We need to make some changes so that once it hatches, our creature begins a new animation - You’ll need to make sure you have the 2 ‘idle’ animation frames saved as .gif files along with the other 2. Next, add these new frames to the self.frames list so it looks like this:
self.frames = ['egg.gif',
'creature.gif',
'idle_frame_1.gif',
'idle_frame_2.gif' ]
Any time you create new frames for new animations, simply add them to the list here, it makes it much easier to switch between them.
Next we want to create a new animation function:
class Creature(object):
def __init__(self, window, canvas, x=0, y=0):
...
def update(self):
...
def wobble(self):
...
def idle(self):
self.frame += 1
self.animation_timer = 1
if self.frame > 3:
self.frame = 1
self.animation_timer = 60
def hatch(self):
...
def draw(self):
...
this new animation simply increases the ‘frame pointer’ self.frame, then checks to see if we’ve gone past frame 3, resetting it to frame 1 (our normal creature frame) and waiting for a little while. Each time update() runs, it calls the function pointed to by self.current_animation, so now we need to make sure that points in the right place after our creature hatches.
Add this line to the end of the hatch() function:
self.current_animation = self.idle
Make sure you don’t call the idle function by putting () at the end - we’re not actually calling self.idle at this point, just storing a pointer to that function in our self.current_animation function.
When you run the program now and wait a while, your creature should blink or do whatever you made your idle animation do once it hatches.
Using this technique, we can make all sorts of animations. Why don’t you experiment - draw the frames for a new animation and add it to what you already have - can you make it switch between the 2?
Another thing you might want to try - When the ‘blink’ animation is done, we set the animation_timer to 60 - why not set it to a random number between 60 and something larger, that way there the ‘blink’ animation happens a bit more randomly!
The next part is the last part. We’ll look at adding some interactivity.