PyThumbPad

PyThumbPad is a customizable virtual thumb pad for directional input, designed for use in Pygame projects. It features a central donut-shaped control area and a movable button pad, making it ideal for mobile games or any application requiring a thumb stick-style input.

Features

• Customizable Appearance: Easily change colors and sizes for the donut and button pad.
• Directional Input: Supports 4 or 8 directional quadrants for precise input.
• Simple Integration: Easy to add to any Pygame project with minimal setup.
• Responsive Input Handling: Smoothly tracks user input and updates the direction accordingly.

Installation using uv

If you are using a modern uv project, you can easily add py_thumbpad to your dependencies:

uv add py_thumbpad

Installation using PyPI

You can install the py_thumbpad package directly from PyPI using pip:

pip install py_thumbpad

Running the Demo / Local Development with uv

If you clone the repository and want to run the demo or develop locally:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/kerodekroma/py-thumbpad.git
cd py-thumbpad

# Run the demo app instantly (uv will bootstrap the venv & dependencies automatically)
uv run main.py

Updating the PyThumbPad Package

If you installed the py_thumbpad package with pip and want to update it:

pip install --upgrade py_thumbpad

If you are using uv, you can update it with:

uv add --upgrade py_thumbpad

Usage

Here's a basic example of how to use PyThumbPad in your Pygame project:

from py_thumbpad import PyThumbPad, PY_THUMBPAD_Directions

# Initialize the thumbpad at position (400, 300)
thumbpad = PyThumbPad((400, 300), {})

# In your game loop
running = True
while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False
        
        thumbpad.listen_events(event)
    
    # Check the direction the thumbpad is pointing to
    if PY_THUMBPAD_Directions.TOP in thumbpad.directions:
        print("Moving UP!")
    elif PY_THUMBPAD_Directions.BOTTOM in thumbpad.directions:
        print("Moving DOWN!")
    elif PY_THUMBPAD_Directions.LEFT in thumbpad.directions:
        print("Moving LEFT!")
    elif PY_THUMBPAD_Directions.RIGHT in thumbpad.directions:
        print("Moving RIGHT!")
    
    # Update and render the thumbpad
    thumbpad.update()
    thumbpad.render(screen)
    
    pygame.display.flip()

pygame.quit()

Options

When initializing PyThumbPad, you can pass a dictionary of options to customize the appearance and behavior:

• quadrants: The number of directional quadrants (4 for up, down, left, right; 8 for diagonals as well). Default is 4.

• donut_color: The color of the donut-shaped pad. Default is (123, 157, 243).

• button_color: The color of the movable button pad. Default is (255, 255, 0).

• donut_bg_color: The background color of the donut. Default is (0, 0, 0).

Example:

thumb_pad = PyThumbPad((400, 300), {
    "quadrants": 8,
    "donut_color": (200, 100, 100),
    "button_color": (100, 200, 100),
    "donut_bg_color": (50, 50, 50)
})

Methods

update() Updates the state of the button pad. This method should be called within the game loop.

render(screen) Renders the thumb pad on the provided Pygame surface.

listen_events(event) Handles Pygame input events and updates the thumb pad's state.

get_directions(current_angle) Returns the direction based on the current angle and the number of quadrants. This method is used internally by listen_events.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to submit a pull request or open an issue to discuss any changes or improvements.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the MIT-LICENSE.txt file for details.