Pygame Menu System Tutorial Part 1: Game Loops and Structure

LINK TO PART 2: • Pygame Menu System Tut...
In this series, we'll be building a retro-styled menu system in pygame. We'll start by learning about game loops and how we can best structure our code for a menu system.
Download the font: www.dafont.com/8bit-wonder.font
Install Pygame: www.pygame.org/wiki/GettingSt...
The code can be found at: github.com/ChristianD37/Youtu...
Personal Channel - / @ur_homedawg
Timestamps:
Intro: 0:00
Game Loop Concepts: 2:20
Creating the Game class: 3:32
For those of you who notice, sorry for the drop in audio quality at certain parts. Should be fixed in future videos!
#gamedev #Pygame #Python

[@alexandrearnsgonzales5610]

When I tried to run the first time the main.py, it showed the following message of error: " AttributeError: 'Game' object has no attribute 'running' " I don't know what I missed

[@alexandrearnsgonzales5610]

Solved :p Instead of using "def _init_(self)" in the "game.py" I used "def _ _ init _ _ (self)"

[@CDcodes]

This seems to be a common problem people are having, probably because of the way it looks in Pycharm. Im gonna pin this comment, thanks for posting the solution!

[@alexandrearnsgonzales5610]

@@CDcodes Thank you for making the video

[@crazyinsanity51]

@@CDcodes the code is saying there is no attribute for run on line 7 on menu

[@gargoyled_drake]

this is exactly the kind of pygame tutorial i was waiting for. i gotta redo my games with this setup but in the end it's gonna make everything way easier to edit from script to script instead of having everything in one script. everything works perfectly. Thank you

[@CDcodes]

You're very welcome!

[@crx53]

this is the best tutorial for menus, thank you!

[@CDcodes]

Glad you enjoyed the video! Hope you were able to learn : )

[@crx53]

@@CDcodes definitely did learn!

[@penguinthaisky7932]

You are so underrated, thank you!💜

[@CDcodes]

Always happy to help! Comments like these mean a lot : )

[@Rurdock]

Screen trasition is such a pain and is where my codes have become very very messy. It was awesome to see how you organised your screens here. Way cleaner than I've been doing. Awesome! Thanks for the great content.

[@CDcodes]

Happy to help!

[@ZgavY]

This might help me develop my first game, thanks!👍

[@maybe_tankerguy05]

Thanks for this. I've been trying to make my code more clean, and I think the way you handle and store evets will really help make my code cleaner.

[@CDcodes]

Hey everyone, I recently made another tutorial that improves upon the ideas presented in this video. The video is about states, which can be used for menus as well as gameplay. Check it out: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mJCnnISof92jmc0

[@hamsterninja4432]

Very underrated, keep up the good work !

[@CDcodes]

Thank you! Ive got an upcoming video that builds on this one, so stay tuned!

[@guoxinxin693]

Oh, You are so talented!!! So clear!!!

[@CDcodes]

Many thanks!

[@Raggaliamous]

This is really fantastic. Hoping to apply this to building a text-based game.

[@CDcodes]

Awesome! You can also check out my states tutorial if you want a more flexible version of this!

[@Raggaliamous]

@@CDcodes i shall indeed!

[@coconaatti2878]

YOU ARE TOTALLY SAVED MY LIFE OMG YOU ARE THE BEST

[@CDcodes]

: )

[@saadsohael8179]

You are just awesome! Loved the video! Please keep making these

[@CDcodes]

Thanks for the support!

[@Musteey_77]

Hello, I have a question...suppose I have a game called play_pyhow do I link it to your menu so when I click Start Game it launches that game (play_py)? I'd really appreciate the help, thanks

[@yarnxd9366]

Fun fact:This video is published on 24 July 2020 and am watching it on 24 July 2021 lol

[@CDcodes]

Thanks for still watching!

[@kuolGG]

Is there a way to have the main screen running on the same python file?

[@dylanjackson586]

Great video!! if you wanted to add a game in once clicking start game would only need to call the game in the game loop to get it to display?

[@CDcodes]

Yup, you got it

[@danwalker1494]

Question, I want to plan a larger project but I’m in over my head. Would you make several files (makes the most sense to me) or few large files? Can you discuss how you would organize a larger project? like maybe separate enemy files or separate level files. I keep getting to a small game that works and it feels like I need to rewrite everything to make it bigger. And I know it’s because I’m not smart enough to know the tricks and big picture I need.

[@CDcodes]

No such thing as not being smart enough, it just requires practice. I'll release a template soon that will try and combine everything.

[@nerdyturkey312]

Interesting content, just subbed 👍 any more pygame projects planned?I have my own pygame channel focused on game dev tools and puzzles ( when I have time).

[@CDcodes]

Thanks for the sub! I have a python project in the works for absolute beginners and then after that I'm going to record another pygame based project

[@tacocatt6808]

Man I cannot thank you enough. You legit just saved my ass and grade. Of course I didn’t copy everything word for word and worked this into my preexisting (but shitty) code. You explained stuff so well, I genuinely feel so grateful. Thank you!

[@CDcodes]

Happy to help!

[@joshuaolinger4841]

Part of the first 1,000 subscribers. Someone comment when the channel hits 50k

[@CDcodes]

Appreciate the support : )

[@joshuaolinger4841]

@@CDcodes Your tutorials gave me a good understanding of how OOP works, and I am really grateful for that man

[@CDcodes]

Glad I could help!

[@LegoSnakeproductions]

Hello Christian, great video but I've been left with a question. Is it really necessary to right self everywhere? It seems like it's just there being redundant, does it serve any purpose?

[@CDcodes]

Short answer: Use self Self is used to refer to the instance of the class. That way we can acess its methods and variables. You can think of each object having variables that "belong" to them in their own little inventory. When we do something like self.color, we are essentially saying "grab the color that belongs on our object." This increases our codes readability and also allows to distinguish between local variables (which are temporary) and class variables (which we need to stick around). Hope that helped.

[@LegoSnakeproductions]

@@CDcodes Id did, thank you very much Christian :)

[@hamzaahmad1224]

self is necessary to use as it refers to an instance of the object itself. Inside the class, you have not created any objects so you go with self.running, self.playing etc but when you come into the driver code then you can access these instance variables directly by replacing self with the name of your object e.g. obj1.running, obj2.playing

[@thinhtapcode3888]

Hello,can you help me out ?.When I run the program,It said pygame.error: font not initialized

[@SparkyLBB03]

after i run the program it tells me that 'Game' object has no attribute 'game_loop' (in main.py ) and the small window doesn't open up. any ideas?

[@jackhayes6641]

I had the same issue, just fixed it by making sure I indented game_loop correctly. I had it on the first layer (same as the class), make sure it's indented one, and on the same level as check_events and reset_keys and such

[@nandiniverma1405]

amazing tutorial! but I have a question. Instead of using a black background, I want to use an image as a background. Can you help me out, please!

[@CDcodes]

Thank you! To add an image, you would just need to blit the image right after you reset the screen. Something like: display.fill() # Reset the screen display.blit(my_image, (0,0)) # Blit your image after the screen is reset screen.update() # Display screen

[@nandiniverma1405]

@@CDcodes Thank you! you are a lifesaver!

[@samtheserious19]

I have a question, maybe a bit dumb: why did you separate the surface and the window? Like, first you make the surface (canvas) and then the window. Normally I have seen it all together like pygame.display.set_mode() but you made it diferent. Is it so to have a different canvas for each menu that would not work if I just do pygame.display.set_mode()? Thank you!

[@CDcodes]

Not a dumb question at all! There's actually a couple reasons you'd want to (implementing camera and effects such as screen shake), but a very general one for a simple project like this is that you'll get a performance boost. Drawing everything onto a surface and then only drawing onto the window once is actually more efficient than drawing everything onto the window individually

[@aftonsenpai]

font is not initialised in the draw_text() module this error keeps on coming... i use the default font

[@danielaneves5070]

I've done everything like showed above, but It keeps saying: 'Statement seems to have no effect' when It starts the lines where u define the keys

[@CDcodes]

Sounds like some sort of syntax error. I can help you debug it on my discord. That way you can share screenshots of your code. discord.gg/grq2EstUZr

[@tristancummings5925]

question...so how would you replace the game you did with our own game?

[@CDcodes]

This would be done by updating the "game loop()" function. If it were me, I'd make two additional helper functions: update() and draw(). Update will handle all the game logic, and draw will display sprites on the screen. This works for small to medium scale games quite well. With games that have lots of different gameplay mechanics,/interfaces, I would opt for a scene structure instead. I may cover that in the future.

[@lynx-me2ew]

8:53 i would use ctrl + q as quit switch

[@mtbminibomber]

Dang Congrats on 2k views

[@CDcodes]

Thank you good sir!

[@crazyinsanity51]

Hey i got a question about the game loop on the main.py trying to read the gameloop on the game.py and it just keeps opening and closing the window and it says can not read the game loop so any sulutions to fix it

[@crazyinsanity51]

also i have checked the order of the game loop and everything and all things match

[@crazyinsanity51]

or to be more clear now its saying its not a atribute so how do i make it a atribute?????

[@CDcodes]

Checkout the pinned post. Seems most people who have this problem have an incorrect indentation somewhere in their code.

[@guoxinxin693]

Dear Christian, I am new to pygame, and have quenstion puzzed me for a long time. Please check at 10:37. I think it should be: if I press the Enter key, KEY_START = True, and we enter into the game_loop. But why did you do the oppsite? What is your logic here? Thanks! I really appreciate your great tutorials.

[@CDcodes]

Because my game is just a simple "Thanks for playing" screen, the game is over ends when I press the start button. Hence, we set the playing variable to false. Also note that we are already in the game loop at that point. Hope that helps!

[@guoxinxin693]

@@CDcodes Thanks for your kind response and I got it now. :)

[@adityask865]

I am getting the error "pygame: font is not initialised" whenever I run the code, I have copied the tutorial code exactly and got the font required

[@curatedxkris71]

Despite installing pygame, when I try to run this code I get an error code that states there is no module named pygame? Is pygame installed in an incorrect path and PyCharm is unable to locate it?

[@sarthakjaiswal1341]

thanks alot

[@CDcodes]

Happy to help!

[@matrat6648]

I keep running into a AttributeError, it’s saying Game object has no attribute ‘font name’ any suggestions?

[@CDcodes]

Sounds like a variable may be missing somewhere. Make sure you included a variable to store the name of whatever font youre using, whether it be the default or the retro one I included.

[@leoribkin4995]

@@CDcodes I'm having the same issue what is the default font or how do I install fonts?

[@vaibhavpandey6640]

great video man ,please make a series on coding a 2d survival game in pygame

[@DhevAcoustic]

I have a problem . When i click the X it doent close the window. What to do . im not able to spot the error

[@CDcodes]

Double check that all the indents are correct, that could be the issue. The working code is on github if you want to see the complete code

[@jacobcowan8391]

Helpful video but when I try running it I get an error message saying that Game object has no attribute called ‘running’

[@jacobcowan8391]

Oops never mind I just saw the pinned comment.😅 Thanks for this helpful video!

[@bodsvei]

Hi, Cant get the font you mentioned, What should I do?

[@CDcodes]

You can use any font file (.ttf). Here's a website with plenty: www.fontspace.com/

[@Car_Hub04]

how do I add my own python file into the game

[@greenin5537]

there's a lot of tutorials out there that usually don't make a class for the pygame game instance, is the only advantage a better structure?

[@CDcodes]

For simple games it may not matter. If you're building more complicated projects, object oriented programming will help a lot in terms of organization. Just my opinion tho

[@greenin5537]

@@CDcodes Oh I see. The thing with those tutorials is that they DO implement classes/OOP with the rest of the game, like the characters, bullets, enemies, etc. All except with the Game class, that's why it confused me what the difference was.

[@cuaitzzz]

Hi! I'm starting to code and I've been wondering: Why is the game written inside a class?

[@danidantas1217]

hi cuait zzz, the game written Inside the class to facilitate the fitting of variables and menu functions. Sorry I don't speak english, I'm using Google translator.

[@CDcodes]

Lets say we're making a really simple game. Maybe we can fit it all one in one python script. But what if our game is a bit more complicated. Trying to fit it all in one file is gonna get really messy really quick. So as good practice, we want to "modularize" our code. This means that rather than having one big mess, we break it down into little pieces that are easier to work with, aka objects/classes. Great, so the only problem is that on their own, one class (say a player) may have a hard time communicating with another (say an enemy). This is where the game class comes in. Using the game class, we can "encapsulate" all of out other objects. That way we can reference them and everything can work together. You can think of it as a toybox, with all of the toys being whatever objects are present in our game (sprites, levels, sounds, etc). By keeping everything organized in our box, things are eqsy to manage and keep track of. Hope that helps!

[@cuaitzzz]

@@CDcodes I understand the concept now, thank you! Unfortunately I keep running into circular imports when trying it lol

[@hamzaahmad1224]

Hi. When I press the x button to close, the graphics window stops responding! The IDE I'm using is jupyter notebook. Please help me find a way around this issue

[@CDcodes]

It could be that the program is entering an infinite loop. Check that the playing and running variables are set.

[@voiidgobliin839]

i've tried to run the code but the window just opens and closes right away. any solutions to this?

[@CDcodes]

Make ths sure the boolean variables (running and playing) are set correctly

[@bengruber5806]

What terminal do you use?

[@CDcodes]

I used Pycharm as the IDE in this video.

[@ABLsaurusRex]

I'm running the latest version of Raspberry PI OS. (Raspbian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)). When I choose the window X, the program ends but the window doesn't close. To solve this issue I added in game.py def quit(self): pygame.quit() and in main.py, after the game_loop, g,quit() while g.running: g.playing = True g.game_loop() g.quit()

[@CDcodes]

Thanks for sharing your solution!

[@oppranto]

Can anyone tell me how can i run my snake game after start button click?? Please help me.

[@MrZeddy-qo4oi]

I followed every step in the video, but there's a problem AttributeError: type object 'Game' has no attribute 'running' the window is not opening. I'm using vscode

[@CDcodes]

Are you sure you declared a "self.running" variable in the init function? If that doesn't help, go to my discord so you can post your code

[@MrZeddy-qo4oi]

@@CDcodes Yes, "self.running" is in the init function. I copied your codes in Github still " no attribute 'running' ".

[@cipherusplays7511]

when i tried to run the main.py, it said File "C:\Users\______\PycharmProjects\pythonProject2\main.py", line 7, in g.game_loop() File "C:\Users\______\PycharmProjects\pythonProject2\game.py", line 22, in game_loop self.check_events() File "C:\Users\______\PycharmProjects\pythonProject2\game.py", line 38, in check_events if event.key == pygame.K_BACKSPACE: AttributeError: 'Event' object has no attribute 'key' im confused

[@robingarcia1226]

Same here

[@lynx-me2ew]

but a really nice tut

[@RedoxRules]

I have this problem idk why i have evrything in the same folder and the name is the same line 2, in from Game_V2_vsc import Game ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'Game_V2_vsc' same things have happened like when i try to put an jpg or png that it cant find the file but everything is in the same folder and i wrote evrything exactly the same way

[@CDcodes]

Is Game_V2_vsc a module or folder? If its a folder then you need to put a dot after to access the module i.e. Game_V2_vsc.myModule

[@RedoxRules]

@@CDcodes it's a module

[@RedoxRules]

@@CDcodes I even loaded your code without changing anything and stills says things like err2 or module "object" not callable

[@max-hill-4]

what compiler is that ?

[@CDcodes]

The IDE im using is pycharm if thats what you mean

[@463896]

pygame window closes immediatley after opening. Why is this?

[@Mohossam]

13:50 It's giving me these errors File "H:\MY game\main.py", line 7, in g.game_loop() File "H:\MY game\game.py", line 16, in game_loop self.check_events() File "H:/MY game\game.py", line 31, in check_events if event.key == pygame.K_BACKSPACE: AttributeError: 'Event' object has no attribute 'key'

[@CDcodes]

Theres something going wrong in check_events(). Make sure you wrote the check_events() function the same way I did. Make sure the for loop matches as well

[@Mohossam]

@@CDcodes It Works , Thank You For The Fast Response And Thank You For This Great Tutorial

[@CDcodes]

@@Mohossam Awesome : )

[@ChrissysAdventurea]

Hi, I've followed the video and made sure everything was correct however I'm still getting the error while g.running: AttributeError: 'Game' object has no attribute 'running' when I run it in the main file but when I run it on the game file it runs but no window appears. Can someone please help me?

[@CDcodes]

Are you sure you declared a self.running variable in the game class?

[@ChrissysAdventurea]

@@CDcodes yes, I even double checked by using the link to the code

[@CDcodes]

Head over to the discord, maybe you can share your files there

[@MrZeddy-qo4oi]

@@ChrissysAdventurea I have the same problem, is the problem has been solve? what did you do?

[@trey4532]

bruh. you are SLAPPING that keyboard lol.

[@CDcodes]

It's a mechanical one so it's pretty loud haha

[@bjkorb7272]

I try sharing a link to the game I made but KZbin won't let me post a link I guess :(

[@CDcodes]

Share it on discord!

[@bjkorb7272]

@@CDcodes done, thanks!

[@estevaopimentel8710]

damn, dude this white idle is burning my eyes

[@CDcodes]

Yeah I've moved over to VS code in my newer videos.

[@_king_of_falcon_]

I cant download ur code

[@CDcodes]

All the code is here: github.com/ChristianD37/KZbinTutorials/tree/master/Menu%20System Also i'll be releasing a modified (and in my opinion better) version of this system soon.

[@sundari7846]

@@CDcodes i have error at main, it said no module named Game, im so stuck, helpp

[@CDcodes]

@@sundari7846 Make sure you imported the game module. Also make sure you are accessing it correctly if it is in a different directory.

[@pascalbouillon1713]

bro no darkmode ...?

[@CDcodes]

Yeah sorry about that. This is something I've fixed in my latest videos

[@carlfranz6805]

I'm not entirely positive but I think "Incompetent Ian" may have done it better.

[@dimitriosdesmos4699]

When you explain things, you need to demonstrate everything step by step...as in do something, run it, do something else, run it again. This might be clear, but could be explained better. Have a look at someone called John Phillip Python, and compare the way he explains it to the way you explain it.

[@williamsmith5896]

Can't... Listen... To... Upspeak....