it has a wide range of application in almost every field like advertising,education,AI/ML etc., programmers are really into it. Building a game for any purpose is fun and has it’s own craze since it involves a lot of imagination. Seeing your imagination and design being build has its own satisfaction. Pygame is python open source framework which helps you do so.
What is Pygame?
If we talk about the basic well-known definition of Pygame, it says-
“Pygame is a cross-platform set of Python modules designed for writing video games. It includes computer graphics and sound libraries designed to be used with the Python programming language.”
You can also define Pygame as-
“Pygame is a Python wrapper module for the SDL multimedia library. It contains python functions and classes that will allow you to use SDL’s support for playing cdroms, audio and video output, and keyboard, mouse and joystick input.”
What this basically means that if you know python and you love playing games,you will definitely have an instinct to develop it and Pygame is one of the easiest python modules that’ll help you in that.It was an open source project which has developed a lot today and is a very popular module for beginners.
It is third party module that you can download from the internet that is used to make games using python. The games are pretty simple and most of them are 2D games.You draw shapes and images and you can go pretty far with Pygame if you know how to use it proficiently .
How to work with Pygame?
To begin with Pygame module,you need to follow some easy steps as mentioned below:-
- You must have Python installed in your pc/mac. If you don’t have it you can easily download it from Python Webiste: https://www.python.org/. Just download the latest version of python available.
- Then you have to open command prompt window.
- In the command prompt window, type “pip” and then type “pip install pygame” to install the module.pip is pretty much package install in python.
- After that pip command will help collecting everything and then you have pygame installed in your pc/mac.
- You can uninstall pygame by typing “pip uninstall pygame” in command prompt.
- If it dosen’t work for you that means you do not have python environment variables which you can fix easily and then get started with pygame.
Working in pygame
The module Pygame is very easy to learn and use so for a beginner it becomes simple to get started with game development. Python itself is very easy to understand language compared to others and even non-programmer can read it whats written in python because its syntax is more of general language. Pygame is built on python so you can explore amazing features of game development using pygame easily. So,to begin with pygame open python cmd and type “import pygame” and then type “pygame .int()”. This will let you import pygame module so that you can work with it.
Building your own games
Pygame module helps you to bring your imagination of gaming to life. Being a beginner in this field, it becomes very difficult to work with complex codes. But using pygame and following the step wise approach, you can really build your own amazing games. Let us look how we can do it.
Firstly, we have to set up window according to what game design we have in our mind and then according to one’s requirement you can have your own specifications. To create a window, just type “win=pygame.display.set_model((1000,1000))”.What this basically so is, it will create a pygame window wherein your whole game program will work.
You can give caption to the window, create shapes, images and much more depending upon how creative you can be while building a game. You can create your character with the help of pygame and the let it move by specifying attributes like size, velocity, sound and music effects etc. Sound exciting, Right ! But this isn’t all. You can also have animation and optimization done to give your game a look according to you.
The game Dangerous Higschool Girls In Trouble was written in Pygame and has won some awards and is available on steam. There are many such games beautifully built using pygame. So, if you want to jump into game development and don’t know where to begin with, Pygame is the best available option.
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