A Level in Text

Part of the Worlds section of Coddy's Pygame journey. Lesson 1 of 35.

Drawing a level wall by wall with numbers is slow to write and hard to change. Instead, type the level as text: a list of strings, one string per row of tiles, one character per tile.

LEVEL = [
    "################",
    "#..............#",
    "#....####......#",
    "#..............#",
    "#.........##...#",
    "#..##.....##...#",
    "#..##..........#",
    "#.........###..#",
    "#..............#",
    "####..####..####",
]

Here # is a wall and . is empty space. LEVEL[9] is the bottom row, a string, and LEVEL[9][4] is its fifth character. Rows count from the top, columns from the left, both from 0.

With tiles TILE = 36 pixels wide, the tile in column col and row row starts at x = col * TILE, y = row * TILE. To walk over one row, enumerate gives each character with its index:

for col, char in enumerate(LEVEL[9]):
    if char == "#":
        pygame.draw.rect(screen, WALL, (col * TILE, 9 * TILE, TILE, TILE))

Two gaps in the bottom row stay empty, because only a # draws a tile.

Challenge

Easy

The starter draws the whole bottom row as one brown bar. Draw it from the map instead:

Remove the line that draws the bar.
Loop over LEVEL[9] with enumerate.
For each #, draw a WALL rectangle at (col * TILE, 9 * TILE, TILE, TILE).

Leave the map as it is. The green square moves with the arrow keys and passes through everything for now: walls that stop it come later in this section.

Try it yourself

import pygame

TILE = 36
WALL = (120, 90, 60)
PLAYER = (80, 200, 120)

LEVEL = [
    "################",
    "#..............#",
    "#....####......#",
    "#..............#",
    "#.........##...#",
    "#..##.....##...#",
    "#..##..........#",
    "#.........###..#",
    "#..............#",
    "####..####..####",
]

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((576, 360))
pygame.display.set_caption("Map from Text")
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

player = pygame.Rect(40, 40, 28, 28)

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

    keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
    if keys[pygame.K_LEFT]:
        player.x -= 4
    if keys[pygame.K_RIGHT]:
        player.x += 4
    if keys[pygame.K_UP]:
        player.y -= 4
    if keys[pygame.K_DOWN]:
        player.y += 4

    screen.fill((30, 30, 46))
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, WALL, (0, 324, 576, 36))
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, PLAYER, player)
    pygame.display.flip()
    clock.tick(60)

pygame.quit()