Question about pong with turtle tutorial in Quincy's newsletter

Python
1

Hello
I enjoyed reading Shane Duggan’s tutorial on building a pong game using turtle.

However, i want to understand it before I code along, and I cant see in the code where the movement of the ball is coming from. dx and dy are not set for the ball. there is a ‘ball_speed’ value in game_rules, but it is never used. Is there a section missing, or am I missing something?

Thanks for any help!

2

These lines are about the ball movement


paddle1.sety(paddle1.ycor() + paddle1.dy)
    paddle2.sety(paddle2.ycor() + paddle2.dy)
    ball.setx(ball.xcor() + ball.dx)
    ball.sety(ball.ycor() + ball.dy)

I include the top two lines to help you find the context of the two bottom lines that set the ball movement .

3

Thanks for responding.
So paddle1.dy is set when the paddle object is defined, but ball.dy is not set when the ball is defined, so it looks like ball.sety(ball.ycor() + ball.dy) would set y to ball.ycor() + an undefined value.
I suspect it has something to do with ‘ball_speed’, which is defined under game rules but never referenced.

I am pretty new to python, so I’m happy to be told i’m misunderstanding something!
Thanks again

1 Like
4

I can’t find that setting either. It is possible it was missed.

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6

thanks Randell, I’m glad i was reading it correctly. So I can see how I could set ball.dx based on ball_speed, but I’m unclear how movement would be achieved on the y axis. Seems like the ball would just ping left to right.

I remember the original game introduced y axis movement if the paddle was moving when it made contact with the ball.

1 Like
7

Looks like I’m having the same issue. this is the error I’ve been getting:
AttributeError: ‘Turtle’ object has no attribute ‘dx’

8

yeah, annoying right! I’m sure it’s not that hard, and surely educational, to figure it out though. I dont have any spare time just now, but if you do get anywhere with it please share! setting dx would be easy i think, but see my comment abovr about introducing y movement. good luck :slightly_smiling_face:

9

yeah I fixed it by adding
ball.dx = 0
ball.dy = 0

and then putting all the conditionals in a while True loop. But it’s still got a lot of bugs to work out. This tutorial was not vetted at all. Now the program runs but nothing works. Github solution using Turtle Here is a much better example.

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i tried to dm the author via the only deets given, but the account is a bot :slight_smile:

Thanks for sharing the other example, i really want to build this when i get a minute!

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No problem! There’s also this FCC Youtube Tutorial which might be a lot more informative. I haven’t watched it yet myself.

1 Like
12

Haha, this tutorial bought to you by ChatGPT!

2 Likes
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i think you are probably right. kind of impressive and depressing at the same time…

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