RogueBasin
Complete Roguelike Tutorial, using python+libtcod, part 10
This is part of a series of tutorials; the main page can be found here.
The tutorial uses libtcod version 1.6.0 and above.
Main menu and saving
Tidy initialization
Now that our game is bursting with gameplay potential, we can think about those little things that die-hard fans will surely miss during their long playing sessions. One of the most important is, of course, a save/load mechanism! This way they can go to sleep and dream about your scary monsters between play sessions.
To choose between continuing a previous game or starting a new one we need a main menu. But wait: our initialization logic and game loop are tightly bound, so theyâre not really prepared for these tasks. To avoid code duplication, we need to break them down into meaningful blocks (functions). We can then put them together to change between the menu and the game, start new games or load them, and even go to new dungeon levels. Itâs much easier than it sounds, so fear not!
Take a look at your initialization and game loop code, after all the functions. I can identify 4 blocks:
- System initialization (code between console_set_custom_font and panel = âŚ).
- Setting up a new game (everything else except for the game loop and the FOV map creation).
- Creating the FOV map.
- Starting the game loop.
The reason why I chose this separation is because I think theyâre the minimal blocks needed to do all the tasks. The system initialization must be done just once. Thinking out loud, here are outlines of all the tasks:
- Create a new game: set up the game, create FOV map, start game loop. (This is what we have now.)
- Load game: load data (we wonât deal with this block now), create FOV map, start game loop.
- Advance level: set up new level (we wonât deal with this block now), create FOV map. (The game loop is already running and will just continue.)
Hopefully that will make at least some sense, itâs not very detailed but gives us something to aim at.
The system initialization code will stay right where it is, itâs the first thing the script executes. Now grab the rest of the code before the main loop and put it in a new function; except for FOV map creation (and fov_recompute = True), the lines player_action = None and objects = [player], which will go elsewhere:
def new_game():
global player, inventory, game_msgs, game_state
#create object representing the player
fighter_component = Fighter(hp=30, defense=2, power=5, death_function=player_death)
player = Object(0, 0, '@', 'player', libtcod.white, blocks=True, fighter=fighter_component)
#generate map (at this point it's not drawn to the screen)
make_map()
game_state = 'playing'
inventory = []
#create the list of game messages and their colors, starts empty
game_msgs = []
#a warm welcoming message!
message('Welcome stranger! Prepare to perish in the Tombs of the Ancient Kings.', libtcod.red)
We have to declare some variables as global, since weâre assigning them inside a function now. The FOV map creation code goes in its own function, declaring some globals as well:
def initialize_fov():
global fov_recompute, fov_map
fov_recompute = True
#create the FOV map, according to the generated map
fov_map = libtcod.map_new(MAP_WIDTH, MAP_HEIGHT)
for y in range(MAP_HEIGHT):
for x in range(MAP_WIDTH):
libtcod.map_set_properties(fov_map, x, y, not map[x][y].block_sight, not map[x][y].blocked)
Finally, the game loop and the player_action = None line belong to their own function now:
def play_game():
global key, mouse
player_action = None
mouse = libtcod.Mouse()
key = libtcod.Key()
while not libtcod.console_is_window_closed():
#render the screen
libtcod.sys_check_for_event(libtcod.EVENT_KEY_PRESS|libtcod.EVENT_MOUSE,key,mouse)
render_all()
libtcod.console_flush()
#erase all objects at their old locations, before they move
for object in objects:
object.clear()
#handle keys and exit game if needed
player_action = handle_keys()
if player_action == 'exit':
break
#let monsters take their turn
if game_state == 'playing' and player_action != 'didnt-take-turn':
for object in objects:
if object.ai:
object.ai.take_turn()
That was a lot of shuffling stuff around! Ok, just a couple of tiny changes left. The new_game function should initialize FOV right after creating the map:
initialize_fov()
And, since the objectsâ list represents objects on the map, it makes sense to initialize it on map creation, so put it in make_map:
def make_map():
global map, objects
#the list of objects with just the player
objects = [player]
Finally, after system initialization you need to call the new functions to start playing:
new_game()
play_game()
Thatâs it! The code is much tidier. If you donât care much about that, though, and prefer visible changes, then the next section is just for you!
The main menu
To keep our main menu from appearing a bit bland, it would be pretty cool to show a neat background image below it. Fortunately, libtcod already has a whole lot of image-related functions!
Of course, since libtcod emulates a console, we canât directly show arbitrary images, since we canât access the consoleâs pixels. We can, however, modify the background color of every console cell to match the color of a pixel from the image. The downside is that the image will be in a very low resolution. However, Jice came up with a neat trick: by using specialized characters, and modifying both foreground and background colors, we can double the resolution! This is called subcell resolution, and this page of the docs shows some images of the effect (at the end of the page).
This means that, for our 80x50 cells console, we need a 160x100 pixels image. Hereâs the one Iâm using, just download it and put it in your gameâs folder if you donât want to draw your own. I searched for real dungeon photos with a Creative Commons license using the advanced search in Yahoo Images (I tried it on Google Images too but didnât get as many results), then fired up Paint.net to resize it and modify it as much as possibly to give it the feel of a fantasy setting: torches, no natural light, a guy with a sword, that sort of stuff. I found that stacking layers and using a brush with an extremely low alpha (a value of 3 or so) lets me draw things very gradually, since Iâm not exactly an artist! It guess itâs OK to spend some time with this since it may be the only actual image in the whole game.
Right, after that small detour, itâs back to coding! Letâs create a function for the main menu interface, and begin by loading and showing the image:
def main_menu():
img = libtcod.image_load('menu_background.png')
#show the background image, at twice the regular console resolution
libtcod.image_blit_2x(img, 0, 0, 0)
Itâs really easy. Notice the file name is a bit different from the image I linked earlier. We can now take advantage of our reusable menu function to present 3 options: start game, continue, or quit. Since the function also returns if the player presses a different key (canceled), we need to wrap it in a loop to present the menu again in that situation.
def main_menu():
img = libtcod.image_load('menu_background.png')
while not libtcod.console_is_window_closed():
#show the background image, at twice the regular console resolution
libtcod.image_blit_2x(img, 0, 0, 0)
#show options and wait for the player's choice
choice = menu('', ['Play a new game', 'Continue last game', 'Quit'], 24)
if choice == 0: #new game
new_game()
play_game()
elif choice == 2: #quit
break
Letâs test this out! In the main script, instead of starting a new game right away with new_game() and play_game(), call our new function:
main_menu()
The main menu is working now, apart from the âcontinueâ feature which weâll get to later. Now itâs time to add some fluff. Before calling the menu function, I want to show my gameâs title and, of course, the authorâs name! You will probably want to modify this for your own game, of course.
#show the game's title, and some credits!
libtcod.console_set_default_foreground(0, libtcod.light_yellow)
libtcod.console_print_ex(0, SCREEN_WIDTH/2, SCREEN_HEIGHT/2-4, libtcod.BKGND_NONE, libtcod.CENTER,
'TOMBS OF THE ANCIENT KINGS')
libtcod.console_print_ex(0, SCREEN_WIDTH/2, SCREEN_HEIGHT-2, libtcod.BKGND_NONE, libtcod.CENTER,
'By Jotaf')
Youâll notice that the menu rectangle itself starts with a blank line. This is because the header string is empty, but console_height_left_rect reports its height as 1 by default. To make that line go away, we need to check that condition in the menu function, between the lines header_height = ⌠and height = âŚ.
if header == '':
header_height = 0
Another detail is that the player may want to switch to fullscreen in the main menu. However, we only check that key during the game. Itâs fairly easy to copy that code to the menu function too, right after asking for the key:
if key.vk == libtcod.KEY_ENTER and key.lalt: #(special case) Alt+Enter: toggle fullscreen
libtcod.console_set_fullscreen(not libtcod.console_is_fullscreen())
Finally, extensive testing shows that starting a new game, going back to the main menu with Escape and starting another game results in a bug! In the second game, parts from the first are still visible. For the screen to always start black we need to clear the console in initialize_fov.
libtcod.console_clear(con) #unexplored areas start black (which is the default background color)
There it is, a neat main menu, and with only a handful of lines of code! If you want to add mouse support to your menus, this is a good time to do it. See this extra for a small code change that will do the trick!
Saving and loading
If youâve tried it before in other languages, this probably sounds scary. It usually means tracing every last bit of state information in your game and cramming it into a raw stream of bytes. Not in Python â the Pickle module is capable of doing that with only a few function calls!
But we can do even better by using the Shelve module: its interface is a simple dictionary. If you havenât used dictionaries before, check the Python tutorial on the subject. Theyâre extremely useful, replacing lists in situations where you wish to index elements not by their position on the list, but by an arbitrary name, number, or any other key.
A Shelve allows you to store any object in a file, indexed by a string (for example, the original variableâs name). So to store the map tiles and game objects in a file called âsavegameâ, we only need to call:
def save_game():
#open a new empty shelve (possibly overwriting an old one) to write the game data
file = shelve.open('savegame', 'n')
file['map'] = map
file['objects'] = objects
file.close()
I bet your jaw just dropped over how easy it is to save a game in Python; mine sure did the first time I learned this! Just rinse and repeat for all your game state variables, and donât forget to call close at the end. The Shelve module will recursively find everything referenced from these variables onwards, so tile instances referenced by the map will be saved, as well as components referenced by game objects, which in turn are referenced by the objects list.
The only quirk to keep in mind is when more than one variable references the same object. For example, the objects list references the player object, but the player variable also references it. Normally this doesnât present a problem, but the Shelve module doesnât keep track of shared references between different dictionary entries. So if you try this:
file['player'] = player
Youâll get two player objects when you load! Because one instance will be saved by file[âobjectsâ] = objects and another by file[âplayerâ] = player. To avoid this weâll just save the index of the player in the list:
file['player_index'] = objects.index(player) #index of player in objects list
Here are a few more variables to keep. Also, donât forget to import shelve at the top of your code.
file['inventory'] = inventory
file['game_msgs'] = game_msgs
file['game_state'] = game_state
To automatically save when the player quits, call the new function in play_game, right before the break line:
save_game()
Thatâs all for saving. Loading follows the same procedure, except we assign to our variables the contents of the Shelve dictionary. Since weâre assigning values to global variables, they need to be declared as such. The player_index we stored lets us assign the player variable to the correct object in the objects list. Having completely restored the core variables of the game, we can initialize the FOV map based on the loaded tiles.
def load_game():
#open the previously saved shelve and load the game data
global map, objects, player, inventory, game_msgs, game_state
file = shelve.open('savegame', 'r')
map = file['map']
objects = file['objects']
player = objects[file['player_index']] #get index of player in objects list and access it
inventory = file['inventory']
game_msgs = file['game_msgs']
game_state = file['game_state']
file.close()
initialize_fov()
We can now add new functionality to the main_menu function, so the player can actually continue a previous game! It needs to be wrapped in a try-except clause, because Shelve will throw an error if loading fails somehow (file doesnât exist, is corrupted, etc). If something goes wrong we just display a message about it and carry on. I also defined a new handy msgbox function for important messages like this.
if choice == 1: #load last game
try:
load_game()
except:
msgbox('\n No saved game to load.\n', 24)
continue
play_game()
And msgbox relies on the menu function entirely. We could call it directly instead of this msgbox, but in my opinion this makes code more readable by clearly conveying the intent (a message box instead of a list of options).
def msgbox(text, width=50):
menu(text, [], width) #use menu() as a sort of "message box"
That concludes the code for the main menu, saving and loading. A nice side-effect is that if the player quits after dying and then tries to continue, the character will still be dead! (Because game_state == âdeadâ .) So by saving to different files you could easily create âmortemâ files so the player can remember previous lost games, which is pretty cool.
You can easily use the main menu as a template for other screens, like game options or character creation. And as you continually upgrade your game youâll sometimes have to add more state variables to the save/load functions; but hopefully with the Shelve module it wonât be too bad. Keep an eye out for the quirk I talked about earlier, if you ever get duplicated objects or strange behavior after loading.
The whole code is available here.