I'm currently making a 2D side-scrolling run'n'jump platform game in PyGame. Most of the stuff is working OK and very well in fact - I am exploiting the fast pyGame Sprite objects & groups.
What I'm interested to know is how people usually deal with Rects for scrolling games. I obviously have a level that is much bigger than visible area, and the player, enemies, bullets etc each have their own (x,y) coordinates which describe where they are in the level.
But now, since we use the "spriteGroup.draw(surface)" call, it will not display them in the right spot unless each objects Rects have been adjusted so that the right part displays on the screen. In other words, everytime a player/enemy/bullet/whatever else is updated, the Camera information needs to be passed, so that their Rect can be updated.
Is this the best method to use? It works but I don't really like passing the camera information to every single object at every update to offset the Rects.
Obviously the ideal method (I think) is to use Rects with "real" coordinates, blit everything to a buffer as big as the level, and then just blit the visible part to the screen, but in practice that slows the game down A LOT.
Any comments/insight would be appreciated.
Thanks
You can have a 2 variables level_landlevel_d which see where you are in the level, Then check which sprites are in the visible area
level_d+height and level_l+width,
 and draw them on the screen.
Pygame: Updating Rects with scrolling levels