When a colleague mentioned to me this tech talk thing I was instantly stoked because of two things. Firstly, although I am seldom active in events like these, I’ve always loved the idea of people of the IT industry coming together in one event solely out of a common interest… I suppose. Yes, I’ve expected people to be light on biz talk today and really just have a great time with their crowd. Secondly, I find it enjoyable sharing experiences. It’s not that everybody will get to learn something new from you but just being able to identify oneself with the one doing the talk feels great right? But I didn’t know what to share. With barely three years of working experience, I’m a newbie compared to other speakers who usually get the invites to conferences. Tackling technical matters like platforms, APIs, and tools could be a safe choice for someone like me. I won’t have to go into an in-depth discussion considering the time we got anyway but let us leave those things to the experts, to training providers, to our professors; you can even learn them on your own with no real risks. So what did I choose? I figured since I’m still practically a beginner I should just give you a glimpse of what it’s like to be a beginner out there.

Who among us here have always wanted to take IT or computer science like they’ve always dreamt of hacking systems and working on large systems doing very complex calculations?

Who among us here have been dragged, maybe literally, by somebody to take the course they are now taking?

Who among us here chose this path for practical reasons?

I did. We are Filipinos, we adapt to survive. With bad economy and high rate of underemployment it’s no longer uncommon for people nowadays to let go of certain things to survive in the real world.

To tell you the truth I’m not really here to talk to people who are a hundred percent sure of themselves in taking this path. I’m here to talk to people who are rather unsure of how they are going to fare out there in the real world.

Who among you here are having a hard time with their math subjects? Calculus, differential equations, discrete mathematics? Who among you here feel like they’re just average programmers, like sure they can produce working applications but they don’t think it is done hard-core way like how some star student does it? I’ll tell you the things I’ve learned beginning my career in the IT industry.

1. TO KEEP YOURSELF SANE, START WITH YOUR OWN STANDARDS

You know how you should respond to that situation I previously stated? You say “who cares?” It’s perfectly normal not to get things perfect the first time. Don’t feel too bad about it. It’s like feeling ugly because you are surrounded by supermodels and you are not even one of them. Don’t start with someone else’s standards ’cause you’ll get there in time. It’s really going to be just you against yourself out there. There are no real competitions against anybody. It’s not very healthy chasing someone or some organization’s standards. What I suggest is to give yourself a good challenge and before you know it you will already qualify in the positions you never thought you could fill.

For more than a year I was the acting project lead on one of the projects in our company. Due to certain circumstances, I was assigned the position. I was pretty hesitant to take it for I knew I didn’t have the technical background to assume such a role. But come to think of it, it’s not all technical stuff in there. If you know how to actually work with your team, you know you won’t be the one to do all the heavy lifting. You are all technically equally capable of producing a good solution. You are simply there to stir the wheel when everybody knows their destination. So I took it as a good challenge and it taught me a lot of things. I may not be the best; It is not for me to say. But I know that I’ve gained something and now I can take on harder challenges in leadership.

2. FOCUS ON YOUR IMPROVEMENT, NOT JUST THE END RESULTS

Being new to the industry, you will most likely be into training and stuff and need to learn new technologies. And do you know the key to an enjoyable learning experience? That is starting by accepting your weaknesses and building your plan from there. Don’t go like “I must learn mobile applications development because it’s gonna get me paid forty thousand pesos a month at the least!” What if you didn’t get the position because somebody else with more experience took it? Will you be dispirited and say “hell, now I have to learn another platform. I heard money is good there and it’s possibly within my league.”

They always say that the journey is more valuable than the destination and that’s true. Won’t it be nice to hear from yourself “yeah, I didn’t get the job but I realized I really love developing UIs providing awesome user experience so I guess I’ll just work more on it”? Don’t just focus on the digits for you’ll surely be surprised how much of your salary you will be willing to trade for work satisfaction. Focus on the non-monetary things you’ll gain. After all, at the end of the day, you’d definitely want to be more valuable than the numbers written on your paycheck.

Quite in relation to that…

3. YOU CANNOT BE THE MASTER OF ALL TRADES YET. APPRECIATE THE VALUE OF MASTERING A SINGLE THING FIRST [and just familiarize yourself with the others for the meantime]

Having great knowledge on a handful of technologies can be very very valuable. And do you know when it is most valuable? It is when you are a one-man team. But the thing is, it will most certainly be not like that in the real world. With time constraints, one person can only do so much despite of what s/he knows. Sure you know some database administration, some web applications development, and some mobile applications development. But having you against three people focused on each of the mentioned field, what can be your value? Given a very short time, it is very much possible for three focused average programmers to beat one expert in delivering a solution unless the expert is willing to trade his physical, mental, and emotional health. And even then such a feat won’t be impressive.

In our team, I’m currently the go-to person for developing supporting web services for mobile applications. Yes I study other frameworks and languages on my free time like python, nodejs, backbonejs, html5, but I’m most valuable in developing web services in PHP and .Net the same way my teammates are most valuable in developing android and iOS applications despite of the other things they know. And needless to say, that expertise will dictate a great part if not a hundred percent of your salary. What I suggest is for you to look into the trends and select one technology of a great value that you will actually enjoy, again emphasizing on enjoyment, then focus on it for now.

4. PUTTING YOUR HARD EARNED KNOWLEDGE TO USE IS UP TO YOU

A lot of us would frown on a complex statistical formula and ask “am I really going to use this after I graduated?” I say you may and you may not. To be honest, application of the things we’ve learned in school is not at all times present unless you chose the right job. Unlike game development that immerses a programmer into some hard-core computing, developing simple information systems won’t ask too much of your expertise in differential equations. BUT there are opportunities for it if you stay watchful especially when we are talking about optimizations and data mining and analytics which may sound rather too grand for you right now but actually serve as foundations for valuable systems.

To share things with you, about a month or two ago we’ve spent a good four hours or so discussing an algorithm that could enhance the response time of the application we were working on. There was even a time that I’ve resorted into using binary trees to lessen the time complexity of a function I was working on ’cause the application was time critical and we were only given five seconds to respond in a transaction that involves scanning the database and going through a handful of records in a legacy system. Yes, powerful machines nowadays can already solve some problems on speed but then it is not always like that.

So what I’m trying to say is you are the ones who are going to put value on what you’ve learned. But I must say that there’s a limit for it because…

5. DOCTRINAIRE SOLUTIONS SELDOM APPLY

Doctrinaire, stiffly adherent to academic standards, very imposing of academic standards as to disregard practical considerations. Apply, be applicable or relevant. So these solutions actually work. These solutions hit all the requirements. It’s just that they’ve disregarded quite a lot of practical considerations that they no longer perfectly apply to the situation.

While going through the technical report for CMMI 1.3 I’ve encountered a very attention capturing term called “operational concept” which describes how an entity or a system actually operates in production. Surprisingly, it’s one thing quite a lot of solution providers tend to overlook ’cause they either overanalyze or are over their heads. Hence they come up with solutions too sophisticated for their customers needs that the customers could not appreciate it.

I’m not even speaking for myself right now, I’m simply relaying what’s in the CMMI technical report. We encounter certain limitations when providing solutions; there’s cost, time, effort, and technology at the very least. Out there, we are not going to develop solutions in an environment very favorable for us so we should always come up with alternatives and be aware of tradeoffs. Even consultants who have earned the authority to tell which technology will be most beneficial also have to consider the operational concept to suggest a solution.

Now what I want to say is, while you ought to learn as much as you can in the IT industry don’t be so envious of somebody who knows the latest frameworks and standards ’cause you are not always going to work on applications running on these latest frameworks capable of supporting the newest standards. It’s not really always about technical knowledge if your goal is to address your customer’s needs and cost is of great consideration. You cannot always impose what you know when circumstances make it impractical and/or costly. You should also develop one thing which is your analytical skill.

Because…

6. YOUR ANALYTICAL SKILL IS EQUALLY VALUABLE WITH YOUR TECHNICAL SKILL AND KNOWLEDGE

I appreciate the value of exams that ask you to perform rather hard-core computations and create an application written in a particular language in detail but I’m not very fond of them. Why? Because they are unrealistic? On the floor, you’re not going to develop computationally intensive applications having to recall each formula straight from memory. There’s google and lots of documentations, white papers, and APIs. You got the time to prepare and it’s even included in your gantt chart. To put it simply, it’s allowed to use cheat sheets and prepare references. You only got to be ethical and ensure that you’ll learn something from your references. Producing reusable codes is a programmer’s responsibility. The ability to understand other people’s code is a valuable skill. So why do we answer exams that do not test those skills? Isn’t our diploma enough proof that we know the use of statistical formulas?

As you go along studying various platforms and frameworks, also pay close attention to the development of your analytical skills. Truth is, if you cannot analyze a situation enough to come up with a solution in which you can utilize your technical knowledge then you will most probably just implementing somebody’s design and we do not want that. We want to be software architects and consultants. So folks while I encourage you to study well, do not cry over your grades ’cause you weren’t able to commit everything to memory and therefore you failed once or twice. How you put everything into practice will matter more.

And that’s it. Now these things I’ve presented seem cliche for some. Some would say, “I’ve always known that!” and I agree that we’ve always known these things. But the surprising thing is that it takes months even years for some people to have these things sink in. Now my only hope is that you will get to ponder on these things later on and be prepared on the challenge ahead. To close things I just wanna thank everybody for this opportunity of being able to share what I know to all of you. And as early as now, let me bid you welcome to the IT industry. I hope I was able to save you some months of on-the-job experience by presenting these things today. A pleasant evening everyone.

I believe that all programmers at some point in their lives have written codes that were rather crude; an obvious understatement. No, they were awful. I could still recall my first few programming exercises where after I spent a good amount of time of our class resolving segmentation faults I was left with the burden of refactoring and optimizing my program. Actually no, the latter was a lie. I used to not care about any standard; I did not know any standard. And even though I had several attempts of optimizing my codes, I found them pretty time consuming that I settled with what worked most of the time. That was me learning programming; a term I only hear in movies when I was younger; a thing that sounded really cool but never dreamt of engaging myself into. I was even never techie. I’ve always been a pen and paper guy.

Fast forward to around seven years after my first programming lessons. I am now a software engineer working 8 hours a day maintaining an online banking system while creating back end support systems for mobile applications whenever needed. I haven’t worked on a certification yet (I’m still searching for the right platform to put my best effort into) which implies that I really haven’t achieved any verifiable expertise yet, but a lot of things have changed. I know quite better now.

But unfortunately, while some of my colleagues can wow me with their designs, there will still be cringeworthy codes to deal with once in a while. Did I mention I was maintaining a legacy system? There you have it. Funny thing is I didn’t really find them bad because I compared them to existing standards. I found them bad because I used to program things the same way before.

Now there’s a question, how did those codes get there? It’s an enterprise solution! Surely they got funds to pay top developers. Then why is it that the solution seems to be created by a bunch of programming students?

The only probable and logical answer I could offer is that standards and criteria for acceptance change over time. What was acceptable coding back then may be ridiculous nowadays. A solution that worked decades ago may no longer be applicable today. Things to which previous generations of programmers settled with may be headache to the current generation of programmers. But then again what about consideration for maintainability? It’s a practice that has been existent for a very long time! That could have produced better codes. It could be a yes and no, I think. Technology of every era has certain limitations. We cannot always have what we want right there and then. We can only give things our best shot. On the funny side, the previous years may not have given us codes to smile on, but they surely gave us work to get well paid for.

Then why bother writing codes that are beautiful in all aspects when it could be trash in the next few years or so? Why, we got discipline! Why settle for something less when you can give better by taking some time to think of a better way to do things? Something that works is one thing; something that works elegantly is another. And quite naturally, if you choose to code badly then you don’t deserve to whine incessantly. While whining can make you feel better for yourself, seriously, getting something done right would feel way better than that. -aB

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 5 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Reblogged from theradioman:

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More than three years ago my mom and eldest sister told me and my other sister Chen, the third eldest, that we'll be going to the north to celebrate our graduation. Yes, due to certain circumstances we entered college at the same time. I was pretty indifferent then. I loved to see the north side of the country 'cause everybody was saying it was beautiful there but I was too busy with school to care about such trips.

Read more… 3,503 more words

Peppermint, this place here was where we stayed while developing our prototype.

So I was looking for something I could get happily busy with, the mobile applications development team to which I belong was into all this business model canvas thing, and I made it as a goal to get exposed and be active in IT events. And guess what? Startup Weekend Manila 3 was announced. The event started last Friday September 28 and ended yesterday night Sunday September 30.

I really didn’t know what to expect. I have a dream of owning my own startup but I could not say that I am already into making it come true. I got a couple of ideas for a mobile application that could potentially be profitable but it still got holes in it that I did not bother to consider pitching it. So what I planned was to just be there, observe, join a team, learn, and above all, enjoy. And enjoy the whole event I did.

Deciding to join didn’t come that easy though. Being just socially awkward, I had to constantly reassure myself that I will have a good time. And despite of it all, I still ended up posting on the wall of my college friends asking for people who are interested in joining the event and coming there with me. But nobody really gave a reply that I could consider as “Yes, count me in.” Thankfully I got someone who’s pretty geeky herself for a girlfriend and she was willing to join me.

I know what you might be thinking right now and perhaps you’re right. Being both Computer Science graduates and software developers, people who are not into software development might have a hard time catching up with some of our conversations. Well that’s part of our quality time. But I digress.

We came to MINT college Friday afternoon for the kick off, the pitches, and the forming of teams afterwards. Some of the pitches were okay and some were hilarious as was intended I suppose. But we of course got our own say on things so an entertaining pitch did not ensure anybody of a development team. Unless they came there with their own team, which is the case, I think, in some groups. Well that’s pretty natural. If you want funding for your idea, you might also consider bringing in your team for votes. Each person got three chances to vote for an idea. As long as everybody’s decent enough to not keep all three votes for their own idea, things will still remain quite fair for people who just came there with their ideas and nothing more. As for me and my girlfriend, we just came there for the experience and to offer our skills.

There were ideas that looked really great for me but pretty complicated and equally risky to invest on; applications that require quite a long time to develop and another long time to profit unless an organization is already willing to buy it as opposed to solely depending on a marketing team. The rest were a lot simpler but the biggest question was how it will differ from the other applications in the market and that was a tough one to pin down. Even the idea that captured me and my girlfriend’s interest could not give a good answer to that I must say.

After the pitching, my girlfriend approached Luigi and stated our intention to join his team. Only to find out that we would form the team ourselves as although his idea made it to the top 18, no one else approached him to work on the application. The application was named Bahala Na (Come What May) after a phrase very common among Filpinos taking chances. It was basically a randomization and recommendation mobile application which on the outside may not look very different to other applications in the market. Yet we gave it a try.

It would seem ridiculous that I joined in creating it, but the thing is I believed that it would actually sell. The features may not be very unique but it was supposed to be fun and considered the culture of its market among all the applications proposed. It has a high tendency to be addictive to Filipinos capitalizing on the people’s bahala na attitude, love of funny things, and preference to quickly come up with decisions. It could potentially influence people’s choices on where to hang out and many establishments would pay either to be recommended more often or for the information on users’ behavior collectively.

Saturday, my girlfriend, being the mobile applications developer in the team, did most of the work for the prototype of the application while I worked on the backend web service that was supposed to consolidate information on places from different data sources and make it available for the application. We came up with decent prototypes but finally decided to have the application run disconnected from the web service and use built-in test data for ease of demonstration.

Sunday, I don’t know of the judges’ ranking but we placed 5th on people’s ranking without partaking on the anomalies that happened during the casting of votes (a common scenario during Startup Weekends they say and part of the fun to which I agree). Something that I could take as a proof that the application indeed appealed to the people.

The whole experience was fun. I experienced headache once in a while for lack of sleep but I had a great time. It was a great opportunity to meet other people in the IT industry outside one’s office and be surrounded with ideas and learn the things surrounding creating a startup. The atmosphere was light and devoid of any of the seriousness of work; super cool to make it short. The food and the coffee was great and there were a lot of freebies. The event was worth my weekend. If I have any regret, that would be missing that chance to actually just sit and listen to a mentor for I was quite too busy coding. Well we got another Startup Weekend for that. -aB

My new journal has a loop in its spine to hold a pen. Currently, I’m using a 0.2 technical pen but the barrel’s too thick to fit in. Yes, the perfect excuse to buy yourself a costly fountain pen. So I went out in my Sunday’s worst to go to the nearest mall, a Robinson’s, to buy one. I kept my thick hair unkempt. My apartment is just a stone’s throw away to bother styling. Also, I was wearing my worn out shorts, an old shirt, and equally disheveled pair of flip-flops. Living somewhere near is a valid explanation if somebody’s going  to insist the unwritten dress code inside a shopping mall in any way.

Unfortunately, there’s no National Bookstore branch at Robinson’s. Well, there used to be one until the mall’s patrons moved their whereabouts in another newer mall nearby. I had to settle with Office Warehouse that endorses Schneider pens. I found the quality of the ink and writing point of Schneider pens good, maybe excellent, but unfortunately they come with thick barrels. Not satisfied, I decided to check out the pens in the other mall, an SM by the way.

Read more…

We live close to the mall you can literally get there in less than 200 cartwheels. I cannot assure you though that you will still have everyone’s respect after doing it. Anyway, I got there carrying this blue umbrella that neither has that hook like handle nor that loop you can use to hang it. For a second or two I thought of how I could set my hands free of that umbrella to use the ATM. There was no place to put it and it was wet. Finally I decided to fasten it to the ATM’s body using my right knee and do my business. Problem solved.

Then while I was walking back home I realized I did it again. Getting out of a situation that challenges your ability to maximize the use of your limbs and the available resources within your reach. I actually thought I was getting so good at it I could write a book entitled “Doing So Much With Only Two Hands”. It would of course have my face in its cover flashing my stupidest smile. I wonder how much it would sell. I wonder if my readers could follow my tips and totally ignore people staring at them with  what-kind-of-alien-is-this looks.

Read more…

I’ve just gone back to reading after a stressful month of bidding for this certain contract from a bank. No we still haven’t got any news on the winner of the contract but things are a lot better now. I could go back to sleeping six to seven hours before getting up for work. Yes, sleeping is a luxury when you’re living an hour and a half to two hours away from your office. I’ve also returned to watching some shows on the television and quite started to watch whatever routine I have to keep myself happy and satisfied. No I’m not going to sell the healthy living and good life drama but you can say that I’m changing my lifestyle for the better.

I cannot be perfectly organized, that’s what I have learned. I could be a really good planner when I have to and that is undeniably good in the workplace but I just could not and should not plan my life the same way. I could only plan events to a certain detail else I’d get tied up to my own plans; I’d be keeping watch of a list every single day; executing the plan will be a must; failure to accomplish everything listed will be painful; and there will be a great chance of missing the side treats. In short, planning getting a life to the tiniest detail will be like not getting a life at all but merely following a series of steps or worse a routine, which is ironic ’cause that’s the thing you tried to avoid in the first place.

Okay, having a detailed plan could work for some of us. I could understand that. But since my goal is to make myself happy with my life, I’d like to start with things I really like to do. And having a detailed plan of action is definitely not part of it. So what’s my high level plan?

My plan can be simply stated as do whatever it is that will make you happy but always be aware of consequences. Yes, that could be a real problem to some if happiness for them comes with robbing a bank. But I’m a simple man who finds happiness in simple things so I think there will be less thinking of awful consequences. Corny as it may seem, that could help me embrace what life has to offer and enjoy it. That’s a lot better than choosing to be an expert on things and quite forcing myself to work hard thinking that’s where I’d get the satisfaction. That’s what I used to do.

I’m not saying that I’m setting my career aside. What I’m saying is you could always try to achieve something good but there’s a thin line between working hard and working too hard for something that will surely come in time. Work can get me well, working, but it surely should not dictate the things I should do with the rest of my life. Let’s say that I’m planning to enjoy the view from the side line for now as opposed to being in the ring with the other fighters competing to be the best. I’ll just do whatever I can, whenever I can if that’s what pleases me. Maybe then I could listen to Billy Joel’s Vienna without getting too depressed. So what is it that I want to do in the days to come?

I want to explore places and things. I want to go out more at daytime – yes, “daytime” should eliminate the idea that I’m planning party-rocking. I want to be more active in things that don’t necessarily involve the industry I’m working on; things that are really enjoyable where you can choose not to be dead serious. And on top of it all, I want to do it without a list and without forcing myself. Happiness is freedom and freedom certainly has nothing to do with forcing oneself. I just want to be open to all the opportunities that will come. Opportunities that I used to turn down before for being overly practical or too worried of how things will turn out or just being me whose life revolves around work and doing it great.

So now I’m going out for a short walk and maybe treat myself with a cup of coffee afterwards; maybe continue reading a book tonight or plan a painting so that canvas I bought won’t stay blank any longer.

The week before last, our practice manager came to my workstation and ask a simple question, “Do you want to be a trainer?” I answered “yes” right away. Truth is I always wanted to teach/train people. I really don’t know why, but I just love that feeling that you get to share what you know to other people and they would look up to you saying inside their heads that “I learned these from this guy.” But it was not a simple yes. I also mentioned that I may not qualify. In reply he told me that there will be a qualification for the position so I shouldn’t worry. And that I did. In my head all was very simple. If I know the topic I’ll get the job. If I don’t, they will surely find someone else.

But when Friday came, one of the employees under the learning and development group came to my workstation and informed me that there will be a meeting in thirty minutes. I said “okay” cooly. I was thinking that we were only going to be advised on how to properly conduct a training and all that guidelines. I didn’t know it was going to be far beyond that. In the meeting we were told that we would undergo a special training not just to learn the effective training approach but also to ultimately pass the accreditation by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). My jaw almost dropped. I didn’t know it would be as serious as that.

Still I didn’t back out. It was daunting at first but when it finally sank in to me, I realized it was a great opportunity to hone my training skills. Perhaps it would be a great plus too considering the fact that I was already contemplating on applying for a lecturer’s position in the university on weekends.

We were told that training days will be on Tuesdays for the next two months. But normally, the training for the accreditation takes seventeen weeks, eight hours a day. Apparently we’re going to cram things because being full time workers, we couldn’t afford that much time. It would be a dead serious cramming I must say with a reading material reaching more than two hundred and fifty pages for just one of the five areas we got to learn. That is already not mentioning that the reading materials voluminous as they are, are already pretty straight forward on discussing things.

Monday came and another surprise came just as I thought I was done with all of it when I agreed to take the challenge in the previous week. I checked my company email and found out about an email sent late the previous Friday telling all trainers to prepare a five-minute discussion of a simple topic for the audition to be done that day, Monday. Again, I was shocked. I was not prepared in any way. We were advised to prepare a powerpoint presentation and dress up. It was also mentioned that we should be able to finish the discussion of our chosen topics within the allotted time. As trainers we should be able to do that.

For a minute or two, I didn’t know what to do. Unlike other participants in the program, I never handled a training before. I don’t have any material in mind from which I could get a good topic I could squeeze into a five-minute discussion. I totally had nothing related to our practice (the Microsoft practice) to discuss. But then I reread the email and notice that there were no instructions telling that the topic should be related to our practice. That was when I got a brilliant idea. I decided to discuss something I worked on during the weekend, the sprite animation tutorial which I even posted here.

I was nervous about the audition almost the whole day but everything went well when I finally got to present my topic. In fact, I got a good feedback which made me happy and proud inside.

The following day I attended the first day of training where we talked about competency based training and learned how to prepare information gathering sheets, training needs analysis forms, and session plans. It was totally enjoyable and helpful. I could already visualize how effective the training will be following that approach. But all the topics just won’t fit in a day no matter how hard they try to simplify things just emphasizing on the most important portions of our extremely voluminous references. As much as we don’t want it, we have to read and study some of the details on our own. Seriously, it could eat a great amount of time from company hours. But I’m usually not that busy like what I said earlier so it was fine for me. I just do not know of the others.

Next week will be day two. I’m looking forward to learning more. But for now, I’m done with surprises. No more surprises this time please. -aB

Advanced Sprite Animation Demo

you can download the codes for this tutorial here.

it has been quite a long while since i last posted a tutorial. fortunately i was able to come up with another one despite the busy schedule. and to continue from what we’ve left here, i am now presenting a tutorial on how to animate sprites with the look and feel that is a lot closer to how we see them in our 2D games. this tutorial will deal with animating sprites that use multiple images for each action, with the said images extracted from a large single image containing views of the sprites from all possible angles.

to begin let us visit the code for the sprites that we are going to use. as what we have learned from our OOP lessons, it is ideal to keep functions that we are going to use across our classes in a base class. this will save us from repetition and make the implementation of changes for all sub-classes easier. so let us check out first the code for our base class contained in lib_sprites.py. normally i would name it class_spritebase.py, but since i’m planning it to contain all other classes and helpers to be used by sprites in the future, i used the lib_ prefix instead to let me know it’s a library.

it of course starts with the imports.

import pygame
from pygame import *

import sys
sys.path.append('utils')

import lib_utils
from lib_utils import StaticFunction

as you can see, aside from the pygame library, we also imported our own library which is lib_utils. if you have been visiting the other tutorials, you can perhaps recall that it is the library we created for helper classes. in this tutorial we are going to use it to create static function calls against our SpriteDirection class.

SPRITEDIRECTION CLASS

the SpriteDirection class is meant to contain all valid directions that we are going to accept. this is so other developers who might want to use our library won’t be guessing parameters to pass whenever setting a sprite’s direction. this class also comes with an IsDirection function to validate direction values.

class SpriteDirection:
    NORTH = '+Y'
    EAST = '+X'
    WEST = '-X'
    SOUTH = '-Y'

    def IsDirection(direction):
        if(direction == SpriteDirection.NORTH or \
           direction == SpriteDirection.EAST or \
           direction == SpriteDirection.WEST or \
           direction == SpriteDirection.SOUTH):
            return True

        return False

    IsDirection = StaticFunction(IsDirection)

SPRITEBASE CLASS

the SpriteBase class as mentioned earlier should serve as the base class for all our sprite classes. it inherits from the built-in object type and has a set of properties with their own getters and setters. for now, it only has two functions namely RenderImage and RenderImageAtLocation which we are going to use to display the sprite’s image on our screen.

to describe our properties in detail:

ImageSource

a Surface returned by pygame.image.load() given a path to a sprite’s source image.

HotSpots

list of Rect objects pointing to portions in the source image that contains images to be used by the sprite.

Direction

a SpriteDirection value specifying the direction to which the sprite faces.

Location

the location of the sprite in the screen

class SpriteBase(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self._imagesource = None
        self._hotspots = list()
        self._direction = SpriteDirection.SOUTH
        self._location = [0, 0]

    #Properties
    def ImageSource(self, imgsrc=None):
        if (imgsrc == None):
            return self._imagesource
        else:
            self._imagesource = imgsrc

    def HotSpots(self, rect=None):
        if(rect == None):
            return self._hotspots
        else:
            self._hotspots.append(rect)

    def Direction(self, direction=None):
        if(direction == None):
            return self._direction
        else:
            if(SpriteDirection.IsDirection(direction)):
                self._direction = direction

    def Location(self, location=None):
        if(location == None):
            return self._location
        else:
            self._location = location

    #Methods
    def RenderImage(self, screen, spotindex):
        screen.blit(self._imagesource, self._location, self._hotspots[spotindex])

    def RenderImageAtLocation(self, screen, location=None, spotindex=0):
        screen.blit(self._imagesource, location, self._hotspots[spotindex])

SHEEP CLASS

i’ve created a number of classes inheriting from the SpriteBase class as requested by my 2 year old nephew. he loved watching the animals move. but for this tutorial i will only discuss the Sheep class contained in class_sheep.py.

it begins with a number of imports for pygame, the lib_sprites, datetime, and config as shown below. the datetime will be used for implementing the delay in displaying the series of images involved in one action while config refers to class we created that is supposed to contain the configurations for the game.

import pygame
from pygame import *

import datetime
from datetime import datetime, timedelta

import config
from config import AppConfig

import lib_sprites
from lib_sprites import SpriteBase, SpriteDirection

the constructor for the class will simply call the parent constructor, load the image to use, and specify the hotspots.

class Sheep(SpriteBase):
    def __init__(self):
        super(Sheep, self).__init__()
        self.ImageSource(pygame.image.load('images/Animal.png'))

        #looking north
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(320, 96, 32, 32)) #standing
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(288, 96, 32, 32)) #step right foot
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(352, 96, 32, 32)) #step left foot

        #looking east
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(320, 64, 32, 32)) #standing
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(288, 64, 32, 32)) #step right foot
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(352, 64, 32, 32)) #step left foot

        #looking west
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(320, 32, 32, 32)) #standing
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(352, 32, 32, 32)) #step right foot
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(288, 32, 32, 32)) #step left foot

        #looking south
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(320, 0, 32, 32)) #standing
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(288, 0, 32, 32)) #step right foot
        self.HotSpots(pygame.Rect(352, 0, 32, 32)) #step left foot

the Turn() method will make the sprite turn to a different direction. note that screen.fill() is called before rendering the image. this is to cover the previously displayed image before rendering another. this can be replaced by a function to render the background when it’s already available.

    #makes a sprite turn to specified direction
    def Turn(self, screen, direction):
        self.Direction(direction)
        index = -1

        if(direction == SpriteDirection.NORTH):
            index = 0
        elif(direction == SpriteDirection.EAST):
            index = 3
        elif(direction == SpriteDirection.WEST):
            index = 6
        elif(direction == SpriteDirection.SOUTH):
            index = 9
        screen.fill(0)
        self.RenderImage(screen, index)
        pygame.display.update()

the Walk() method initiates variables for making the sprite walk to current direction. the direction is checked first and locations to display images are put into a list, the same as the indices of the images to display from the sprite’s hotspots. each location in the list of locations should correspond to one image in the sprite’s hotspots, therefore the length of locations array and index array should be equal.

putting a grid over the display screen, the length of either array could be taken as the number of steps that a sprite would take to move to the next cell in the grid. in our example we have a 32px x 32px cell and so a sprite’s ending location should be 32px from the current location. the more step we use, the smoother the action will be. however it could have a few issues like making the distance between two locations seem so far and too much redrawing of the surface than necessary. in our example, we’re just going to use 4 steps.

    #makes a sprite walk to current direction
    def Walk(self, screen):
        locations = list() #contains locations for each sprite image to render in succession
        indexarray = None #contains the indices of all sprite images to render
        if(self.Direction() == SpriteDirection.NORTH):
            locations.append([self.Location()[0], self.Location()[1]-8])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0], self.Location()[1]-16])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0], self.Location()[1]-24])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0], self.Location()[1]-32])
            indexarray = [1, 2, 1, 0]
        elif(self.Direction() == SpriteDirection.EAST):
            locations.append([self.Location()[0]+8, self.Location()[1]])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0]+16, self.Location()[1]])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0]+24, self.Location()[1]])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0]+32, self.Location()[1]])
            indexarray = [4, 5, 4, 3]
        elif(self.Direction() == SpriteDirection.WEST):
            locations.append([self.Location()[0]-8, self.Location()[1]])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0]-16, self.Location()[1]])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0]-24, self.Location()[1]])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0]-32, self.Location()[1]])
            indexarray = [7, 8, 7, 6]
        elif(self.Direction() == SpriteDirection.SOUTH):
            locations.append([self.Location()[0], self.Location()[1]+8])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0], self.Location()[1]+16])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0], self.Location()[1]+24])
            locations.append([self.Location()[0], self.Location()[1]+32])
            indexarray = [10, 11, 10, 9]

        self.__animate_walk__(screen, locations, indexarray)

the __animate_walk__() is a private method that takes care of the actual animation. this method simply loops through the specified locations and hotspot indices by the Walk() method and display the images on screen with certain delay enough for each image to be viewable to the user. a check was also included to make the sprite stay within the bounds of the display screen.

def __animate_walk__(self, screen, locations, indexarray):
        if(len(locations) == 0 or len(indexarray) == 0):
            return
        for i in range(len(locations)):
            loc = locations[i]
            if(loc[0] < 0 or loc[1] < 0 or loc[0] > AppConfig.DEFAULT_SCREENSIZE[0]-32 or loc[1] > AppConfig.DEFAULT_SCREENSIZE[1]-32):
                return
            self.Location(loc)
            screen.fill(0)
            self.RenderImage(screen, indexarray[i])
            pygame.display.update()
            #implements delay
            t1 = datetime.now() + timedelta(seconds=0.125)
            while(datetime.now() < t1):
                pass
            self.Location(loc)

THE GAME

the game.py file is where the game should be implemented. like the others, it begins with importing a number of libraries.

import pygame
from pygame import *

import datetime
from datetime import timedelta

import config
from config import AppConfig

import sys
sys.path.append('entities')

import lib_sprites
from lib_sprites import SpriteDirection

import class_sheep
from class_sheep import Sheep

import class_cow
from class_cow import Cow

import class_rooster
from class_rooster import Rooster

import class_butterfly
from class_butterfly import Butterfly

following imports is the initialization. notice that pygame.key.set_repeat() is used. this is to make the sprite walk as long as the the key is held down as opposed to making it walk from one cell to another for each key press.

pygame.init()
pygame.key.set_repeat(1, 1)

screen = pygame.display.set_mode(AppConfig.DEFAULT_SCREENSIZE)
display.set_caption('Advanced Animation Demo')

going = True

what follows is the initialization for the sprite and the main loop which is pretty self-explanatory. after rendering the sprite image in its initial position, we’re going to wait for a user triggered event and respond accordingly. we’ll close the application if we encounter a QUIT. if we encounter a button press in any of the four directions we either turn if it is different from the current one, or walk.

character = Sheep()
character.RenderImage(screen, 9)
pygame.display.update()

while going:
    for e in event.get():
        if e.type == QUIT: #checks if close button was clicked
            going = False
        elif e.type == KEYDOWN:
            keystate = pygame.key.get_pressed()
            if(keystate[K_UP]):
                if(character.Direction() == SpriteDirection.NORTH):
                    character.Walk(screen)
                else:
                    character.Turn(screen, SpriteDirection.NORTH)
            elif(keystate[K_RIGHT]):
                if(character.Direction() == SpriteDirection.EAST):
                    character.Walk(screen)
                else:
                    character.Turn(screen, SpriteDirection.EAST)
            elif(keystate[K_LEFT]):
                if(character.Direction() == SpriteDirection.WEST):
                    character.Walk(screen)
                else:
                    character.Turn(screen, SpriteDirection.WEST)
            elif(keystate[K_DOWN]):
                if(character.Direction() == SpriteDirection.SOUTH):
                    character.Walk(screen)
                else:
                    character.Turn(screen, SpriteDirection.SOUTH)

pygame.quit()

and that’s it. you can download the codes for this tutorial here. i hope you enjoyed working with this tutorial. ’til next time. -aB