Extend an existing class

In this step you are going explore how to extend an existing class. It is also perfectly normal to write your own classes and then extend them.

Copy the code from this program, paste it into a new file named character.py, and save it in the folder containing all your earlier code.

The code is a Character class that I have written for you. If you have a look at it, you should recognise some familiar things.

You’ll see that to create a Character object, the constructor needs two parameters: the character’s name and a description of the character:

def __init__(self, char_name, char_description):

    self.name = char_name

    self.description = char_description

    self.conversation = None

Create a new Python file and save it as character_test.py, in the folder with your other code.

from character import Character

dave = Character("Dave", "A smelly zombie")

Add this code in the character_test.py to call the describe method on the object you created to show the character’s description on the screen.

dave.describe()

Save and run your program. You should see the description of the character you just created:

Dave is here!

A smelly zombie

Tasks