The Arcade Book

Installation

Arcade can be installed like any other Python Package. Your machine(s) need to support OpenGL 3.3+ for arcade to work. If you are familiar with Python package management you can just “pip install” Arcade. For more detailed instructions see Install.

Getting Help

If you get stuck, you can always ask for help! See the page on How to Get Help for more information.

Tutorials

If you are already familiar with basic Python programming, follow the Simple Platformer as a quick way to get up and running. If you are just learning how to program, see the Learn Arcade book.

Arcade Skill Tree

• Basic Drawing Commands - See How to Draw with Your Computer, Drawing Primitives

  • ShapeElementLists - Batch together thousands of drawing commands into one using a arcade.shape_list.ShapeElementList. See examples in Faster Drawing with ShapeElementLists.

• Sprites - Almost everything in Arcade is done with the arcade.Sprite class.

  • Basic Sprites and Collisions

  • Individually place sprites

  • Place sprites with a loop

  • Place sprites with a list

• Moving player sprites

  • Mouse - Move By Mouse

  • Keyboard - Move By Keyboard

    • Keyboard, slightly more complex but handles multiple key presses better: Better Move By Keyboard

    • Keyboard with acceleration, de-acceleration: Acceleration and Friction

    • Keyboard, rotate and move forward/back like a space ship: Move By Turning

  • Game Controller - Game Controller

    • Game controller buttons - Supported, but documentation needed.

• Sprite collision detection

  • Basic detection - Learn Arcade book on collisions, Move By Mouse

  • Understanding collision detection and spatial hashing: Collision Detection Performance

  • Sprite Hit boxes

    • Detail amount - arcade.Sprite

    • Changing -arcade.Sprite.hit_box

  • Avoid placing items on walls - Randomly Place Coins, But Away From Walls And Other Coins

  • Sprite drag-and-drop - See the Solitaire.

• Drawing sprites in layers

• Sprite animation

  • Change texture on sprite when hit - Change coins

• Moving non-player sprites

  • Bouncing - Sprite Bouncing Coins

  • Moving towards player - Sprites That Follow The Player

  • Moving towards player, but with a delay - Sprites That Follow The Player 2

  • Space-invaders style - Slime Invaders

  • Can a sprite see the player? - Line of Sight

  • A-star pathfinding - A-Star Path Finding

• Shooting

  • Player shoots straight up - Shoot Bullets Upwards

  • Enemy shoots every x frames - Have Enemies Periodically Shoot

  • Enemy randomly shoots x frames - Have Enemies Randomly Shoot

  • Player aims - Aim and Shoot Bullets

  • Enemy aims - Have Enemies Aim at Player

• Physics Engines

  • SimplePhysicsEngine - Platformer tutorial Step 3 - Many Sprites with SpriteList, Learn Arcade Book Simple Physics Engine, Example Move with Walls

  • PlatformerPhysicsEngine - From the platformer tutorial: Step 4 - Add User Control,

    • Moving Platforms

    • Ladders - Platformer tutorial Step 10 - Adding a Score

  • Using the physics engine on multiple sprites - Supported, but documentation needed.

  • Pymunk top-down - Supported, needs docs

  • Pymunk physics engine for a platformer - Pymunk Platformer

• View management

  • Minimal example of using views - Minimal Views Example

  • Using views to add a pause screen - Using Views for a Pause Screen

  • Using views to add an instruction and game over screen - Using Views for Instruction and Game Over Screens

• Window management

  • Scrolling - Move with a Scrolling Screen - Centered

  • Add full screen support - Full Screen Example

  • Allow user to resize the window - Resizable Window

• Map Creation

  • Programmatic creation

    • Individually place sprites

    • Place sprites with a loop

    • Place sprites with a list

  • Procedural Generation

    • Creating a Depth First Maze

    • Creating a Recursive Maze

    • Procedural Caves - Binary Space Partitioning

    • Procedural Caves - Cellular Automata

  • TMX map creation - Platformer tutorial: Step 8 - Collecting Coins

    • Layers - Platformer tutorial: Step 8 - Collecting Coins

    • Multiple Levels - Work with levels and a tiled map

    • Object Layer - Supported, but documentation needed.

    • Hit-boxes - Supported, but documentation needed.

    • Animated Tiles - Supported, but documentation needed.

• Sound - Learn Arcade book sound chapter

  • Music Control Demo

  • Spatial sound Sound Demo

• Particles - Particle Systems

• GUI

  • Concepts - GUI Concepts

  • Examples - GUI Concepts

• OpenGL

  • Read more about using OpenGL in Arcade with OpenGL.

  • Lights - Lighting Demo

  • Writing shaders using “ShaderToy”

    • Shader Toy - Glow

    • Shader Toy - Particles

    • Learn how to ray-cast shadows in the Ray-casting Shadows.

    • Make your screen look like an 80s monitor in CRT Filter.

    • Study the Asteroids Example Code.

  • Rendering onto a sprite to create a mini-map - Mini-Map

  • Learn to do a compute shader in Compute Shader.