Project [07] 🐶 Pet Manager Exploring Classes & OOP

📘 Introduction

Welcome to Pet Manager, a Python project where you’ll design and build a fast-paced animal care simulation while learning one of the most important programming skills: Object-Oriented Programming (OOP).

In this project, you won’t just use classes—you’ll design them, extend them, and connect them together to form a complete program. By the end, you’ll have a working terminal-based game where players care for animals, level them up, and unlock new pets… all powered by your own code.

This project is designed to move quickly. The goal isn’t to play a game for a long time—it’s to build one intelligently.

💻 What Is This Project About?

In Pet Manager, you will create a Python program that simulates taking care of virtual animals.

Your program will:

Represent animals using classes
Store animal data such as hunger, happiness, cleanliness, and level
Allow the player to feed, play with, and clean animals
Use inheritance so different animals behave differently
Track experience points (XP) and leveling
Unlock new animals as the player levels up
Run inside a terminal-based game loop

The program is structured like real software:

A base class that defines shared behavior
Subclasses that customize behavior
A player class that manages multiple animals
Helper functions that control user input and game flow

This mirrors how object-oriented programs are written in real applications and games.

🧠 What You’ll Learn (Coding & Python Topics)

By completing this project, you will practice and apply:

Creating and using classes
Writing __init__ constructors
Using instance variables
Applying encapsulation (protecting internal data)
Creating getter properties with @property
Using inheritance to extend a base class
Overriding methods in subclasses
Using polymorphism with shared method names
Working with lists of objects
Storing classes in dictionaries
Writing and calling instance methods
Designing a simple game loop
Handling user input safely
Structuring a large Python file logically

These are core OOP skills that transfer directly to advanced Python, Java, C++, game development, and software engineering.

🎯 Learning Objectives

By the end of this project, you will be able to:

Design a base class that models shared behavior
Create subclasses that modify and extend that behavior
Explain the difference between a class and an object
Use composition to manage multiple objects inside another class
Read and write object-oriented Python code confidently
Build a complete, multi-class Python program from scratch
Understand how OOP helps manage complexity in larger programs

🧭 How to Navigate This Document

Before we dive into coding your very first Python mystery game, here's how to move around this digital guide:

At the top right of this document, there’s a dropdown menu. Click it to quickly jump to any section of the project—from Section 1 all the way to the final run.

Screenshot showing the section dropdown menu in the top-right corner of the document

If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, then move your mouse down to the very bottom, a small bar will pop up that lets you go to the next section.

There is no back button, so to return to a previous section, you’ll need to click the dropdown menu in the top right again and choose the earlier section.

🛠 Tip: Work One Section at a Time!_

Each section gives you a bit of code and teaches a new idea. Don’t rush! After each section, test your work with the small test file provided.

Absolutely! Here’s a special explanatory section to help students understand how a slot machine works, including betting and winning logic — which is essential before they start building algorithms.

🚀 Ready, Set, Code!

This project is broken into clear, manageable sections.
Each section builds directly on the last, and by the end, you’ll have a fully working program that you created step by step.

Don’t rush. Don’t copy blindly.
Focus on why each class exists and how the objects interact.

When you’re ready, jump into Section 1 and start building your first pieces of the Pet Manager system. 🐾💻