Explosions

Part of the Sprites and Images section of Coddy's Pygame journey. Lesson 34 of 36.

An enemy that vanishes in one frame feels like nothing happened. Put an explosion where it was: the one-shot animation from chapter 6, as a sprite in its own group.

for enemy in hits:
    score += 10
    explosions.add(Explosion(enemy.rect.center))

A killed sprite still has its Rect, so enemy.rect.center is where it was hit. The explosion plays explosion_1.png to explosion_4.png, 5 frames each, and kills itself.

Load the four pictures into a list, explosion_frames, before the loop. Update explosions every frame and draw it last, over everything else, so the blast covers the ship and lasers it overlaps.

Sounds, a shaking screen and flying sparks come in section 6, built on this same loop.

Challenge

Medium

Load explosion_1.png to explosion_4.png into the list explosion_frames.
Write the Explosion class from the lesson A One-Shot Explosion, made with a center.
Make explosions = pygame.sprite.Group(); add an Explosion at each destroyed enemy's centre; update it every frame and draw it after the ship.

Try it yourself

import random
import pygame

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((640, 480))
pygame.display.set_caption("Star Patrol")
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
font = pygame.font.Font(None, 32)

ship_image = pygame.image.load("assets/images/ship.png").convert_alpha()
laser_image = pygame.image.load("assets/images/laser.png").convert_alpha()
red_image = pygame.image.load("assets/images/enemy_red.png").convert_alpha()


class Player(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.image = ship_image
        self.rect = self.image.get_rect(midbottom=(320, 470))

    def update(self):
        keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
        if keys[pygame.K_LEFT]:
            self.rect.x -= 6
        if keys[pygame.K_RIGHT]:
            self.rect.x += 6
        self.rect.clamp_ip(screen.get_rect())


class Laser(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    def __init__(self, x, y):
        super().__init__()
        self.image = laser_image
        self.rect = self.image.get_rect(midbottom=(x, y))
        self.mask = pygame.mask.from_surface(self.image)

    def update(self):
        self.rect.y -= 10
        if self.rect.bottom < 0:
            self.kill()


class Enemy(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    def __init__(self, image, x, y, speed):
        super().__init__()
        self.image = image
        self.rect = self.image.get_rect(center=(x, y))
        self.mask = pygame.mask.from_surface(self.image)
        self.speed = speed

    def update(self):
        self.rect.y += self.speed


def spawn_wave(image, count, speed):
    for i in range(count):
        x = random.randint(40, 600)
        enemies.add(Enemy(image, x, -40 - i * 120, speed))


player = Player()
lasers = pygame.sprite.Group()
enemies = pygame.sprite.Group()
last_shot = 0
score = 0
spawn_wave(red_image, 6, 2)

running = True
while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False

    player.update()
    keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
    now = pygame.time.get_ticks()
    if keys[pygame.K_SPACE] and now - last_shot >= 250:
        lasers.add(Laser(player.rect.centerx, player.rect.top))
        last_shot = now
    lasers.update()
    enemies.update()
    for enemy in enemies:
        if enemy.rect.top > 480:
            enemy.kill()
    hits = pygame.sprite.groupcollide(enemies, lasers, True, True, pygame.sprite.collide_mask)
    for enemy in hits:
        score += 10

    screen.fill((12, 14, 30))
    enemies.draw(screen)
    lasers.draw(screen)
    screen.blit(player.image, player.rect)
    score_text = font.render(f"Score: {score}", True, (240, 240, 240))
    screen.blit(score_text, (10, 10))
    pygame.display.flip()
    clock.tick(60)

pygame.quit()