How to redraw while in another method?

Processing.py
1

I’m making a programming game for kids to learn to program using processing and python. It involves a wombat which picks up leaves in tiles and there may be some obstacles like rocks. This might be familiar to you if you did something in Greenfoot. I am making it in python though, and have little experience with Processing.

The wombatgame file runs the game. The leaves, rocks, world, and wombat are objects. A world is created with a wombat and some leaves. I then have a player class which is where the kids will program the wombat to do certain tasks. In the code(main method in player class) included I have a wombat which makes 4 steps in the direction it is facing.

The problem is that the wombat will move(x and y variables are changing for it) but it won’t display every movement until the end. It teleports instead of showing the user every step graphically. I commented out the world.play() user code in the draw() function because that is not where I want to put it. It teleports because it can only update the screen though world.display() when the world.play() method has finished. I call redraw in the wombat class after a movement which should run the world.display() method but it doesn’t do the code in the draw() function(which has world.display()) until world.play() is finished. I need to figure out how to redraw while running world.play()

Here is the code:

Any suggestions on how to improve the code or organization of the game are welcome.

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1st thing I’ve noticed is that you have loadImage() inside your classes.

It means that the very same image resource is gonna be unnecessarily reloaded & stored as another PImage object each time a new instance is created!

As a rule of thumb, load all resources in setup() and store them in global arrays.

Your classes can then access those resources directly or request them in their constructor.

1 Like
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I can see how that could add a lot of overhead if I were to spawn a lot of objects. Thanks for the suggestion.

4

I’ve also noticed you’ve got no “.pyde” file in your posted gist! :fearful:

Seems like your “wombatgame.py” should be renamed to “wombatgame.pyde” so your sketch can run in Python Mode. :nerd_face:

Of course, all your files need to be inside a folder which matches the name of that “.pyde” file. :cowboy_hat_face:

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5

from time import sleep

Seems like you’re applying everywhere something which pauses the sketch’s “Animation Thread”! :open_mouth:

But when we do so, it also pauses the rate on which the sketch’s renders the main canvas to the window! :scream:

If you want, I’ve written a class Countdown which sets its done property to True when a specified delay has transpired after we invoke its start() method: :crazy_face:

There are 2 versions of it for “Python Mode” though. Take your pick: :blush:

6

I know that time.sleep() is a blocking command but I want it to block because then the animation will be slower right? If I didn’t have time.sleep() it would pretty much teleport because it wouldn’t have to wait in between walk commands.

7

The right way to decrease a sketch’s FPS is via the frameRate() method: :face_with_monocle:

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Thanks, I’ll keep trying to clean up the code and debug :slight_smile: