Snake Animation Generator

A VIS142 Project

File Description

snake.py

The snake generated by this file can only take one turn at the time. He/she has to finish the current turn before deciding to make a new turn. He/she also may go out of scope and most likely you will never see him/her again unless you give him/her enough time until he/she decides to come back to the screen by chance. We value free-will here so don't force your snake friend to come back to the screen. He/she will be mad :/

snake_multiturn.py

The snake generated by this file can take multiple turns at the time. He/she doesn't have to wait for the current turn to finish before making the next turn. So you will often see snakes in zig-zag shape. The snake from this file may also go out of scope.

snake_multiturn_inScreen.py

The ULTIMATE version of snakes! The snake generated by this file can take multiple turns. He/she also loves to stay in the screen and shows off his/her beautiful wavy body. So when he/she reaches the edge, he/she will not keep going out of the screen.

Preparation before running

Install pygame

Run this line in terminal

python3 -m pip install -U pygame --user

Check this page if you meet any issues with installation: https://www.pygame.org/wiki/GettingStarted
Check pygame documentation for more information: https://www.pygame.org/docs/

Install ffmpeg (if want to get a video)

Download here

How to get the video

First move inside the frames folder.
Since the program generates frames (images ends in .png) in the folder frames (You will have to have this folder for the program to run), you will have to run the following command to merge the frames into a video:

ffmpeg -r 60 -start_number 1000000 -s 4096x2160 -i %d.png -vcodec libx264 -crf 31 -pix_fmt yuv420p final.mp4

1000000 should be replaced with your start_sequence_num

Customize your own snake frames and video

Frame/video Size

Change width and height parameters at the start of the file

Change name and title

Change name and title parameters

Change output frames' name

Change start_sequence_num

Change snake's body data

Look for self.size self.length self.color in class Snake

Change the length of the video

for i in range(0, 20*60): # Change Here
    screen.fill((0,0,0))
    for thing in snakes:
        thing.move()
    pygame.image.save(screen, "./frames/" + str(frame_num) + ".png")
    frame_num = frame_num + 1
    pygame.display.update()
    clock.tick(60)

The for loop generates 60 frames for one second. Change 20 to any other length of time. eg. 30*60 generates 30 seconds of 60-frame video.
Note There will always be 3 seconds of title and 1 second of black screen before the snake videos.

Change the number of snakes in a video

snakes = []
for i in range (0, 35): #Change Here
    snakes.append(Snake())

Change the range to modify how many snakes you want in a video.
eg. for i in range (0, 40) will give you 40 snakes in a video.