I am currently creating a grand strategy space empire game as my python course project. I am using Pygame library and all was going suprisingly good until...

...until I wanted to generate a random star field.

Using the usual randint(a,b) occationally results in some stars being too tight clusters.

Here is an attachment with a picture of the problem.

[attachment=18450:Untitasdfled.png]

I have managed to come up with something like this, but this is still not enough, because some stars still bleed into each other.

for i in range(200):
        x = random.randint(17, 776)
        y = random.randint(17, 471)

        while x in x_used == True or y in y_used == True:
            x = random.randint(17, 776)
            y = random.randint(17, 471)
        
        pygame.draw.circle(DISPLAYSURF, WHITE, (x, y), 2, 0)
        pygame.draw.circle(DISPLAYSURF, WHITE, (x, y), 5, 1)

        counter = 0

        while counter < 19:
            x_used.append((x-9) + counter)
            y_used.append((y-9) + counter)
            counter += 1

The "200" in the range command is the number of stars I want to generate.

So, my question is: how can I generate random coordinates, so that each point generated has an area around it, into which other points cannot be generated?

Well rand is pseudorandom not real random.

To fix this you may have to find a way to also use a random offset to limit clusters.

On the other hand why fix it. If you looked at a real night sky with no city lights there would be clusters. Clusters are natural I think the way it is now looks more realistic then some space type games that use a non generated back drop.

The randomness that randint() can offer me, is sufficent for my needs.

I don't want to limit clusters - clusters are cool in this type of game. I need to limit the minimum distance between any two stars that the generator can create.

I woudln't have anything against these clusters, but I need to show some numbers and a little text underneath each one of them. This information is quite important from the perspective of a player, so I have to make this sacrifice.

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Does anyone know if there are any commands in built in python library that do this kind of generation or do I have to construct my own function for this. I have read the python random library documentation, but half the commands have too complex descriptions for me to understand.

The isn't exactly what you are looking for, but it is a similar problem that you might get some information from.

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,14037.0.html