List Practice with a Carnival Race

It takes hard work and determination to win a typical race but, in this game, it will take luck and the right sequence of random values. Much like the standard carnival race game where you use a water pistol to squirt a target that makes a character move along the track — even if you shoot as hard and steadily as possible, it does not seem to guarantee a win.

Getting Started

Try writing this game from scratch by creating a New PyCharm project and replace the default code given in the Python file with the basic code below to get started:

"""
Created on Sep 22, 2022

@author: YOUR NAME HERE!!

This module represents a carnival Racer game, in which a number of turtles randomly race across the screen.
"""
import random
import turtle

# Set up the game scene
theScreen = turtle.Screen()
theScreen.tracer(False)

# Play the game forever
theScreen.mainloop()

Here is a video discussing getting started on the project

Where will you start when you are completely in control?

Steps to Create the Game

Do you want to start by creating a single racer that moves across the screen?

• Create a turtle and assign it to a variable
• Move it to a position (x-coordinate on the left edge, y-coordinate where ever you want)
• Write a function that takes a turtle and randomly adds to its x-coordinate
• Write the game_step() function to animate the game that calls the function above and ends with these two lines of code:
  

  theScreen.update()
  theScreen.ontimer(game_step, 10)

• Add code to the game_step() function to stop the turtle after it reaches the other side of the screen (hint: look at the Aim It Game code for ideas about how to do this)

By creating all the racers lined up on left side of the screen?

• Create an empty list
• Write a loop over a range() of the number of turtles you want to create to:
  • Create a turtle and assign it to a variable
  • Move it to a position (x-coordinate on the left edge, y-coordinate calculated based on which turtle it is (first turtle at the top, then each moving down by approximately 25 pixels))
  • Add the turtle to your list so it can be referenced later
• Don't forget to update the screen at the end so you can see the results:
  

  theScreen.update()

Or setting the look or theme for your game?

• Make a size and title for your game
• Set the background color for the screen
• Draw tracks, road lanes, pool lanes, stars in space, or other background
• Draw the shape for your turtle or find an image, scale to the proper size and save it as a GIF image, before importing it into your program using:
  

  theScreen.addshape('IMAGE_NAME.gif')

• Any other setup tasks you think are necessary

Whichever order you decide on, make sure to work in small iterative steps so you can quickly see the results to know you are on the right track.

Finally, to actually see a racing games like at the local carnival, you will need to update the game_step() function to:

• Loop over all the turtles in the list and for each one:
  • Call your random move function with it as a parameter
  • Check if it has reached the other end of the screen and set your end of game boolean to True

When done, it should appear like the turtles are racing to the right side of the window (but we know they are just moving randomly :)

Add Interactivity

As of now, it is not much of a game since the player can only watch the action.

Add the ability for the player to impact the game by speeding up a racer by giving it an extra call to your random move function:

• Mouse: click on any racer by adding this line to every turtle in your loop that creates the turtles:
  

  def handleMouse (x, y):
      # loop over turtles to check which one is closest to x and y
      # call YOUR_RANDOM_MOVE_FUNCTION with the found turtle
  yurtle.onclick(handleMouse)

• Key: control a specific racer of your choice (like the first, middle, or last) by pressing a key (like 'Right' or '.' or '='):
  

  def handleKey ():
      # call YOUR_RANDOM_MOVE_FUNCTION with the player's turtle
  theScreen.onkeypress(handleKey, 'Right')

Or come up with another way to play — it's your game!

Extending the Game

Once you have the basic game features working, add more features to experiment and turn your game into one where a player dodges (or catches) obstacles.

Feel free to be creative, but remember to keep your ideas at your skill level since there are still many things we have yet to learn, but here are some ideas to get you started:

• score: such as counting the number of objects successfully dealt with (dodged or caught) or points for specific objects
• goal: give the player a number of lives or timer to determine the length of the game
• message: separate winning and losing Game Over messages when the game ends
• levels: make some aspect of the game harder (e.g., faster, more obstacles, less distance) after a certain number of points or time
• waves: create the obstacles in different "interesting" patterns (using loops and arithmetic)
• shooting: allow the player to shoot a single bullet at a time at the obstacles
• effects: allow different obstacles to have different effects on the game (e.g., different amounts of points, explosions, or act as power-ups)

Some ideas include Parachute, Night Driver, Frogger, Fruit Ninja, or your experience with other dodging style games.

In the comment at the top of the Python file add:

• Your name
• How long you spent coding it
• How to play your game (so I know how to play the game and what you intended to do and what is not completely working)
• Discussion of the fixed values you choose to make your game fun to play: the size of the game objects, number of obstacles, various movement speeds, and any random ranges