2. Quest Lab

2. Quest Lab

Setup

Planning your Quest

📝 Open this Google Doc and make a copy for your group. Make sure everyone has access to the doc and that all their names are on it.

Preparing your Quest

💻 Clone the Quest framework and install its requirements (no need to accept an assignment this time).

    cd ~/Desktop/cs9/unit_2
    git clone https://github.com/cproctor/quest.git quest_lab
    pip install --editable quest_lab
    cd quest_lab

Starting your Quest

🌐 Open up the Quest documentation

Questions

Write an answer to each numbered question below in your Doc.

Part A

Quest helps you build top-down adventure games. You control a player, who walks around and interacts with the environment, items, and other characters.

💻 To get a feel for it, we will play a few simple games. (Note: We are using the -m flag here to tell Python to run the quest.examples.island module.)

    python -m quest.examples.island

Take it for a spin. You can use the arrow keys or wasd to move around the island but you can't walk into the ocean.

Q0.

Before you look at any code, make a prediction about what classes are being used in this game.

✏️ Write this as a list of at least three imagined classes, where for each class you describe:

• The name of the class
• What it does
• What other classes it interacts with

Q1.

You may have noticed some of the following features.

✏️ For each, explain how the classes you imagined in Q0 could make this happen. You can make up new classes if you need to!

• This game is made up of a bunch of little images called sprites. The player is a sprite, and each patch of background is a sprite. How could the game keep track of which background sprites belong where?
• The player is not allowed to walk into the ocean. How could the game enforce this rule?
• As the player moves around, the viewport scrolls, so that the player can never get to the edge of the screen. Which class could make this happen? What rule would be applied to get this behavior?

Part B

Now we are going to read the code for the game we just played. You can either

• Open quest/examples/island.py in Atom
• Or read the code on the documentation website

👀 First, skim the whole file. First there are a whole bunch of import statements:

    from quest.game import QuestGame
    from quest.map import TiledMap
    from quest.sprite import Background, Wall

Then is a helper function called resolve_path--you can ignore this. Next we have a class called IslandAdventure, which has a bunch of properties and methods:

    class IslandAdventure(QuestGame):
        ...

Finally, a statement to run the game:

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        game = IslandAdventure()
        game.run()

Q2.

IslandAdventure is a subclass of QuestGame. This means IslandAdventure inherits all the properties and methods from QuestGame. The properties declared in IslandAdventure are used by QuestGame to change the game's behavior.

💻 Try changing some of these values, saving the file, and running it again.

✏️ What does each of the following do?

• screen_width
• top_viewport_margin
• player_initial_x
• player_speed

Q3.

QuestGame has a bunch of methods like setup_maps(), setup_walls(), setup_player(), setup_npcs(), and so on. Most of these do almost nothing. The idea is that subclasses like IslandAdventure can override these methods when they need to. IslandAdventure overrides two methods.

💻 Now play a second version of Island Adventure:

    python -m quest.examples.island_discrete

There is a very slight difference in the way the player moves.

✏️ Explain the difference, using the words "continuous" and "discrete" (look 'em up).Then explain how IslandAdventureDiscrete achieves this. What class actually determines whether movement is continuous or discrete? Finally, explain why a game might want to use discrete movement like this.

Q4.

Above, you looked at the classes that determine how movement works in the game. This movement functionality works for both playable and non-playable characters (NPC).

However, how does a human player control a character's movement? Where is the user interface created in the game?

✏️ Find the two functions that handle user input and describe what happens when the UP/W, DOWN/S, LEFT/A, RIGHT/D keys are pressed.

Part C

💻 Play another sample game:

    python -m quest.examples.grandmas_soup

GrandmasSoup shows how dialogue can be used in a Quest game. There are two main classes that help manage dialogue: Modal and Dialogue.

👀 Using the source code for these samples and the Quest documentation, learn about the Modal and Dialogue classes.

Q5.

✏️ Describe the differences between the Modal and Dialogue classes and what each is responsible for.

Interactions in the game happen when the main Player collides with an NPC. GrandmasSoupGame extends the NPC class into two new classes: Grandma NPC and Vegetable NPC.

✏️ Describe what happens in the Modal and Dialogue classes when the player collides with one of the extended NPC classes.

Part D.

💻 Play the last sample game:

    python -m quest.examples.maze

👀 Read the source code for the Maze class. Note how much of it is comments.

💻 Make some sample mazes in a terminal window by opening the python shell and running the following code:

    >>> from quest.maze import Maze
    >>> m = Maze(55, 15)
    >>> m.generate()
    >>> print(m)

Q6

✏️ From reading the code and comments, what makes a maze a maze? What are its properties? What do the two parameters we pass into the Maze constructor mean?

The MazeGame doesn't change much from the basic Game class. However, the module also implements a MazeMap class, which holds most changes to run this game.

✏️ How does the MazeMap class work with the Maze class?

Part E.

Now it’s your turn create a game! To start, pick something small, just a minor change, so you can get a feel for the framework.

Here are some example features:

• Create a confusing game where the left and right controls are flipped.
• Alter the Maze game so there is more or less treasure.
• Change the treasure sprite in the Maze game.
• Add more items to the GrandmasSoup game.

💻 Implement your game by creating a new module in the examples directory and extending one of the existing games to add a new feature.