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How to make mask collision detection less laggy in python pygame

Im trying to make a collision detection system for a game im making. This section of code works fine when I am detecting collisions when the objects are smaller, but now once I make a mask of a moon which can be up to 1000 pixels in diameter it starts to lag my computer. Ive tried to make a 2nd image of the outline of the moon to use to detect the collisions but upon further testing it would still detect collisions while in the middle of the outline (in the transparent parts of the image) and did not help the lag. I also tried to make the outline image less pixels but keeping the same size. The images move down the screen as a ship moves across the screen to dodge them. I need pixel perfect collisions
If someone could tell me how to reduce lag, or some other way of detecting if my ship is within the circle that would be a big help :)
for i in range(numMoon):
moonRect = pygame.Rect(moonX[i], moonY[i], int(100*moonScale[i]), int(100*moonScale[i]))
if moonRect.colliderect(shipRect):
moonMask = pygame.mask.from_surface(moon)
offset_x = shipRect.x - moonRect.x
offset_y = shipRect.y - moonRect.y
crash = moonMask.overlap(shipMask, (offset_x, offset_y))
if crash:
print('moon')

Creating a Mask from a Surface is an expensive operation. Do not generate the pygame.mask in the loop. Create the mask during initialization directly after loading the image:
moon = pygame.image.load(...)
moonMask = pygame.mask.from_surface(moon)
Use the pre-generated mask
for i in range(numMoon):
moonRect = pygame.Rect(moonX[i], moonY[i], int(100*moonScale[i]), int(100*moonScale[i]))
if moonRect.colliderect(shipRect):
offset_x = shipRect.x - moonRect.x
offset_y = shipRect.y - moonRect.y
crash = moonMask.overlap(shipMask, (offset_x, offset_y))
if crash:
print('moon')

pygame - Snap Mouse to Grid

I'm making a little platformer game using pygame, and decided that making a level editor for each level would be easier than typing each blocks' coordinate and size.
I'm using a set of lines, horizontally and vertically to make a grid to make plotting points easier.
Here's the code for my grid:
def makeGrid(surface, width, height, spacing):
for x in range(0, width, spacing):
pygame.draw.line(surface, BLACK, (x,0), (x, height))
for y in range(0, height, spacing):
pygame.draw.line(surface, BLACK, (0,y), (width, y))
I want the user's mouse to move at 10px intervals, to move to only the points of intersection. Here's what I tried to force the mouse to snap to the grid.
def snapToGrid(mousePos):
if 0 < mousePos[0] < DISPLAYWIDTH and 0 < mousePos[1] < 700:
pygame.mouse.set_pos(roundCoords(mousePos[0],mousePos[1]))
(BTW, roundCoords() returns the coordinates rounded to the nearest ten unit.)
(Also BTW, snapToGrid() is called inside the main game loop (while not done))
...but this happens, the mouse doesn't want to move anywhere else.
Any suggestions on how to fix this? If I need to, I can change the grid code too.
Thanks a bunch.
P.S. This is using the latest version of PyGame on 64 bit Python 2.7

First of all I think you're not far off.
I think the problem is that the code runs quite fast through each game loop, so your mouse doesn't have time to move far before being set to the position return by your function.
What I would have a look into is rather than to pygame.mouse.set_pos() just return the snapped coordinates to a variable and use this to blit a marker to the screen highlighting the intersection of interest (here I use a circle, but you could just blit the image of a mouse ;) ). And hide your actual mouse using pygame.mouse.set_visible(False):
def snapToGrid(mousePos):
if 0 < mousePos[0] < DISPLAYWIDTH and 0 < mousePos[1] < 700:
return roundCoords(mousePos[0],mousePos[1])
snap_coord = snapToGrid(mousePos)# save snapped coordinates to variable
pygame.draw.circle(Surface, color, snap_coord, radius, 0)# define the remaining arguments, Surface, color, radius as you need
pygame.mouse.set_visible(False)# hide the actual mouse pointer
I hope that works for you !

Dealing with Sprites and Collisions Using Pygame

I am learning python using pygame and I am working on something that involves sprites and collisions. I've looked at some examples but I still don't quite understand it. What I am attempting to do is to be able to add sprites(a ball) when the user presses the "=" key and also be able to remove the last sprite added when pressing "-". I am not able to remove just the last one, I have only been able to remove all of them.
So far I have been able to add the balls to the window and have them bounce off the walls and one another(sort of). When 2 balls collide, they don't completely touch yet they bounce off. Sometimes the balls get stuck and won't move and sometimes the balls bounce off the frame which they aren't suppose to.
Its my first time working with sprite groups and would appreciate any help/guidance into making this work smoothly.Thanks.
The code:
ball.py
import pygame
from pygame.locals import *
class Ball(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
def __init__(self, x, y, vx, vy):
super().__init__();
self.image = pygame.image.load("ball.png").convert()
self.image.set_colorkey(pygame.Color(0, 0, 0))
self.rect = self.image.get_rect()
self.rect.x = x
self.rect.y = y
self.vx = vx
self.vy = vy
def draw(self, SCREEN):
SCREEN.blit(self.image, (self.rect.x, self.rect.y))
def move(self, SCREEN, balls):
l_collide = self.rect.x + self.image.get_width() + self.vx > SCREEN.get_width()
r_collide = self.rect.x + self.vx < 0
t_collide = self.rect.y + self.vy < 0
b_collide = self.rect.y + self.image.get_height() + self.vy > SCREEN.get_height()
a = pygame.sprite.spritecollide(self, balls, False, False)
if len(a) > 1:
self.vx *= -1
self.vy *= -1
if l_collide or r_collide:
self.vx *= -1
if t_collide or b_collide:
self.vy *= -1
self.rect.x += self.vx
self.rect.y += self.vy
ball_animation.py
import pygame
import sys
import random
import math
from pygame.locals import *
from ball.ball import Ball
from random import randint
def ball_list(num):
ball_list = pygame.sprite.Group()
for x in range(num):
rand_x = random.randint(0,400)
rand_y = random.randint(0,400)
vx = 4
vy = 5
ball_list.add(Ball(rand_x, rand_y, vx, vy))
return ball_list
def main():
pygame.init()
FPS = 30
FPS_CLOCK = pygame.time.Clock()
# COLOR LIST
BLACK = pygame.Color(0, 0, 0)
# Code to create the initial window
window_size = (500, 500)
SCREEN = pygame.display.set_mode(window_size)
# set the title of the window
pygame.display.set_caption("Bouncing Ball Animation")
# change the initial background color to white
SCREEN.fill(BLACK)
balls = ball_list(0)
while True: # <--- main game loop
for event in pygame.event.get():
if event.type == QUIT: # QUIT event to exit the game
pygame.quit()
sys.exit()
if event.type == KEYDOWN:
if event.key == K_EQUALS:
balls.add(Ball(randint(0,400),randint(0,400), 4,5))
if event.key == K_MINUS:
try:
balls.remove()
except IndexError:
print('There is no balls to take!')
SCREEN.fill(BLACK)
for x in balls:
x.move(SCREEN,balls)
x.draw(SCREEN)
pygame.display.update() # Update the display when all events have been processed
FPS_CLOCK.tick(FPS)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()

Removing Sprites on Press
The problem is sprite.Group.remove(sprites) wants you to specify which sprites it should remove. sprites here should be a sprite/list of sprites that you want to remove from the group. This means to remove the last ball added on key press you need to keep a list of the ball sprites and pop() the most recently added item from it, and then use the result of the pop() as the sprite to remove from the group. sprite.Group has a .sprites() method which returns a list of all sprites in the group, in the order they were added. This list is generated from the group and is not actually an interface with it, so doing things to this list won't affect the group. We can still however use it to get the last added sprite. Here is what it looks like:
elif event.key == K_0:
try:
sprite_list = balls.sprites()
to_remove = sprite_list[-1] # Get last element of list
balls.remove(to_remove)
except IndexError:
print('There is no balls to take!')
Collisions
So this is a bit more involved and not so simple to fix in your code. To understand what the problem is, look at what your collision velocity adjustments are actually doing for the screen border case.
l_collide = self.rect.x + self.image.get_width() + self.vx > SCREEN.get_width()
r_collide = self.rect.x + self.vx < 0
t_collide = self.rect.y + self.vy < 0
b_collide = self.rect.y + self.image.get_height() + self.vy > SCREEN.get_height()
#################
if l_collide or r_collide:
self.vx *= -1
if t_collide or b_collide:
self.vy *= -1
Consider a single time-step in your code. We check to see if the sprite is sitting over the edge of the boundaries by any amount. If its hanging over, we reverse the velocity. There is a case where your edge checking will get you into trouble. If your self.vx is less than the difference between your current position X and the boundary of the x dimension, you will reverse your speed, travel self.vx back towards the boundary, but not make it past. In the next time-step, you will see that you are still over the boundary, and your program will again reverse self.vx, actually sending you away from the boundary. In this case you will bound back and forth each time-step by self.vx. Normally this wouldn't happen in your code, except for when you spawn a new ball sprite over the boundary further than your self.vx or self.vy for that ball. This can be remedied by making sure you don't spawn balls off the edges, or better yet, only reversing your velocity if you need to.
if (l_collide and self.vx>0) or (r_collide and self.vx<0):
self.vx *= -1
if (t_collide and self.vy<0) or (b_collide and self.vy>0):
self.vy *= -1
Notice here we only reverse the velocity if we are over the edge AND the velocity is headed deeper in that direction. Now for your sprites you have two options, just like with the boundaries:
Only initiate a new ball in empty space where it cannot collide.
Implement some way to calculate the correct velocity adjustment and only apply it if the velocity is headed in the opposite direction.
From what I read in the documentation, sprite.Group looks like it is meant for checking if sprites are overlapping, and not for physics simulation. I recommend doing some research on 2d physics simulation to get a nice conceptualization of what information you should want to communicate between objects. I'm sure there are some nice tutorials out there.
Finally, to address your other question about why they are colliding when they don't appear to be touching. sprite.spritecollide is returning which sprites have rectangles that intersect. If your ball.png is color keyed for transparency, this does not affect the rect of the sprite. Pygame appears to have functionality implemented designed to handle this problem in the collided keyword of sprite.spritecollide:
pygame.sprite.spritecollide()
Find sprites in a group that intersect another sprite.
spritecollide(sprite, group, dokill, collided = None) -> Sprite_list
The collided argument is a callback function used to calculate if two sprites >are colliding. it should take two sprites as values, and return a bool value >indicating if they are colliding. If collided is not passed, all sprites must >have a “rect” value, which is a rectangle of the sprite area, which will be >used to calculate the collision.
collided callables:
collide_rect
collide_rect_ratio
collide_circle
collide_circle_ratio
collide_mask
That's from the pygame documentation. The documentation for the collide_circle function states that your sprite should have a radius attribute, or else one will be calculated to fit the entire rectangle inside a circle. As such, in your Ball.__init__ function I would recommend adding:
self.radius = self.rect.width/2
This will make collide_circle use a radius that approximates your ball image, assuming it is centered and circular and occupies the entire image. Next, you must add the collision specification to your collision check by changing:
a = pygame.sprite.spritecollide(self, balls, False, False)
to
a = pygame.sprite.spritecollide(self, balls, False, pygame.sprite.collide_circle)
If you solve the problem of not spawning new ball objects inside each other, this should all work nicely. If you can't get them to spawn inside each other, think about a different data-structure or different way of collision checking to get the results you want. Best of luck!

I can see two questions in your text
You want to only remove one sprite, rather than all the sprites in the spritegroup
If you look at the pygame documentation, you can see that spritegroup.remove has an optional argument. You can remove a single sprite by putting your desired sprite as the argument, such as myspritegroup.remove(mysprite).
You have issues with the colliding
Your collision works for me as long as the balls don't spawn on top of each other on creation which you can simply check. Good luck :)

PyGame Platformer with Interactive Platforms "Drawn" In

I'm looking for the easiest way to implement this. I'm trying to implement platforms (with full collision detection) that you can draw in via mouse. Right now I have a line drawing function that actually draws small circles, but they're so close together that they more or less look like a line. Would the best solution be to create little pygame.Rect objects at each circle? That's going to be a lot of rect objects. It's not an image so pixel perfect doesn't seem like an option?
def drawGradientLine(screen, index, start, end, width, color_mode):
#color values change based on index
cvar1 = max(0, min(255, 9 * index-256))
cvar2 = max(0, min(255, 9 * index))
#green(0,255,0), blue(0,0,255), red(255,0,0), yellow(255,255,0)
if color_mode == 'green':
color = (cvar1, cvar2, cvar1)
elif color_mode == 'blue':
color = (cvar1, cvar1, cvar2)
elif color_mode == 'red':
color = (cvar2, cvar1, cvar1)
elif color_mode == 'yellow':
color = (cvar2, cvar2, cvar1)
dx = end[0] - start[0]
dy = end[1] - start[1]
dist = max(abs(dx), abs(dy))
for i in xrange(dist):
x = int(start[0]+float(i)/dist*dx)
y = int(start[1]+float(i)/dist*dy)
pygame.draw.circle(screen, color, (x, y), width)
That's my drawing function. And here's my loop that I have put in my main game event loop.
i = 0
while (i < len(pointList)-1):
drawGradientLine(screen, i, pointList[i], pointList[i + 1], r, mode)
i += 1
Thanks for any help, collision detection is giving me a huge headache right now (still can't get it right for my tiles either..).

Any reason you want to stick with circles?
Rectangles will make the line/rectangle a lot more smooth and will make collision detecting a lot easier unless you want to look into pixel perfect collision.
You also don't seem to save your drawn objects anywhere (like in a list or spritegroup), so how are you going to check for collision?
Here's a leveleditor I did for game awhile back, it's not perfect, but it works:
https://gist.github.com/marcusmoller/bae9ea310999db8d8d95
How it works:
The whole game level is divided up into 10x10px grid for easier drawing
The leveleditor check if the mouse is being clicked and then saves that mouse position
The player now moves the mouse to another position and releases the mouse button, the leveleditor now saves that new position.
You now have two different coordinates and can easily make a rectangle out of them.

Instead of creating a whole bunch of rect objects to test collision against, I'm going to recommend creating something called a mask of the drawn-in collideable object, and test for collision against that. Basically, a mask is a map of which pixels are being used and which are not in an image. You can almost think of it as a shadow or silhouette of a surface.
When you call pygame.draw.circle, you are already passing in a surface. Right now you are drawing directly to the screen, which might not be as useful for what I'm suggesting. I would recommend creating a rect which covers the entire area of the line being drawn, and then creating a surface of that size, and then draw the line to this surface. My code will assume you already know the bounds of the line's points.
line_rect = pygame.Rect(leftmost, topmost, rightmost - leftmost, bottommost - topmost)
line_surf = pygame.Surface((line_rect.width, line_rect.height))
In your drawGradientLine function, you'll have to translate the point coordinates to the object space of the line_surf.
while (i < len(pointList)-1):
drawGradientLine(line_surf, (line_rect.x, line_rect.y), i, pointList[i], pointList[i+1], r, mode)
i += 1
def drawGradientLine(surf, offset, index, start, end, width, color_mode):
# the code leading up to where you draw the circle...
for i in xrange(dist):
x = int(start[0]+float(i)/dist*dx) - offset[0]
y = int(start[1]+float(i)/dist*dy) - offset[1]
pygame.draw.circle(surf, color, (x, y), width)
Now you'll have a surface with the drawn object blitted to it. Note that you might have to add some padding to the surface when you create it if the width of the lines you are drawing is greater than 1.
Now that you have the surface, you will want to create the mask of it.
surf_mask = pygame.mask.from_surface(line_surf)
Hopefully this isn't getting too complicated for you! Now you can either check each "active" point in the mask for collision within a rect from your player (or whatever other objects you want to collide withe drawn-in platforms), or you can create a mask from the surface of such a player object and use the pygame.Mask.overlap_area function to check for pixel-perfect collision.
# player_surf is a surface object I am imagining exists
# player_rect is a rect object I am imagining exists
overlap_count = surf_mask.overlap_area(player_surf, (line_rect.x - player_rect.x, line_rect.y - player_rect.y))
overlap_count should be a count of the number of pixels that are overlapping between the masks. If this is greater than zero, then you know there has been a collision.
Here is the documentation for pygame.Mask.overlap_area: http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/mask.html#pygame.mask.Mask.overlap_area

PyGame-Character Goes Off Screen

I am trying to make a game with pygame but I can't figure out how to keep my character from going off screen(set a limit). I have a .png image controlled by user input, but it's possible for the character to go off the visible screen area normally. I can't figure out how to do this. I made a rectangle around the window, (pygame.draw.rect) but I can't assign the rect to a variable so I can create a collision. I also tried this:
if not character.get_rect() in screen.get_rect():
print("error")
But it didn't work, just spammed the python console with "error" messages.
(i checked the other post with this question but nothing worked/didn't get it)
So my question is, how can I keep my character from going offscreen, and which is the best way to do that?
~thanks
EDIT: My game doesn't have a scrolling playfield/camera. (just a fixed view on the whole window)

if not character.get_rect() in screen.get_rect():
print("error")
I see what you are trying here. If you want to check if a Rect is inside another one, use contains():
contains()
test if one rectangle is inside another
contains(Rect) -> bool
Returns true when the argument is completely inside the Rect.
If you simply want to stop the movement on the edges on the screen, an easy solution is to use clamp_ip():
clamp_ip()
moves the rectangle inside another, in place
clamp_ip(Rect) -> None
Same as the Rect.clamp() [Returns a new rectangle that is moved to be completely inside the argument Rect. If the rectangle is too large to fit inside, it is centered inside the argument Rect, but its size is not changed.] method, but operates in place.
Here's a simple example where you can't move the black rect outside the screen:
import pygame
pygame.init()
screen=pygame.display.set_mode((400, 400))
screen_rect=screen.get_rect()
player=pygame.Rect(180, 180, 20, 20)
run=True
while run:
for e in pygame.event.get():
if e.type == pygame.QUIT: run = False
keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
if keys[pygame.K_w]: player.move_ip(0, -1)
if keys[pygame.K_a]: player.move_ip(-1, 0)
if keys[pygame.K_s]: player.move_ip(0, 1)
if keys[pygame.K_d]: player.move_ip(1, 0)
player.clamp_ip(screen_rect) # ensure player is inside screen
screen.fill((255,255,255))
pygame.draw.rect(screen, (0,0,0), player)
pygame.display.flip()

When you used pygame.draw.rect, you didn't actually create a "physical" boundary- you just set the colour of the pixels on the screen in a rectangular shape.
If you know the size of the screen, and the displacement of all of the objects on the screen (only applicable if your game has a scrolling playfield or camera), then you can do something like this:
# In the lines of code where you have the player move around
# I assume you might be doing something like this
if keys[pygame.K_RIGHT]:
player.move(player.getSpeed(),0) # giving the x and y displacements
if keys[pygame.K_LEFT]:
player.move(-player.getSpeed(),0)
...
class Player:
...
def move(self, dx, dy):
newX = self.x + dx
newY = self.y + dy
self.x = max(0, min(newX, SCREEN_WIDTH)) # you handle where to store screen width
self.y = max(0, min(newY, SCREEN_HEIGHT))
Note that a useful tool for you to get the size of the Pygame window is pygame.display.get_surface().get_size() which will give you a tuple of the width and height. It is still better, however, to avoid calling this every time you need to know the boundaries of the player. That is, you should store the width and height of the window for later retrieval.

Here's a simple control code that I use in my games to keep sprites from going off the screen:
# Control so Player doesn't go off screen
if self.rect.right > WIDTH:
self.rect.right = WIDTH
if self.rect.left < 0:
self.rect.left = 0
if self.rect.bottom > HEIGHT:
self.rect.bottom = HEIGHT
if self.rect.top < 0:
self.rect.top = 0
WIDTH and HEIGHT are constants that you define to set the size of your screen. I hope this helps.