Space Turtle Chomp

We will start off today creating a simple Python game using Python Turtle Graphics. Turtle Graphics is a prebuilt set of python instructions that allow you to create and move characters around the screen, enabling you to draw pictures, logos and create simple animations or games.

Step 1.

If not already open please open VS Code.

Step 2.

Select File –> New File. You should now see your program window

Step 3.

Since it is a great idea to save your project at the beginning of any new development, select File –> Save and name the file (I called mine kbgame1.py)

Step 4.

Next we need to install a Python extension for VS Code.

Click the Extensions icon in the sidebar (or press Ctrl+Shift+X on Windows/Linux, Cmd+Shift+X on Mac). In the search box, type Python. Install the extension called Python published by Microsoft — it should be the top result.

If VS Code already prompted you to install a Python extension when you saved your .py file, you can skip this step.

Step 5.

We need to make sure that VS Code knows where to find Python. Here’s how to do that:

Step 6.

When coding one of the first things we should always do as a developer is leave a comment explaining what the program does at the top of the screen. We can make a comment using #

An example of a comment is below, try writing the below on the top line. This code won’t run, so feel free to write whatever helpful notes you like here:

# Turtle Graphics Game – Space Turtle Chomp

Step 7.

Next we need to import the Turtle libraries and set up the screen, we do this by typing:

import turtle

# Set up screen
turtle.setup(650,650)
wn = turtle.Screen()
wn.bgcolor('navy')

There are lots of colours to choose from.

Step 8.

Next we create our first Turtle character, we do this by typing:

# Create player turtle
player = turtle.Turtle()
player.color('darkorange')
player.shape('turtle')
player.penup()

So we create a new turtle variable called player then use the inbuilt turtle attributes to help set it up, player.color (again we can select a different colour from the colour chart).

player.shape selects the shape (you can also use circle, arrow, square and classic).

penup means that the turtle shape won’t leave a line when it moves (think of a pen in your hand, penup() you don’t draw, pendown() you do draw).

Step 9.

Now we set the speed we want our turtle to move across the screen at:

# Set speed variable
speed = 1

Step 10.

Finally we need the turtle to move and the easiest way to do this is by setting a while loop:

while True:
    player.forward(speed)

This piece of code is slightly different to the code you have written before. Instead of telling the computer to perform an instruction once, you are telling the computer to repeatedly perform that instruction for as long as some condition is true. You are doing this using what’s called a while loop.

The syntax of a while loop is:

while <condition>:
   # do stuff here

In our example <condition> is simply the value True, that always evaluates to True. Meaning that our turtle will move forward until the program is closed.

Step 11.

Now all we need to do is save our code, we can do this by selecting File –> Save (Ctrl S on Windows or Cmd S on Mac). Then run the module by selecting Run –> Run Without Debugging (or pressing Ctrl F5 on Windows or ^F5 on Mac ).

You should see your Turtle window appear with a Navy background and a Dark Orange turtle moving across the screen. Any program output will appear in VS Code’s terminal panel at the bottom of the screen. Close the Turtle window to stop the program and return to your code.

Before moving on to the next section you can have a play with your code by trying different colours, shapes and speeds and for some fun you could change player.penup() to player.pendown()

Your code should now look like this:

#Turtle Graphics Game
import turtle

#Set up screen
turtle.setup(650,650)
wn = turtle.Screen()
wn.bgcolor("navy")


#Create player turtle
player = turtle.Turtle()
player.color("darkorange")
player.shape("turtle")
player.penup()

#Set speed variable
speed = 1


while True:
   player.forward(speed)