Using Replit

To build our game, we will use the Pygame library, which provides a set of readymade functionality that we can use to build Pong and its animations.

Using Replit

Today, we will be using Replit to build the Pong game.

If you would like a recap on how to use Replit, check out our Python basics tutorial.

Now, let’s go through some of the code that has been provided to you in the main.py file.

Libraries and import statements

Look at the top of the code. You will see the following line:

import pygame

This statement allows us to import all of the animation and object-drawing functionality provided by the pygame library. A library is a place where related functionality is grouped together for use in the Python language. For example, the pygame library provides a way to draw a rectangle on screen, which we can use to draw the boundaries, the ball, and the paddles used in Pong game.

Comments

The gray line that starts with a # is called a comment. These are notes in the code that help to explain what the code does in normal English. Comments are ignored by the computer; developers use comments to communicate with each another, especially when several developers are working on the same code. Comments also allow someone who is looking at the code to get a high-level overview of what is happening without having to read all of the code. In main.py we use comments throughout to indicate where changes to the code are required.