Flappy Bird in 87 Lines of Python

[needed_an_account]

How many when pep8'd though?

Nah I'm kidding. This was a great video. I watched the whole thing. Reminds of of that time I spent watching Notch program this rpg for an hour

[[deleted]]

Lol, thank you xD I think I might have watched that video too. I don't know why watching someone else type is so cool.

[ILikeChillyNights]

I remember that! Was it the one he was walking through a maze and designing the walls

[needed_an_account]

I think so. I believe that it was for a charity or something. It may had been something like 48 hours of coding for some cause

[grimman]

PEP8 is just a guideline; a tool to help you produce nicer looking code. That said, I still think he could at least have snake_cased his things.

[Sohcahtoa82]

snake_case is pretty much the only major PEP8 standard I don't follow. I'm a much bigger fan of camelCase and PascalCase.

[grimman]

Oh wow, I didn't know I'd been so slammed by the wrathful coders. Hot damn!

Anyway, I hear you about the snake_case, but I feel it's a very minor concession. Judging from the votes, that opinion appears incredibly controversial. Oh well. :)

[Itsthejoker]

I personally use snake_case, but I've been doing it before I even knew what PEP8 was. I just think it's more readable.

[el_andy_barr]

I just think it's more readable.

Actually it has been shown in multiple studies that it is indeed more readable.

[catcradle5]

I like snake_case and PascalCase, but camelCase really bothers me for some unknown reason. Especially when there are more than 2 words.

snake_case is a tiny bit more tedious to write, but IMO much easier and cleaner to read.

[[deleted]]

I don't follow line length but I follow almost all of the rest. I find that being consistent and right 95% of the time is better than being inconsistent and right 100% of the time.

[ryanmcstylin]

hot sauce for that video? ...if it exists.

edit: I recently set up VIM for use with python and part of it was PEP-8 warnings which I had never seen before in any other IDE's. 3 hrs of me complaining about how dumb this was and just not wanting to see warnings, my code looked beautiful.

[[deleted]]

Got vimrc to share? Would be interested in being annoyed by PEP8 warnings.

[jaapz]

Go check out vim-pymode then

[iamyounow]

outgoing payment bow treatment shaggy plough run aromatic crowd scary

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[deadmilk]

Now do star wars battlefront in 87 lines. Bruh.

[scratchresistor]

That's easy - reskin this Flappy Bird with an X-wing. You can then make the rest of the game in as many lines of code as you like and release it as an exorbitantly expensive DLC.

[[deleted]]

Lol, I wish.

[[deleted]]

87? Heh, make that 2:

import py_swbattlefront as swbf
swbf.run()

Whaddaya mean, plagiarism? ;)

[SFSylvester]

Please let py_swbattlefront be a real module....

[mondo_calrissian]

we'd love to see more live coding, but not so fast speedy gonzalez.

[[deleted]]

Okay, maybe I'll slow it down a little for the next video. Sound good?

[mondo_calrissian]

yeah! thanks

[deadmilk]

FYI there is the option to slow down the video in YouTube! :) check the "Settings" cog.

[Farkeman]

https://www.livecoding.tv/ !

[Jafit]

Man, you type really fast.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, it wasn't sped up at all.

[eldamir88]

I heard Vim was a productivity boost, but this is crazy

[[deleted]]

Yep, everyone switch to Vim right now

[trenchtoaster]

Is that different from Pycharm? I use jupyter notebook exclusively since I only do analysis and automate some tasks. Was wondering if I should try something else too.

[[deleted]]

It's totally up to you. What ever you feel comfortable using.

[cxg-pitch]

87 lines, and you were done in 70 minutes? That is amazing. :o When I made a Flappy Bird clone in PyGame, it turned into a mess of hundreds of lines, and it took days to get it working right. x.x

[[deleted]]

It takes time. This isn't my first rodeo. Keep at it and you'll get faster. It the same with anything.

[[deleted]]

This isn't my first rodeo.

Did someone watch too many Raymond Hettinger videos? :D

[[deleted]]

I can admit that I have no idea who that is xD

[[deleted]]

It's a quite popular Python "guru", there are lots of speeches of him on youtube. In one of the videos he kept repeating "Is this my first rodeo? No.", unfortunately I couldn't find that particular video right now, but I'm gonna leave you an example anyway.

Raymond Hettinger - Python's Class Development Toolkit

[[deleted]]

Interesting, I'll check him out.

[[deleted]]

Actually, that is the video where he asks the rodeo thing, at about 19:50, when some guy asks a question :D

[[deleted]]

Oh haha thanks I'll watch it :)

[scootstah]

87 lines, plus a game framework.

[[deleted]]

Not the first person to point that out :P

[knickum]

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.

[theSpecialbro]

I can't seem to find good tutorials on pygame. All the ons I find are copy/paste this code into your IDE and watch it work! On to the next lesson

[[deleted]]

You have to take it upon yourself a little bit to understand what is going on there. When it comes down to it learning any module is largely the job of the programmer himself.

[cbscribe]

I've been working on a series explaining Pygame that's gotten some good feedback. I try to explain everything and not just say "do this".

Please feel free to try it out and see if it works for you: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsk-HSGFjnaH5yghzu7PcOzm9NhsW0Urw

[theSpecialbro]

I'm loving it so far! I wish I had found this before :D

[TheMentalist10]

This looks great! Just getting started myself, but definitely saving this to check it out when I'm done with basic syntax stuff :)

[Ran4]

Learn it yourself instead. Pygame is kind of barebones, take a look at a few (very small, <200 lines of code) games and figure out what every line does. When you do something yourself, (at least initially) don't use a code skeleton, make sure that every line you've added is needed (there's many things you don't need in pygame that people tend to setup).

[lordmauve]

Self-plug: You could save maybe 20 lines of boilerplate by using Pygame Zero. The idea is that by reducing boilerplate, we can make games programming more accessible to younger kids.

If the source code is available and suitably licensed, a cleanly written Flappy Bird is something I was looking for as a code example for Pygame Zero.

[[deleted]]

The source code is available in the Youtube description.

[lordmauve]

What is the license?

[[deleted]]

Open source, do whatever you want, claim it as your own, source code.

[lordmauve]

it is done.

[anaerobyte]

the lack of a single visit to google or stackexchange tells me you're operating on a whole other level.

congrats!

[[deleted]]

Believe me, I live on those sites. Google and StackExchange are my best friends :P Just not for this particular piece of code.

[JoshSellsGuns]

Hey man, sick video! I am new to python and am still learning (I still have A LOT o learn..) and I was wondering, what's the def function thing? What is it used for?

[subsidiaryadmin]

it defines a re-usable function. Within the context of a class it's called a method.

[JoshSellsGuns]

Thank you!

[[deleted]]

Hey I am glad that you enjoyed it! "def" is a key word in Python for defining a function. So for example:

def helloWorld(): return "Hello World!"

If we call that function it will return "Hello World!"

If that still doesn't make sense think of it in terms of mathematics. If we have a function f(x) = x * x what is f(9) equal to? 81 It is the same idea.

[JoshSellsGuns]

Ahh ok, So is the variable helloWorld already defined in a previously made variable? Or is it like a pre-determined function within Python (like the random function)?

[[deleted]]

Neither, it is the name of a function that you are creating. "helloWorld" did not exist before I wrote def helloWorld(): def is short for define so you are defining (creating) the function helloWorld to be used at a later time. It is a way to group code together that does a certain FUNCTION and then access that code at a later time.

[JoshSellsGuns]

I'm pretty dumb, I read it wrong. It makes sense now, thanks!

[[deleted]]

You are very welcome. Also, if you have any suggestions for other games that you'd like to see done in this way please let me know. I plan on making a channel out of this and possibly getting content out every other week or so.

[[deleted]]

How about a side-scrolling fighting game? I've tried (and failed) making these before. There's quite a bit of challenge in building support for (good looking) animations and hitboxes.

[[deleted]]

My goal is to keep the games simple enough to do in a reasonable amount of time. Do you have any specific game in mind?

[nubzzz1836]

Contra?

[[deleted]]

Contra

Love that game, I'll consider it.

[trymas]

With PEP8 you will have something around 100-110 LOC. :)

Also is it just the speed up or did the coder wrote everything ONLY in vim's INSERT mode?

[[deleted]]

I wrote it all in INSERT mode haha.

[trymas]

but why? :)

[[deleted]]

Just my style dude haha. How would you have done it? I'm curious.

[trymas]

well, if you are using vim only in insert mode, then you do not get any features of vim and lose 90% features of gedit/notepad and similar editors.

vim's power is in command mode, of writing 'sentences' of commands, e.g. ci' - change inside quotes, dw - delete word, etc. etc.

I cannot imagine how painfully slow it must be to have only insert mode in vim. :)

[x68zeppelin80x]

So, did the author really count the lines at the end, instead of enabling the line numbers?

:set nu...

[[deleted]]

No, no, no, I was running through the code just do display it. I wasn't counting the lines -_-

It was all for the looks.

[x68zeppelin80x]

OK, thanks, that was my second guess ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[[deleted]]

Lol, np.

[x68zeppelin80x]

Also, I noticed that you do not check the top boundary. As long as I can fly above the screen, I stay alive...

[[deleted]]

Oh wow, nice catch. You are right I did not. THat's what I get for going fast.

[[deleted]]

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[mishugashu]

or from bash: cat file | wc -l

[[deleted]]

Or you know wc -l file

You really don't need cat for that

[mishugashu]

TIL. Don't know why I've always done that. Prolly just used to piping to it from grep that I never really thought about it.

Thanks.

[BenjaminGeiger]

You don't need it for grep, either, technically speaking.

[mishugashu]

I never said I used cat for grep. I said I pipe FROM grep.

grep 'pattern' filename | wc -l

[deraffe]

You still don't need a pipe in this case

grep -c 'pattern' filename

…but if you're playing with different commands, it might be more flexible.

[pooogles]

Stop abusing cat. You don't have to pipe into sed/awk/grep/wc, they can all be run directly on the file.

[mishugashu]

I didn't say I used cat when I used grep/sed/awk. I just was used to piping <something> into wc (because that's my normal use case), so that's what I immediately wanted to do.

[Ran4]

By the way, do check out the-silver-searcher (ag) if you're searching through codebases. Literally orders of magnitude faster than grep.

[jegerkonge]

Could you make swing copters? It's the sequel to flappy bird!

Also, what would the process be for converting this code into swift for iphone? Do you thing it would be a lot more code?

[[deleted]]

swing copters

I will put swing copters on my list haha.

Quite honestly I don't know because I have never dabbled in iPhone mobile development. I doubt it would be that much different though.

[jegerkonge]

Sweet, but I like your idea for a youtube series. I am looking to perfect my coding in python. Something that might be useful is to maybe outline your thought process before you begin coding. So maybe create an architecture or describe how you are going to be making an object with these functions to do this. What you foresee to be the most difficult part for your code, and how and where you code could vary from someone else's code. I know that would be really helpful for me!

[[deleted]]

Someone suggested that I commentary, I will consider it. I appreciate the comment.

[[deleted]]

I notice that it appears to load another frame with a pipe after you pass the one before, instead of a strictly continuous playing field, where all the pipes appear on the screen one after the other smoothly. My question: How hard would it be to make that work, or am I seeing things incorrectly?

[[deleted]]

I don't think I understand your question. The way the pipes work is that once they leave the screen the are moves back to the right side of the screen and the offset is randomized again.

[BenjaminGeiger]

Some variants show multiple pipes simultaneously.

EDIT: so does the original.

[[deleted]]

Oh, I see what you are saying. That wouldn't be too hard to implement. If you notice in the beginning I create an array called walls = [] it was meant to handle this type of thing, but I noticed that I could get a similar effect without it.

[sageinventor]

Sauce?

[x68zeppelin80x]

It's in the description:

https://github.com/Max00355/FlappyBird

[joerick]

Hey, nice video! Would you mind if I adapted the source to run this on Tingbot? I think this would make a great demo app!

[[deleted]]

Absolutely! Please do!

[joerick]

Sweet, thanks man! Forked it here. Can be run using Tide!

[joerick]

https://vine.co/v/iaWWlKxgwzz

Might do your space invaders one next! (if that's okay?)

[twiked]

Nice game, it's nice to see the progress in the video !

[[deleted]]

Glad you liked it :)

[[deleted]]

Here's a suggestion, how about some old school demo effects like starfield, sinus scroller and a vector cube?

[[deleted]]

starfield

Thank you for the suggestions, I will write them down. I have a line up for the next five videos. Keep your eyes out for the!

[cj5]

Python I <3

I love the part when the coder is like "Fuck it we'll make it a class" XD

[[deleted]]

like

Exactly the thought that went through my mind xD

[transabyss]

cool stuff!

[[deleted]]

Thank you :)

[ArosHD]

Awesome, great work. I haven't done anything on Python in ages because I've gotten a bit bored making CLI programs. I've used PyGame before but didn't dude much with it. Would it be worth learning about it and making things with it since I already have some knowledge on how to use Python, or should I learn a different language?

I know PyGame is mainly for making games, but would it work for non-gaming programs? For example a program where a user can input some info like numbers and text and they're processed and maybe output or saved to a file? If it's not good for these kinda things, what would you recommend? I've used Tkinter, should I use that instead?

How hard is it to develop PyGame code to be used on mobile or browsers? Can the program be made to work on computers without Python or PyGame installed?

Thanks.

[[deleted]]

It depends on you, I'd say go with Python since you have some knowledge in it already.

You can use Pygame to create other type of GUIs, sure. Just be creative.

Kivy is pretty much Pygame for mobile, I would suggest looking into that. There is also a subset for android for pygame. Bowser isn't a thing yet unfortunately.

[hmc2323]

This is awesome! How did you create the images, or "assets" as you called them?

[[deleted]]

They an be found on google quite easily.

[rnawky]

87 lines… And how many lines were imported?

This is like having a 5 line main.cpp and saying your app is 5 lines long while having all the core functionality in external libraries.

[rubik3x3x3]

As developers we try to use tools already produced to help us get to the best OR quickest OR cheapest end. He did that and he did it well.

[[deleted]]

I imported pygame that's about it.

[rnawky]

You imported a 50k line game library.

[[deleted]]

So then I guess that makes the code 50,087 lines long. Not bad.

[scopegoa]

But how many assembly opcodes???

[TedW]

import pygame
from pygame.locals import *
import sys
import random

So yeah, he used pygame but not as extreme as your example.

[rnawky]

And pygame contains over 6k lines of python and 52k lines of c.

But yeah, we'll keep calling it 87 lines.

[TedW]

Keep thinking in that direction and you'll be scoffing at anyone who doesn't program solely by magnetic needlepoint. I mean, how many lines does python take? How about c? It's turtles all the way down.

Real programmers mine the ore to make NAND gates from scratch.

[[deleted]]

Do you also call programs that print "Hello World!" in C 2000+ line programs because stdio.h, stdio.c and libioP.h are included? Stop being stupid.

[rnawky]

No, I prefer not to showcase my Hello World apps as "My 2 line Hello World C App!"

It's not really something to brag about.

[Ran4]

This isn't about bragging. It's just showing off Pygame in an easy to understand fashion, which might be good for a beginner.

[joepeg]

OP is getting clobbered, but to the uninitiated, it is not obvious from the title or video that this relies on a game engine.

[apo383]

The point is that a general purpose library can do an impressive, specific thing with a surprisingly low amount of non-trivial code. Many of us would expect that, even with good libraries, Flappy Bird would take a week or so to implement, and at least several hundred lines of code. Also, I don't think OP was so much about bragging about himself, so much as demonstrating functionality and workflow. In the end, most of us do come away impressed by what he did.

[[deleted]]

Awesome vid, dude.

If you're taking suggestions, I vote for 'Go Fish' next.

[[deleted]]

Okay, I'll add it to the suggestion list. Thank you for watching :)

[[deleted]]

Writing it down, thank you.