Made the monster Follow You! My variation on the grid based game.

Question

I decided to make my own little spin on the grid based python game you create in the course "Python Collections"

Before I even watched the videos on making the game, I embarked on making it myself. I figured by the cute little animation depicting the game that you wanted us to make the monster follow the player. Turns out that wasn't the case, but I got it to work anyways :P

Here it is! Let me know if you have any suggestions, I know the coding work is probably a bit sloppy and there is, I'm sure, many improvements to be made. But! I hope you enjoy it nonetheless

In case you're wondering how I got the monster to follow the player, to pick the best move that gets it closest to the player, it was actually rather simple. What I did was take the distance between lines formula, which is sqrt((x2^2 - x1^2) + (y2^2 - y1^2)) of each possible move (up, down, left, and right) so long as they don't go outside the grid, and the monster just picked the move that resulted in the smallest number. Turns out, that's all it takes to get a monster to chase you!

import random

def create_moves(player):
    plyr = player
    removeable = (-1, -1)
    while True:
        up = ((plyr[0] - 1), plyr[1])
        down = ((plyr[0] + 1), plyr[1])
        left = (plyr[0], (plyr[1] - 1))
        right = (plyr[0], (plyr[1] + 1))
        move_list = [up, down, left, right]

        if move_list[1][0] > 4:
            move_list[1] = removeable
        if move_list[3][1] > 4:
            move_list[3] = removeable
        if move_list[0][0] < 0:
            move_list[0] = removeable
        if move_list[2][1] < 0:
            move_list[2] = removeable
        break

    try:
        choice_list = ["1 = Up {}".format(up), "2 = Down {}".format(down), "3 = Left {}".format(left),
                         "4 = Right {}".format(right)]
        for index, moves in enumerate(move_list):
            if move_list[index] == removeable:
                choice_list[index] = ""
        updated_list = list()
        for items in choice_list:
            if items == "":
                continue
            else:
                updated_list.append(items)

        print(*updated_list, sep='\n')
        user_choice = input("\nChoice: ")
        user_choice = int(user_choice)
        if user_choice > 4 or user_choice < 1:
            int("bacon") #Used to throw an exception to avoid 
                         #users entering in letters
        if user_choice == 1:
            return up
        elif user_choice == 2:
            return down
        elif user_choice == 3:
            return left
        elif user_choice == 4:
            return right
    except:
        print("Choice must be a number and it must be between 1 and 4")
        create_moves(plyr)

def create_monster_moves(mon):
    removeable = (-1, -1)
    while True:
        m_up = ((mon[0] - 1), mon[1])
        m_down = ((mon[0] + 1), mon[1])
        m_left = (mon[0], (mon[1] - 1))
        m_right = (mon[0], (mon[1] + 1))
        m_move_list = [m_up, m_down, m_left, m_right]

        if m_move_list[1][0] > 4:
            m_move_list[1] = removeable
        if m_move_list[3][1] > 4:
            m_move_list[3] = removeable
        if m_move_list[0][0] < 0:
            m_move_list[0] = removeable
        if m_move_list[2][1] < 0:
            m_move_list[2] = removeable

        return m_move_list

def move_monster(mon, plyr):
    removeable = (-1, -1)
    m_move_list = create_monster_moves(mon)
    best_move_num = 100.0
    best_move_tup = (0,0)
    while True:
        for monster_moves in m_move_list:
            if(monster_moves == removeable):
                continue
            else:
                move = ((plyr[0] - monster_moves[0])**(2) + (plyr[1] -
                                                   monster_moves[1])**(2))**(.5)

            if move < best_move_num:
                best_move_num = move
                best_move_tup = monster_moves
        break

    return best_move_tup

def draw_map(plyr, mon):
    print(" _ _ _ _ _")
    tile = "|{}"
    for idx, cell in enumerate(CELLS):
        if idx in [0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23]:
            if cell == plyr:
                print(tile.format('X'), end='')
            elif cell == mon:
                print(tile.format('M'), end='')
            else:
                print(tile.format('_'), end='')
        else:
            if cell == plyr:
                print(tile.format("X|"))
            elif cell == mon:
                print(tile.format("M|"))
            else:
                print(tile.format("_|"))

CELLS = [(0,0), (0,1), (0,2), (0,3), (0,4),
         (1,0), (1,1), (1,2), (1,3), (1,4),
         (2,0), (2,1), (2,2), (2,3), (2,4),
         (3,0), (3,1), (3,2), (3,3), (3,4),
         (4,0), (4,1), (4,2), (4,3), (4,4)]

monster = 0
player = 0,0
door = 0

user_choice = 0

#Sets each object a cell. If anyone has the same cell, it starts over
while True:
    monster = random.choice(CELLS)
    player = random.choice(CELLS)
    door = random.choice(CELLS)

    if monster == door or monster == player or door == player:
        continue
    else:
        break
        #If it's else, none of them were equal

while True:
    print("\nYou are in cell {}".format(player))

    draw_map(player, monster)

    player = create_moves(player)
    if player == door:
        print("You win! You made it to the door!")
        break
    elif player == monster:
        print("You got eaten by the monster :( Game over")
        break
    monster = move_monster(monster, player)

    draw_map(player, monster)

    if player == monster:
        print("You got eaten by the monster :( Game over")
        break

Answer 1 · 2015-08-21T07:13:18Z

August 21, 2015 7:13am

Dude…the gameplay is definitely heightened by the chasing monster! I'm playing it right now! Couple things: when I'm next to a wall, and even though the option is removed, I can still select that option and go off the grid. And it'd be cool to have a 'Play Again?' option at the end of a game. It also shows the updated map twice after I select a move.

I'm not deep enough yet to know how to improve the code or I'd let you know if I saw anything! Here are some conceptual ideas though: being able to select diff map sizes (more monsters on larger maps?); when the monster gets the player, have an option to battle it(!) in a turn-based style fight or a dice roll; maybe the user could land on a power-up that would show where the door is. Maybe too much, but I'm digging it!

Question though: why is the removable tuple set to (-1,-1)? Also, how is it that you can call mon[0] and mon[1]? I don't a a 'mon' list…does it trace back to removable somehow??

Answer 2 · 2015-08-21T18:28:14Z

August 21, 2015 6:28pm

Dude this is awesome, I'm going to look at it a little harder and play around with it myself. Your distance between lines formula is a bit over my head since I never got far in the maths, but one thing I did see that was interesting was your line.

if user_choice > 4 or user_choice < 1:
            int("bacon") #Used to throw an exception to avoid 
                         #users entering in letters

Instead of doing it like that, which is clever, you can use the keyword raise, like this:

if user_choice > 4 or user_choice <1:
    raise ValueError #You can also just use raise by itself. Check out help('raise') in the Python interpreter

raise is a great trick I learned recently, when used by itself it re-raises the last exception that was active in the current scope. If no exception is active in the current scope, A RuntimeError exception is raised indicating that this is an error.

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David McCarty

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Made the monster Follow You! My variation on the grid based game.

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John Hill

John Hill

David McCarty

David McCarty

Brandon Wall

Brandon Wall

John Hill

John Hill

David McCarty

David McCarty