Working with Python – Introductory Level

Course Curriculum

Chapter 1: Introduction

Lecture 1: Introduction

Lecture 2: About me

Lecture 3: Installing Python (Macintosh)

Lecture 4: Installing Python (Windows)

Lecture 5: Installing the PyCharm CE

Lecture 6: Python resources and documentation

Lecture 7: How to ask for help

Lecture 8: Is Python interpreted, compiled, or both?

Chapter 2: Getting started with Python and our adventure game

Lecture 1: The obligatory "Hello, World!" program

Lecture 2: The structure of a Python Program

Lecture 3: An aside: Python's basic data types

Lecture 4: Where to put variables: scope

Lecture 5: Getting started with our adventure game

Lecture 6: Another aside: functions

Lecture 7: Implementing a while loop to keep the program running

Lecture 8: Reading from the terminal

Lecture 9: Making decisions based on user input

Lecture 10: An aside: Python's comparison operators

Lecture 11: Printing help and sanitizing user input

Lecture 12: Spicing things up with colour

Chapter 3: Making the Game functional with Classes

Lecture 1: Python Classes

Lecture 2: The Player class

Lecture 3: The Room class

Lecture 4: The Game class

Lecture 5: Using our classes, and getting started with game movement

Lecture 6: Using a new data type, tuples, to help with room descriptions

Lecture 7: Navigating around the labyrinth

Lecture 8: An aside: the dictionary data structure

Lecture 9: Showing items and monsters

Chapter 4: Implementing an Inventory

Lecture 1: Lists, and adding a list to the Player class for inventory items

Lecture 2: Getting started with picking items up

Lecture 3: Completing the functionality for picking items up

Lecture 4: Displaying the current inventory

Lecture 5: An aside: more about looping

Lecture 6: Cleaning up game play by printing room descriptions only when necessary

Lecture 7: Dropping items

Lecture 8: Equipping items

Lecture 9: Showing equipped items, and a challenge

Lecture 10: Solution to challenge

Lecture 11: Unequip an item

Lecture 12: Implement the "status" command, to show the player how they are doing

Lecture 13: An aside: different ways of printing strings with variables

Chapter 5: Implementing a turn-based combat system

Lecture 1: How combat will work

Lecture 2: Giving the player a chance to fight or flee

Lecture 3: Starting combat: "rolling for initiative"

Lecture 4: Player's turn

Lecture 5: Monster's turn

Lecture 6: Warning the player when their health is low

Lecture 7: Adding XP, incrementing the number of monsters defeated, and awarding gold

Lecture 8: Adjusting the attack roll based on weapon, armor, shield, and monster type

Lecture 9: Letting a player rest to regain health

Chapter 6: Keeping track of player location using a map

Lecture 1: What we are going to build in this section

Lecture 2: Defining how big our map will be, and saving that information in the Game class

Lecture 3: Prepopulating all rooms in the map

Lecture 4: Keeping track of the player's location, and limiting movement to the current map

Lecture 5: Challenge: verifying our logic when checking player movement

Lecture 6: Solution to challenge

Lecture 7: Trying out our code and updating our position on the map

Lecture 8: Keeping track of player movement

Lecture 9: Implementing a (partially functional) "map" command

Lecture 10: Making the map function more useful

Lecture 11: Finalizing the "map" command

Chapter 7: Improving the game interface

Lecture 1: Adding a status bar

Lecture 2: Challenge: revise welcome text to explain why players have no weapons or armor

Lecture 3: Solution to challenge

Lecture 4: Finishing up the game logic