Is it possible to display a change of color to a pygame Sprite?

Question

I have a pygame Sprite which is generated through Font. It's just a 16x16 surface with a letter printed on it and blitted.

The sprite has a timer (it's a powerup) and when it's near the end of it's life I want it to flash a random color on every update. I've been successful doing this with other text but that text isn't a sprite, just a string I blit to the score board. I figured this would be the same, but once the sprite is generated, no matter how much I change the sprite's color, the change doesn't translate to the screen (though if I print(self.color) I can see the updated color tuple in the console).

I've tried putting the random color picker inside the Class as well as trying outside the class in my while loop. I can change the color easily enough, but the sprite on screen doesn't actually change. I am not using an external sprite image, just a Font blitted to a pygame.Surface.

This is my item class.

class Item(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    def __init__(self, name, pos):
        pygame.sprite.Sprite.__init__(self)
        self.name = name
        self.image = pygame.Surface([16, 16])
        self.image.set_colorkey(black)
        self.font = pygame.font.Font("./fonts/myfont.ttf", 16)
        self.pos = pos
        if self.name == "health":
            self.color = (255, 0, 0)
            self.text = self.font.render("H", True, self.color)

        self.lifespan = 200
        self.lifespan_counter = 0
     
        self.image.blit(self.text, (0, 0))

    def update(self):
        # Update timer
        self.lifespan_counter += 0.1
        if self.lifespan_counter >= self.lifespan:
            self.kill()
        # Update position
        self.rect.center = (int(self.pos[0]), int(self.pos[1]))

And then at the bottom of my def main() in the while loop, I have this stuff:

        random_color_counter += 1
        if random_color_counter > 3:
            random_color = get_random_color()
            random_color_counter = 0

        screen.fill(background)
        text_box.fill(blue)
        game_box.fill(white)

        # Update the sprites positions and then draw them to game_box surface
        player_sprites.update()
        player_bullet_sprites.update()
        enemy_sprites.update()
        enemy_bullet_sprites.update()
        item_sprites.update()

        player_sprites.draw(game_box)
        player_bullet_sprites.draw(game_box)
        enemy_sprites.draw(game_box)
        enemy_bullet_sprites.draw(game_box)
        item_sprites.draw(game_box)

        ...

        for i in item_sprites:
            game_box.blit(i.image, (int(i.pos[0]), int(i.pos[1])))

        # Refresh everything
        pygame.display.update()

And this is the function that picks a new color.

def get_random_color():
    r = random.randint(0, 255)
    g = random.randint(0, 255)
    b = random.randint(0, 255)
    return r, g, b

And then I can use the color random_color for most things, just not sprites apparently.

Like I said, this displays the sprite just fine at the position it is supposed to (where the baddie died), but I cannot seem to have a change to the item sprites color translate to the screen. I'm just not seeing what I'm doing wrong.

" no matter how much I change the sprite's color, the change doesn't translate to the screen" - Where do you try to "change" the color. I can't finde this part of the code in your question. — Rabbid76
– Rabbid76, Commented Jun 3, 2021 at 6:07
Everything I tried was unsuccessful. Based on what you see above, what is the best approach that I should take towards being able to do this? How would you do it? — Matthew Ogilvie
– Matthew Ogilvie, Commented Jun 3, 2021 at 8:14
You have to render the text with a new color. You have to show the attempts in your question. — Rabbid76
– Rabbid76, Commented Jun 3, 2021 at 8:19
Very good. I didn't try re-rendering the text! It gets rendered on init and then stays the same color for life. I assumed that once it became a sprite, I could control the sprites color. Looks like I did ask a good question since I got a good, simple answer. Thanks very much. Very helpful. — Matthew Ogilvie
– Matthew Ogilvie, Commented Jun 3, 2021 at 8:23
No your question is not "good". I had to guess what you want. I could only guess because I read a lot of incomplete questions like this one and this is a common problem. — Rabbid76
– Rabbid76, Commented Jun 3, 2021 at 8:26

Rabbid76 · Accepted Answer · 2021-06-03 08:21:35Z

0

When you want to change the color of the text, you have to render the text again and update the text Surface. Write a change_color method:

class Item(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    # [...]

    def change_color(self, color):
        self.image = pygame.Surface([16, 16])
        self.image.set_colorkey(black)
        self.color = color
        self.text = self.font.render("H", True, self.color)
        self.image.blit(self.text, (0, 0))

answered Jun 3, 2021 at 8:21

Rabbid76

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