On Sat, 11 Nov 2006 23:40:00 -0800, Levi Pearson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Back in those days, even some commercial programs were written in BASIC
with simple menu-driven interfaces. Creating those was within the reach
of a hobbyist programmer, and more importantly, it /felt/ like it was
within reach.
This is, I think, the big difference between "programming then" and
"programming now". When text adventure games were all the rage, and a few
lines of BASIC could look the same as one, it was pretty easy to get the
feeling that you were creating something that people would actually want
to play.
However, with powerful (and free/Free) libraries existing today, I think
we're starting to get close to having this ability again. I've been
intrigued by PyGame in particular. It's cross-platform and drop-dead
simple to make games with--that *feel* like they're within reach of
commercial games. Take a look at these two tutorials, for example:
http://www.pygame.org/docs/tut/chimp/ChimpLineByLine.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7694
Both are more or less understandable by someone just learning to program,
and can be tweaked by novices to do more than they currently do. I've also
heard of this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1598631128
which actually wraps PyGame around something even easier. I haven't read
it, but I've heard that it's geared towards the absolute newbie who
doesn't even know what a for loop is, takes them through the basics and at
the end has them writing a game with sound and graphics.
So for people who are past the "Logo" stage of wanting to program,
Python/PyGame seems like a great way to go. Has anyone else tried this
route?
~ Ross
/*
PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net
Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug
Don't fear the penguin.
*/
