Python how to delay bullet shooting

Question

Thank you in advance for your time.

If I fire a bullet with space key, a stream of bullets are created. If I would set a delay with time.sleep() inside \'if keys[pygame.

Answer 1

Here's an answer without classes. You just have to store the previous time when a bullet was fired, subtract it from the current time and check if it's above some time limit (500 ms in this example) to see if we're ready to fire.

import pygame


def game_loop():
    pygame.init()
    gameDisplay = pygame.display.set_mode((640, 480))
    clock = pygame.time.Clock()
    bulletpicture = pygame.Surface((10, 5))
    bulletpicture.fill(pygame.Color('sienna1'))
    bullets = []
    x = 50
    y = 240
    previous_time = pygame.time.get_ticks()

    gameExit = False
    while not gameExit:
        for event in pygame.event.get():
            if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
                gameExit = True

        keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
        if keys[pygame.K_SPACE]:
            current_time = pygame.time.get_ticks()
            # We're ready to fire when 500 ms have passed.
            if current_time - previous_time > 500:
                previous_time = current_time
                bullets.append([x+25, y+24])

        remaining_bullets = []
        for bullet in bullets:
            bullet[0] += 6  # Move the bullet.
            if bullet[0] < 500:  # Filter out the bullets.
                remaining_bullets.append(bullet)
        bullets = remaining_bullets

        gameDisplay.fill((30, 30, 30))

        for bullet in bullets:
            gameDisplay.blit(bulletpicture, pygame.Rect(bullet[0], bullet[1], 0, 0))

        pygame.display.update()
        clock.tick(120)

game_loop()
pygame.quit()