Re: [pygame] Firing bullets

[Kris Schnee <kschnee@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles Christie wrote:
> Now my questions are:
>
> A. If this is really all I have to do, how do I get the bullets to 
> register with my screen redrawing class? I use that dirty rect update 
> method where you have to specify the class with the sprite class.

If you want the bullet objects to have a reference back to the object 
running the game (if any), you can give them that reference. Say:

class Game:
	...
	def MakeBullet(self):
		self.bullets.append(self, Bullet() )

class Bullet:
	def __init__(self,game_object):
		self.game_object = game_object

If you do that, the bullets can then call functions of the game object. 
I do that for the ships in my game so they can say, "Hey, I got 
destroyed," but not for bullets. Also I've got separate lists for player 
and enemy bullets to simplify collision detection.

> I can probably figure out how to make the bullets come out of the boss 
> as they are fired. I can definitely do that...

Just set their starting location to be the same as the enemy's, or for 
extra coolness use a relative location lined up with a visible turret. 
But that assumes the bullets can't collide with the enemy itself!

> The next thing is: for a kill function, can I make the bullets have a 
> little animation when they die? as in, shrink until they're tiny and 
> disappear? This obviously isn't very important at all and not useful 
> until the bullets actually appear on screen (which they haven't yet) but 
> I think it would be better than disappearing bullets. ;)

A really simple way to do it would be to load the bullet image as a 
strip of images, say 256*64 if the bullet is 64*64. Then use the first 
one for the bullet while it's alive. When it's destroyed, set a timer 
over three frames and use frame 1, then 2, then 3, then delete the bullet.

Kris