Pygame (Python Game Development) Tutorial - 13 - Fixing the Hardcoding Video Lecture | Pygame (Python Game Development): Create Awesome Games - Front-End Programming

hey guys what is going on welcome to
another PI game tutorial video in this
video we're going to be talking about a
really important thing and that is hard
coding so in our PI game so far we have
a lot of what's called hard coding of
things that really should be variables
so for example we have the game display
first of all that's the first thing that
we've hard-coded so the dimensions of
our window are hard-coded
into our game display shouldn't be doing
that um then we have lead X&Y they're
hard-coded 300 300 well what if you know
we decide to make the display 200 by 200
well too bad you know you can't do that
so then coming down here where else are
we having trouble here we've got first
of all all of this like the ten so
remember we're moving by ten because
that's the size of our block all right
that's the size of you know the
thickness of our snake what if one day
we're like well I want the snake to be
13 pixels by 13 pixels well good luck
because you're going to have to edit
this this this this and this and this
that's a lot of edits you're probably
going to forget one and even if you
didn't that's a lot of edits and at the
end of the day if someone wants to
resize their window if you want to scale
everything with that resizing of the
window you're going to now you've got to
scale all of these things and so a bunch
of variables instead of one variable
then also let's say you want to change
the window size now you've got to come
down here and change this and this for
sure but then also really changing of
the window size affects this in this as
well
I'm trying to think what else that
pretty much covers all the variables we
have right now but as we go on down the
road we're only going to continue
referencing the window size especially
when we go to start placing text and
stuff like that and other things on the
screen like menus all this kind of stuff
that's going to be a problem obviously
block size will be referencing that as
we create more and more of the snake
where are we all that stuff we just
can't be hard-coding like we're doing so
that's what we're going to be fixing in
this video is all the nasty hard coding
that we've done so first we're going to
start with these two here so width and
height now we're going to call these
display underscore width and we'll just
say that's 800 and then display
underscore height and we'll say that is
600 now we take display width you paste
that there and take height and you paste
that there now where do we want to start
X&Y well I just want to start basically
in the middle of the screen right so the
X start should be lead width divided by
two whatever that happens to be that's
where we want to start it lead Y display
height divided by two that's where we
want to start it change we'll just leave
those we have some want to change
anything meter there let me come down
here we see all these tens right so now
we want to have some sort of block size
right so we're going to call this block
size that's not a good idea and where
say block size equals 10 easy enough so
we'll copy that and basically everywhere
we have 10 paste paste paste paste done
oh and then we also have those down here
for display weight so I'll copy display
width we come down here paste and then
we want to make this display height
height whoops hold on do control Z here
so lead X greater than or equal to
display width and then lead y greater
than or equal to despoil a height okay
and then again this is block size so
we'll just like right here this pygame
draw rect a block underscore size and
then we'll just copy that and paste that
and then finally we have clock tick we
might want to have a variable be able to
update the frames per second for
whatever reason so we also just want to
fill in fps there and then we'll go up
to the very top here and we'll just say
FPS equals 30 okay something like that
and that should be it so now if we look
at our script we see that yeah I mean
there's still some obviously plain text
numbers but these are variable
definitions but here nothing no more
playing text zeros are ok because
they're zeroes that's where we're
starting them some more variable
definitions then here zeroes again there
okay it's not a big deal if you have a
bunch of zeros it's only like the
numbers that really truly matter but you
know variables here variables they're
zeros again don't matter but then the
actual numbers that matter have
variables to them not you know
hard-coded numbers so let's go ahead and
save and run that make sure everything
kind of acts the way we expected it to
our square is the size that we intend so
that's nice we can move it around no
problem let's go ahead and exit off the
screen
that worked out let's try that was a Y
problem let's try the X problem no
problem there either so now we've got
rid of a lot of the nasty hard-coding in
our scripts
so the reason why I didn't really want
to start with these kinds of things like
throwing and display with display height
or display width divided by 2 or all of
this kind of so this is kind of
confusing out of the gate
Pegeen can be kind of daunting for some
people initially so it's nice to keep
everything as basic as possible and at
the beginning
but now that you understand like what
you know what is displayed with display
height all that kind of stuff it can
actually be more clarifying to use
variables especially if like you're
someone looking at this script you can
scroll down here and instead of seeing
lead X is greater than or equal to 800
you might be like wait what what's that
you know like why why are they using 800
then 600 was that but instead now it's
much more clear like lead X is greater
than I'm able to display with okay so I
see why this is a problem you know it
just makes a lot more sense to reading
it but anyway that's it for this video
as always thanks for watching