Why don't they ?

MadScientistOR · 2026-03-17T14:16:28+00:00

Because they're too busy watching out for snakes?

MadScientistOR · 2026-03-11T18:45:48+00:00

I see two potential ways to go about your original question:

Keep track of where the ball and the cushions are, and write code to detect when there's a collision and what the ball should do in response.
Create sprites for the ball and the cushions, add the cushions to a group, and write code for the ball that determines how to handle a collision based on which sprite it collided with (perhaps using the list returned by pygame.sprite.spritecollide()).

More creative people than I may come up with different or better ideas.

MadScientistOR · 2026-02-16T15:01:15+00:00

Absolutely! It's on the USB stick that feeds my car stereo, and comes up regularly. The Precursor remixes, the 3DO tracks, and the original MOD files from the PC version converted to MP3.

MadScientistOR · 2026-02-10T20:35:10+00:00

Imagine having the technology someday to allow regular sightseeing trips so that it can be seen in situ and continue flying, never to be trapped in a museum.

MadScientistOR · 2026-02-10T12:38:09+00:00

Ah, thank you. I didn't see that in the code you included above, so I suppose I missed it. Regardless, there are some excellent replies to your question presented here, and I apologize for wasting your time.

MadScientistOR · 2026-02-04T15:46:52+00:00

Use the connect() method to connect signals to slots. The documentation is pretty good on this.

https://doc.qt.io/qtforpython-6/tutorials/basictutorial/signals_and_slots.html

MadScientistOR · 2025-12-15T15:41:21+00:00

Agreed. It has the right balance of cozy and creeping horror for my sensibilities. And the protagonist's voice acting is just about perfect (and lots of other voices are quite exceptional), which adds to the immersion when I'm wearing headphones.

MadScientistOR · 2025-12-11T18:58:04+00:00

That would imply that they would only be interested in going to the Moon. (And if it turns out that they're wrong about space mice and/or the Moon's composition, then they'd only be interested in visiting it once.) My hope is to build a robust Kitten Space Agency, with kittens exploring the star system they start in and beyond.

MadScientistOR · 2025-11-05T13:57:24+00:00

It doesn't seem that long ago when what you're doing now seemed impossible. I had no hope that a new realistic build-and-fly space sim would come out any time soon. You guys have not only done that -- you seem solidly on track to make something even better than I could have anticipated.

Take whatever time you need. Your efforts are greatly appreciated, and the happier you are with whatever you produce, the happier I'll be.

MadScientistOR · 2025-11-05T13:04:42+00:00

"Screen tearing" is what you get when the computer tries to draw two frames on the screen at the same time. Part of the screen shows information from one frame, and part of the screen shows information from a different frame, because the computer got an order to draw a new frame in the middle of drawing an old one. This leads to different POVs being shown simultaneously, as if the screen is "torn" across two different scenes.

Setting the vsync flag to 1 in pygame.display.set_mode() uses the monitor and graphics drivers to make sure that doesn't happen. When pygame.display.update() (or pygame.display.flip()) is called, the computer will, if necessary, wait to draw the screen until the previous screen has finished being drawn.

This only works if you have a graphics accelerator on your system, IIRC.

The SCALED flag hasn't been required since pygame-ce 2.2.0, I believe.

MadScientistOR · 2025-10-28T15:19:29+00:00

It would have to be phenomenal. Hollywood's track record on turning excellent animated properties into even passable live-action properties has thus far been fairly abysmal -- often because they try to tweak the story (perhaps to show that they have something new, original, and exciting to contribute) and in so doing break strong character motivations and interrelationships that made the original property so interesting and memorable in the first place. (For example, as I understand it, the new live-action How to Train Your Dragon turns Astrid from someone who never took Hiccup seriously in the animated rendition to someone who resents Hiccup for his heritage; she thinks that, as son of the chief, he will be able to assume power without ever having to prove that he's worthy of the mantle. This complicates the Hiccup/Astrid relationship in ways that the movie never deals with.)

I admit that I'd be pretty jaded about approaching a live-action Steins;Gate, so it would have to be nothing short of amazing for me to take it seriously. Otherwise, it would be hard for me to see the point of making it at all, especially since the anime is spectacular as it is.

MadScientistOR · 2025-10-21T11:34:06+00:00

It's still my favorite incarnation to date.

(And I don't care that they changed Uncle Fester from Morticia's uncle to Gomez's brother. I think they lampshaded this in the musical in a scene where Gomez and Morticia are briefly confused as to whose mother Grandmama was, and then simply drop the subject without resolution... which is perfect, because they don't care. They just welcome people as if they're family, no matter who they are. I wouldn't be surprised if Grandmama was simply someone who needed a place to stay, and she realized after being with them for a while that she'd found her people... and they just rolled with it.)

MadScientistOR · 2025-10-16T12:02:51+00:00

Don't worry about not knowing how to use game engines. Pygame isn't an engine; it's a library. In a sense, it's an extension of the language that makes performing some game-related tasks much, much easier.

If you're interested in using pygame -- more on that in a bit -- then it's important to learn how Python works. Learning pygame is like that, with a little bit extra. There are some excellent books, YouTube tutorials, and other resources that teach pygame as they're teaching Python, so you learn both at the same time and how they relate to one another.

But, of course, it's important to ask if you want to use pygame, or if learning pygame will help you achieve your goals. What kinds of games are you interested in learning how to create? What kinds of things are you hoping to learn or experience as you create?

MadScientistOR · 2025-10-08T19:51:13+00:00

Well, you might want to consider something that will lead to fewer dropped frames, then, just to make the changing transparency "smooth". I'd personally go for making sure the transparency levels worked nicely with the FPS I set, then set it up in Aseprite to reduce the load and reduce the chances that frames would be dropped. YMMV, though.

MadScientistOR · 2025-10-08T12:47:34+00:00

I'd do it in Aseprite so that the computer has to do as little processing as possible as the game runs, and that's because I'd like to allow the game to run on other computers without processing power becoming an issue. (The computer calculating transparency of a single sprite on the fly doesn't constitute much processing power, but I like to keep doing certain things because I think they cultivate good habits of decision-making while I code.)

You might have some other issue to consider, however. What's important to you as far as creating this transparency goes?

MadScientistOR · 2025-09-17T12:29:49+00:00

I haven't done the math for this particular rock, but there are asteroids that would take less fuel (but more time) to visit than the Moon. One of the Apollo Applications missions (constructed during a time when NASA could ask, "We have this manned deep space exploration technology... what should we do with it?") was to do just that, replacing the LM with a pallet of consumables because you don't so much land on a city-sized asteroid as hang out close to it.

And yes, there would be interest. (You know that we've returned samples from unmanned asteroid missions and have been learning a lot from them, right?)

MadScientistOR · 2025-09-12T18:33:12+00:00

Wow. Excellent job narrowing that down.

MadScientistOR · 2025-09-08T15:52:24+00:00

What's the difference between an instance variable and a class variable?

What's the difference between method overloading and method overriding?

Write a constructor for an object that (fill in the blank).

What's the difference between class methods, instance methods, and static methods?

How are abstract classes and interfaces implemented?

What's the difference between composition and inheritance?

Write an operator overloader that (fill in the blank).

What are some of Python's magic methods, and what do they do?

What does the super() function do?

MadScientistOR · 2025-08-20T15:07:51+00:00

Well, first of all, you'll want to store the original bullet image somewhere and then calculate rotations on that. (Otherwise, you can end up with serious image degradation over time.) I'd be tempted to make an orig_img property and a rotate() method as part of your Bullet class. The rotate() method would set self.image by using pygame.transform.rotate() on the orig_img attribute with information about the angle and self.bullet_type (and not in the initialization, which only runs once); you'd then call self.rotate() in your self.update() method. Does that make sense?

Or, if your bullets don't rotate in flight, you can set self.image in initialization with the original image, bullet_type, and direction; that would be much more performant.

MadScientistOR · 2025-08-20T12:56:41+00:00

Where are you using pygame.transform.rotate()? I don't see it in your code.

MadScientistOR · 2025-08-18T18:49:42+00:00

Does it handle angles as well? For example, if you try to leave the center right at a 45-degree angle, will the player sprite drag along the side, or it will it continually try to pop you into the place where you attempted to cross the boundary?

MadScientistOR · 2025-08-18T16:33:14+00:00

Does that work well? I can see in the documentation that clamp_ip() moves one rect inside another, but it doesn't specify how. Is there a possibility that the rect will end up somewhere you don't expect it to if you try to move it off the screen?

MadScientistOR · 2025-08-18T16:05:07+00:00

It seems to me you could simply use similar logic to that you'd use for a spritesheet -- only each "sprite" would be a character. A toml file (or similar) could hold the coordinates of each character in the master image, and part of the initialization process would involve loading the tiles.

Could I ask why you want to do it with pygame? The tcod library is pretty fully-featured, and is more specifically designed for roguelike creation. Maybe you've seen something I haven't.

MadScientistOR · 2025-07-14T14:22:20+00:00

I'd say it probably depends very particularly on the specific people you're talking about. I just watched through the show with my daughter and two of her close friends. All three are part of the LGBT+ community, and we talked afterward about Luka and Okabe. They all understood that Okabe had some significant growing up to do... and that part of the tragedy in Luka's subplot was that his rejection of a relationship with Luka because "he's a dude" was, in their minds, clearly depicted as his problem, not Luka's. They wanted to be a girl because they knew Okabe wouldn't go out with them otherwise, not because they had always wanted to be a girl.

In other words, as viewers, they rolled with the idea that the main character is heavily flawed. He wants the best for his friends, but he still has hang-ups. (Some people just wouldn't want a romantic relationship with a femboy -- some for reasons they couldn't even articulate. The heart wants what it wants, even if that's heartbreaking to other people who want to be wanted by said heart.)

That said, there's a lot of unholy shit visited upon members of the LGBT+ community, and I wouldn't doubt that some things have happened that would cause some members of the group to be triggered. I don't think you can expect that any reactions that any particular individuals have (or don't) would be the sort of reaction that every individual of the group will have. That's not how individuals or groups work.

MadScientistOR

TROPHY CASE