Adventures in Python

Craig Richardson is a software developer, freelance writer, and former teacher with plenty of classroom experience. In his spare time, he has introduced hundreds of beginners to programming through his fun and engaging Python workshops and resources.

• Introduction 1Adventure 1Diving into Python 23What Is Programming? 24Opening IDLE 25Returning to Your First Python Program 26It Isn’t Working—Grrr! 28Using a File Editor 30Asking Questions with Variables 33A Bit About Variables 35Using Variables for a Fill-in-the-Blanks Story 37Making the Program Make Decisions: Conditionals 39Using if Statements 39Nested if Statements 41Creating an Imaginary Vending Machine 43Repeating Code with Loops 45Using while Loops 45Infinite while Loops 47Praise Generator 48A Bigger Adventure: Spaceship Control Console 50Set-Up and Password 50Using the Console to Do Things 52Adventure 2Drawing with Turtle Graphics 57Getting Started with Turtle 57Using Variables to Change Angles and Lengths 61Using Addition to Draw a Spiral 64Saving Some Space with Loops 65A Shape with 360 Sides: Drawing a Circle 67Controlling the Number of Sides Using for Loops 68Changing the Fill Colour in a Shape 71Creating Functions to Reuse Your Code 72Shape Presets 75Adding Randomly Generated Pictures 76Adventure 3Windows, Buttons, and Other GUI Stuff 83Creating Buttons 84Changing the Button Text on Click 87Counting Clicks 88Creating Text Boxes 90Writing It Backwards 92Adding Passwords 93Building a Random Sentence Generator 96Programming a Guessing Game 99Adventure 4More GUI Elements with Tkinter 105Creating Sliders 105How Colours Work on Computers and as Hexadecimal Values 109Changing the Canvas Colour 111Making the Colour Picker 113Adding a Text Box 116Creating a Click Speed Game 117Adventure 5Drawing Shapes with PyGame 123Installing PyGame 123My First PyGame 124Creating Rectangles 127Creating a Rectangle 127A Rainbow of Rectangles 128Colour Grid 131Creating Ellipses 133Wobbling Circle 133Saving Your Images 135Saving a Single Image 135Saving a Series of Images 136Adventure 6Adding Keyboard Input with PyGame 139Using Keyboard Input 140Other Keys You Can Use 142Creating the Game 142Introducing Full Movement 146Moving the Player Offscreen 148Adding the Ball 150Creating Collisions 152Goal! 154Adding a Time Limit 157Adventure 7Creative Ways to Use a Mouse with PyGame 161Getting the Mouse Position 161Making a Button 163Moving Target 166Exploding Clicks 169Making a Mesh 172Creating Mouse Trails 175Adventure 8Using Images with PyGame 181Loading an Image 181Layering Images 184Randomly Layering Images 186Adding a Moustache to a Photograph 188Making Sprites 191Creating a Walking Animation 191Walking in All Directions 195Teleportation 197Adventure 9Using Sounds and Music with PyGame 203Playing Sounds 203Creating a Noise Loop 205Making Keyboard Sound Effects 207Using Music with Python 210Playing Music 210Adding Volume Tremolo 212Making a Music Player 215Adding Sounds and Music to a Game 218Adventure 10Your Really Big Adventure 223Writing the Program for the Game 224Setting Up the Files 224Making the Game 225Walls 226Doors, Collisions and Coins 229Setting Up the Window and Variables 231Adding the Game Loop 234Character Controls and Animations 234Player Collisions and Collecting Coins 237Displaying Points and Updating the Window 237Playing the Game 238Debugging the Game 239Summary 240Appendix AInstalling and Downloading the Proper Files 243Installing PyGame 243Windows 8 243Windows 7 245Mac 245Linux (Ubuntu) 247Raspberry Pi 248Downloading the Files for Adventures 8, 9 and 10 248Windows 8 248Windows 7 249Mac 249Linux (Ubuntu) 250Raspberry Pi 250Glossary 251Index 257