Alright. Thanks for your reply everyone. I'm currently still working on a Ren'py project, but I'm probably going to try pygame once that's finished. I'm mostly making visual novels, though, so it's possible that I'm staying with ren'py until I reach its limits.
yours truly armornick 2011/11/23 stabbingfinger <stabbingfin...@gmail.com> > Hi, Armor Nick. > > Some common bottlenecks I've encountered: > > rendering many images per frame > brute force collision checking > computationally intensive logic and AI > real-time image transformation > heavy usage of images with SRCALPHA > 2D and 2.5D layering > particles > > These are easy limits to hit early on especially in scrollers, > platformers, and bullet hell type games, or when you start adding > environment and GFX. > > But there are clever techniques that pygamers have developed to deal with > them in the form of cookbook recipes, libraries, and modules. Many issues > can be easily mitigated by selecting a culling technique or two to reduce > the number of things processed each game loop. > > Some people popping into IRC lately seem easily frustrated by these > challenges, wanting an inefficient workload to just perform well. I can > understand the sentiment. But I personally get an immense amount of > pleasure from conquering these challenges. :) > > When I started pygame three years ago I was told you can't do a scrolling > action-RPG: it's too much work for the CPU. Since then, computers became a > significantly faster and several people have produced reasonably impressive > action-RPGs, as well as other genre. > > For some examples one only has to look among the top places at pyweek.org, > where pygame competes with the likes of pyglet, cocos2d, and rabbyt, all of > which have the proclaimed advantage of 3D acceleration. It's become clear > to me that for most hobby games the only real limitation is the > resourcefulness of the programmer. > > I personally haven't yet hit a wall with Python or pygame that forced me > to look at another framework or a natively compiled language, and I've done > a few relatively ambitious projects. > > That may seem like a biased representation of Python's and pygame's > capabilities, but I assure you it's not. A few times a year my eyes wander > to other game development libraries or engines, but I keep coming right > back to pygame. > > Hope that perspective helps. > > Gumm > > > On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 6:08 AM, Chris Smith <maximi...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> You can use Renpy for graphic novels. SNES RPG's would be no problem. For >> AI and other things, python might be slow but you will probably be >> surprised how far you can go with it. It'll certainly be easier than going >> the C++ route (although I'm not a C++ fan, to be honest... I'd use Lisp if >> I needed the code to be faster). >> >> >> On 23 November 2011 21:47, Nick Arnoeyts <nickarnoe...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> I'm actually not quite sure what I'm going to write yet. Either an RPG >>> in the style of SNES-era Final Fantasy, or a visual novel (if you know >>> Higurashi or Clannad). I'm not (yet) interested in 3D and I would certainly >>> do something like that in C++. >>> >>> Pygame is probably fast enough for the graphics, but I was wondering how >>> performance would be for AI and other calculations. >>> >>> yours truly >>> armornick >>> >>> 2011/11/23 Chris Smith <maximi...@gmail.com> >>> >>>> You can't really compare the language C++ with the library Python. >>>> >>>> You could compare C++ / SDL with Python / Pygame, and probably C++ >>>> would be faster (but maybe by not as much as you think)... but it would >>>> certainly take a lot more time to write the code. >>>> >>>> As to what you can do with Pygame, well it is a 2D library that I find >>>> fast enough for most things. In some ways I think Pygame is a little >>>> 'old-school': Pygame does not do a lot for you, but it gets out of the way, >>>> and perhaps most importantly, it's small enough to fit in my mind but big >>>> enough to do what I want. >>>> >>>> Unless you develop as part of a team you need 3D, you are unlikely to >>>> choose a project that Pygame cannot handle in some way. >>>> >>>> Perhaps you could tell us more about what you wanted to write... that >>>> would make it easier to tell you if Pygame could do this for you. >>>> >>>> Chris >>>> >>>> >>>> On 23 November 2011 21:07, Nick Arnoeyts <nickarnoe...@gmail.com>wrote: >>>> >>>>> Hey everyone >>>>> >>>>> I was wondering what the limits of pygame performance are. What is the >>>>> absolute maximum kind of game that can be written with it, and what kinds >>>>> of things are better done in pure C++ than python? >>>>> >>>>> This is probably a question that's asked periodically on the mailing >>>>> list, so I apologize in advance. >>>>> >>>>> Yours truly >>>>> >>>>> Armor Nick >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>> >> >
