4 replies to this topic

[Snaphaan]

I'm a bit of a noob here except for some PHP background so keep in mind some possible stupid questions

I'm having a bit of difficulty making the decision if I should start learning python or rather move to something else. As popular as python seems to be it isn't (or does not seem that way) implemented much in the way of game creation. There is PyGame (does anyone know where their forum is?), panda and stuff like Blender's GE (with no commercial succes except for Yo Frankie) but it seems most of the major good engines only support stuff like LUA, C#, Java or whatever else.

I was looking at Construct (supports python scripting) but many devs reckon it's nothing but a toy and I guess I might get stumped quickly in the future. 3D isn't really a big deal for me but should I decide to put in the effort sometime in the future, what would be my options with Python? 3D wise that is. Well, except for Panda.

PyGame looks great but it seems to have no support for 3D except through OpenGL. Has anyone used PyGame and OpenGL together and is it difficult? Is PyGame still regularly supported? I'm just worried because I couldn't find a single active forum?

Should I just skip python and rather do X.

Thanks for your time!

[jbadams]

PyGame don't provide a forum, but they do have an active mailing list.

I think Python is a good choice; it's a popular language both within and outside of the games industry, and it's a good language to get your feet wet with programming even if you later decide to move on to other languages; remember that your choices are not forever; if you stick with it you'll almost certainly learn additional languages at some point, and you'll find that after you've really learned the underlying concepts with one language picking up others is relatively easy.


If you're interested in 3d with Python some choices include Panda3d, PyOgre, and PyOpenGL and pyglet amongst others, although if you're just starting out it might be better to start with 2d until you have a better handle on the language.

Quote

many devs reckon it's nothing but a toy

See #2 in my list of "4 reasons you aren't a successful indie developer" -- it doesn't matter what other people think, just whether or not you can get the job done with the tool(s) in question.


Hope that's helpful!

[Stainless]

Starflight is one of my favorite games of all time.

When it came out, we were all working in assembler. We laughed at the idiots using C.

When I looked at Starflight again years later, I realised it was coded in Forth. Stunned me, so I went and had a look at Forth.

It's beautiful, the code it produces is lovely. It's a complete head f*ck to work with, but I love it.

I would never have thought a commercial game could have been written in Forth, but I was wrong.

If you are good enough, you can write a good game in any language,

[fireside]

One common mistake new programmers make is to think they are wasting their time learning a certain language. Languages are very much alike and mainly have a few syntax differences, but some, like c or c++, are pretty low level and not the best choice for learning right away. The hard part is learning the first one, and that's where python shines because it was written more or less for that purpose. Not only is it useful, and you will probably use it for a long time, but it's one of the best stepping stone languages. The question is, how well do you know PHP, because that's a language also, and if you are pretty familiar with it, python might not be necessary in that way. If that's the case, you should look around at engines and libraries, and make a decision based on what you intend to do. Do you want to make a web game or a downloadable, etc. For 2d right now, I think an html5 engine might be the best choice, or just choose javascript and html5. There are still a lot of kinks in getting it to work everywhere so I would probably find an engine, or library, where someone else took care of that. Easel and Impact are pretty popular.

[Snaphaan]

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jbadams, on 13 November 2012 - 01:28 PM, said:

-- it doesn't matter what other people think, just whether or not you can get the job done with the tool(s) in question.

Stainless, on 13 November 2012 - 03:05 PM, said:

I would never have thought a commercial game could have been written in Forth, but I was wrong.

If you are good enough, you can write a good game in any language,

I guess the real problem is weather I will be able to achieve what I set out to do. I found a very interesting post yesterday about a few well known games and the languages (products) they were created in. Very interesting and it seems Indie-devs grab at almost anything they can to get the job done. Also I found out from another thread on this forum that PyOpenGL is s wrapper around opengl for 3D that you could impliment in PyGame. That sounds pretty good.

fireside, on 13 November 2012 - 03:15 PM, said:

For 2d right now, I think an html5 engine might be the best choice, or just choose javascript and html5.  There are still a lot of kinks in getting it to work everywhere so I would probably find an engine, or library, where someone else took care of that.  Easel and Impact are pretty popular.

I'm not a PHP guru but I needed to get a grip around the language for proper Wordpress and Buddypress theming and customization. Looking at Easel and Impact it seems Javascript is another popular choice but I think right now I'm going to get my hands dirty with python.