The First World

In this section, we’ll create our first “world” in Miniworlds. A world is the basic building block for everything you want to see or control in your application — from a simple game field to more complex worlds like those in video games. Let’s dive right in:

Getting Started

To create a world, you only need a few lines of code:

from miniworlds import World

# Create a new world with dimensions 600x300 pixels
world = World(600, 300)

# Start the world to display it
world.run()

What happens in this code?

• Import the library: The first line imports the Miniworlds library, which provides all the necessary functions.

• Create a world: The method miniworlds.World(600, 300) creates a new world. This defines the world’s size: 600 pixels wide and 300 pixels tall.

• Start the world: world.run() starts the world and displays it on screen. You can think of this line like pressing “Play” — the world becomes visible only after this.

Take a look at the following image showing the first step:

Adding a Background

To avoid having an empty world, you can add an image as a background. You’ll need an image saved in the images folder of your project. Your project structure might look like this:

project/
├── my_world.py  # file with your python code
└── images/
    └── grass.png

Once you’ve placed your image (e.g., grass.png) in the images folder, you can add it to your world using the add_background method:

import miniworlds

# Create world
world = miniworlds.World(600, 300)

# Add image as background
world.add_background("images/grass.png")

# Start world
world.run()

What’s happening here?

• The method add_background("images/grass.png") loads the image grass.png from the specified path and sets it as the background for your world.

Note

There are different types of Worlds in Miniworlds. The TiledWorld is specifically designed for games using tiled layouts, such as top-down RPGs.

See also

Concept: Naming and Variables

See also

Concept: Imports