Infinite sprites with PyGame

The one thing that has always bugged me about sprites in PyGame is that they are so damn finite. Why should I be restricted to an upper bounded number of sprites in my game? Fortunately, I figured out a way of breaking the finite sprite limit, and render an infinite number of sprites to the screen - without any reduction in the frame rate!

Now before you try to convince me this is impossible with such arguments that as "an infinite number of sprites requires an infinite amount of memory", bare in mind that I consider the laws of mathematics to be more rules than actual laws. And rules were meant to be broken, as they say. Not convinced? Download and run this demo, and tell me when you run out of memory. Requires Python and PyGame.

Download Infinite Sprites

This blog post was posted to It's All Geek to Me on Wednesday May 2nd, 2007 at 10:27PM

16 Responses to "Infinite sprites with PyGame"

MrTinkles

May 2nd, 2007, 10:33 p.m.

Wow, very nice, very smoooth up till 950, which somthing in the backround sent it lagy for 0.5 of a sec, very noice
Joe

May 2nd, 2007, 10:56 p.m.

Nice job! Another great demo/lesson. I'm really looking forward to your book.
michael schurter

May 3rd, 2007, 5:52 p.m.

Only 950? I'm up to over 12,000!

Obligatory screenshot:
http://michael.susens-schurter.com/files/pygame-sprites.png

This is on Debian Sid, Python 2.4.4, PyGame 1.7.1, 2.8GHz CPU and 1 GB RAM. I also removed the FULLSCREEN flag, so I could continue to get work done while it ran. ;)
Will

May 3rd, 2007, 6:14 p.m.

Only 950? I’m up to over 12,000!

Holey moley!
Popcorn Mariachi

May 5th, 2007, 12:29 p.m.

Heh. Neat trick!
Geometrian

May 6th, 2007, 11:20 p.m.

Holey Moley this!
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/7060/14594229wd4.png
Geometrian

May 6th, 2007, 11:22 p.m.

Actually a cheat... Changed the number of sprites to start around 14590000.
:)
Geometrian

May 6th, 2007, 11:24 p.m.

Have gotten several thousand the 'right' way though...
1.7Ghz Centrino Duo
1 gb RAM
GeForce Go 7600
Will

May 6th, 2007, 11:28 p.m.

A devious ruse! I would have believed it if you hadn't come clean. :-|
Geometrian

May 6th, 2007, 11:32 p.m.

I would have been lying- and doing something that much would have been suicide for my computer...
John

May 9th, 2007, 8:53 a.m.

I'm having some problems using the SubPixelSurface when the hight of the image is different from the width! The result image gets all screwed up. Any ideas?
Will

May 9th, 2007, 8:55 a.m.

That was a bug in the first version. Download it again, and it you should find that it is fixed. :-)
Gareth Noyce

July 26th, 2007, 9:55 a.m.

Man, that's like soooo 2002 ;)

http://www.pygame.org/pcr/unlimited_sprites/index.php
Will

July 26th, 2007, 9:32 p.m.

It comes back in fashion every 5 years!
Gareth Noyce

July 27th, 2007, 9:10 a.m.

Shame Pygame doesn't really. You're right about the exe hassles though, sorting out distribution would have helped lift it years ago...
derf

August 15th, 2008, 10:54 a.m.

1Xoq01 re re rerrrreeee gththtt