Pygame on Wilhelm Maritz

The particle fade that never faded

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Asteroids on boot.dev is a guided build. Its chapters cover Pygame setup, the game loop, the player, and the asteroids: enough for a working game. Everything past that is left to you, and that is where I kept going, adding momentum, a start menu, lives, scoring, and explosions.

The explosions were the fun part. Shoot an asteroid and fifteen white particles fly outward and fade to nothing over half a second.

Space has no drag, so I added some

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The boot.dev Asteroids course gives you a ship that moves while you hold a key and stops when you let go. It works, it is simple, and it feels nothing like being in space. What I wanted was continuous motion: you thrust, and then you keep going, because nothing out there is slowing you down.

That is a small change to describe and a surprisingly interesting one to build, because the honest version of it is unplayable.