In the code example below, you can move both tanks (as in Step 020 - Shooting bullets from the end of a cannon barrel) or you can “teleport” the yellow tank toward the mouse pointer by clicking the left mouse button. The blue tank will rotate it's turrent toward the position of the yellow tank. The problem is to decide in wich direction the turret should move.

In the code example below this is solved by the Tank class method aim_at_player. Note that the angle diff can result in values > than 360, so the result is divided by 360 and its modulo¹⁾, is saved. You will also note that very few lines are altered since Step 020 - Shooting bullets from the end of a cannon barrel, mostly the tank class got a new method:

    def aim_at_player(self, targetnumber=0):
        #print "my  pos: x:%.1f y:%.1f " % ( self.pos[0], self.pos[1])
        #print "his pos: x:%.1f y:%.1f " % ( Tank.book[0].pos[0], Tank.book[0].pos[1])  
        deltax = Tank.book[targetnumber].pos[0] - self.pos[0]
        deltay = Tank.book[targetnumber].pos[1] - self.pos[1]
        angle =   math.atan2(-deltax, -deltay)/math.pi*180.0    
 
        diff = (angle - self.turretAngle - 90) %360 #reset at 360
        if diff == 0:
            self.turndirection = 0
        elif diff > 180:
            self.turndirection = 1
        else:
            self.turndirection = -1
        return diff

And also the mainloop's event handler is expanded. He now checks the MOUSEBUTTON event to teleport player1 tank around:

            # teleport player1 tank if left mousebutton is pressed
            elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
                if pygame.mouse.get_pressed()[0]:
                    #left mousebutton was pressed
                    player1.pos[0]=pygame.mouse.get_pos()[0]
                    player1.pos[1]=pygame.mouse.get_pos()[1]

User yipyip has donated a very interesting solution to this problem, using Complex numbers. See his source code here: yipyip's solution

no additional resources needed

To run this example you need:

View/Edit/Download the file directly in Github: https://github.com/horstjens/ThePythonGameBook/blob/master/pygame/021_targeting.py

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