How to continuously move an image smoothly in Pygame?

Yes, I know that there are similar questions out there, and I have read through them, but they do not help me (or most likely I just don't understand them enough to use them).

FYI: I do not use classes, or anything like that.

The Problem

So what I am trying to do is make security cameras in my game. It moves/pans the image left until the image reaches the edge, waits like 1 second or something, then it moves/pans the image right until the image reaches the edge, wait 1 second or something, repeats. I have accomplished that, but the resulting animation looks jerky/laggy. I wish to make the animation smoother and less jerky/laggy.

EDIT: I also want to keep the same speed of the animation if possible

Here is my code; 

              if var_bounce == 0:     if var_x <= -207:         if var_x_timer == 10:             var_x = var_x + 10             var_bounce = 1             var_x_timer = 0         else:             var_x_timer = var_x_timer + 1     else:         var_x = var_x - 10 if var_bounce == 1:     if var_x >= 0:         if var_x_timer == 10:             var_x = var_x - 10             var_bounce = 0             var_x_timer = 0         else:             var_x_timer = var_x_timer + 1     else:         var_x = var_x + 10

Some Variables and Values Explained

  • The var_x is the x value which I just place in the x value spot when I use the blit function.

    E.g. screen.blit(image, (var_x, 0))

  • The var_x_timer is the timer for when it needs to wait for the 1 second or something.

    The reason why I am using the framerate of my program rather than use a timer function because 1) I did not want to sleep/delay/stop the program just for this, and 2) I don't need it to be precise when waiting.

  • The var_bounce is just a way for the program to know that it has reached the edge and needs to go in the opposite direction.

  • The minimum and maximum x values are 0 and -207respectively and this is so that the image still covers the entire screen. I got these values through trial and error, so no need to change those.

Other/Additional Information

  • The size of my images for the security cameras is 1600 x 718

  • The screen size is 1366 x 718

My Code in Action

(Ignore the other stuff)

(Looped)

enter image description here

1 answer

  • answered 2021-06-12 07:01 Rabbid76

    Do not "move" the image by 10, but move it by 1.

    The method tick() of a pygame.time.Clock object, delays the game in that way, that every iteration of the loop consumes the same period of time. See pygame.time.Clock.tick():

    This method should be called once per frame.

    That means that the loop:

                      var_x, var_bounce, speed_x = 0, 0, 2  # application loop clock = pygame.time.Clock() run = True while run:     clock.tick(60)      if var_bounce == 0:         if var_x > -207:             var_x = var_x - speed_x          else:             var_bounce = 1     elif var_bounce == 1:         if var_x < 0:             var_x = var_x + speed_x          else:             var_bounce = 0      # [...]

    Minimal example:

                      import pygame  pygame.init() window = pygame.display.set_mode((400, 300)) clock = pygame.time.Clock()  background = pygame.Surface((window.get_width()+200, window.get_height())) ts, w, h, c1, c2 = 100, *background.get_size(), (64, 64, 64), (127, 64, 64) tiles = [((x*ts, y*ts, ts, ts), c1 if (x+y) % 2 == 0 else c2) for x in range((w+ts-1)//ts) for y in range((h+ts-1)//ts)] for rect, color in tiles:     pygame.draw.rect(background, color, rect)  var_x, var_bounce, speed_x = 0, 0, 2  def scroll():     global var_x, var_bounce     if var_bounce == 0:         if var_x > -200:             var_x = var_x - speed_x         else:             var_bounce = 1     elif var_bounce == 1:         if var_x < 0:             var_x = var_x + speed_x         else:             var_bounce = 0  run = False while not run:     clock.tick(60)     for event in pygame.event.get():         if event.type == pygame.QUIT:             run = True      scroll()      window.blit(background, (var_x, 0))     pygame.display.flip()  pygame.quit() exit()