Hi Louis, Well, I guess much of what I have to say about Python really depends on what kind of games you intend on creating with Python. My suggestions might depend on weather you are thinking of doing advanced 3D games, 2D side-scrollers, board and puzzzle games, etc. For instance, the PyGame API for Mac OS/Linux/Windows, which is a Python wrapper for SDL, is functional for basic audio and input support, but is not in the same league as say DirectX, and lacks features that more advanced game development APIs offer. One of these is good high quality virtual 3D audio support that XNA, DirectX, and Java's J3D technologies have. If you aren't going to be creating 3D FPS games, and will be doing board games, simple side-scrollers, space invader clones, then PyGame should be alright for your needs. As far as the Python language itself goes it is a fairly decent language. Some programmers like it because it doesn't have a lot of syntactical structure, uses non-typed variables, and can be used to script applications as well as write applications. In my experience these qualities are both good and bad. While not having a strong syntactical structure makes application development faster Python requires that the source code is formatted correctly. Blocks of code are not defined in braces like in Java, C, C++, etc and relies soully on spacing and tabbed indention. This could be difficult for a blind developer who can't see formatting, and must depend on braille or spoken feedback about the formatting to determine where blocks of code start or end. I find it helpful just to add a comment to the end of an if statement, function, etc to tell me when I have concluded a block of code so someday in the future I can just scan the comments rather than trying to figure out the structure by spacing and indention alone. Earlier I mentioned that Python is not a typed language. That means variables aren't declared as integers, float, strings, etc as such. In Python you just initialize a variable and the Python interpreter converts the data stored in that variable to the proper data type. While this can speed up development I personally rather like strongly data typed languages such as C, Java, and C# where you must specifically asign a single data type to a variable. In non-typed languages like Python I often find using Hungarian notation like iMyVariable, bMyVariable, fMyVariable, etc helpful in keeping track of the data types I am working with. A variable name like iMyVariable would identify to me that the stored data is an integer, and the variable name is MyVariable. You asked is Python crackable. The answer is yes. Every interpreted programming language runs a high risk of being hacked and cracked by software pirates. Since Python began its life as a high level scripting language, and was primarily designed for open source software it doesn't have a great deal of security in place against software crackers. You can minimize this by running a Python compiler like py2exe on your code to build a binary, but there are ways for crackers to get at your code if they want it bad enough, and have the skills to crack your game. On the other hand because Python is primarily a scripting language it does allow you to create games with scripting ability. You could design your core engine, and then use Python scripts to build the levels, and easily add new adventures/missions to your games without having to modify the core game engine. Which is one of the cooler aspects of Python. As far as writing games for a PPC device like the Pac Mate my first recommendation would be Basic4PPC. It seams to be well thought out, have some decent game development tools, and is based on the .NET CF framework. That alone makes it ideal for note takers and smart phones. However, from what I have seen of your current games it looks as though most of your games are text based and don't require a lot of sounds and the other sorts of things I am thinking of as being the typical modern accessible game. In that case Python would be fine for your needs. I have written my fair share of text based apps in Python, and it works well for a quick and dirty application that just prints text to the screen, and accepts simple keyboard commands. If you want to discuss this further you might want to sign up for the game developers list on USA Games, and we can talk about this more at length. Hth.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hi game developers. Lately, I have been taking a look at Python because it > runs on a variety of platforms, especially the PAC Mate and BraillePlus. This > will allow me to write a program once and modify it for these corresponding > Python interpreters on both platforms. My question is: is it a good language > for game development, and, would you recommend selling games, if need be, > using such a language? Is it easily hackable? Are there any other high-level > languages you would recommend for such a task that works on PPC and an ARM > version of Linux? Thanks. > --- > Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
