Hi,
Also, you can do some pretty cool 3D stuff with opengl, since a lot of the
hard work is done in shaders on the GPU. So using python is ok.
Check out some of the awesome 3d stuff Ian Mallett has done:
http://pygame.org/tags/geometrian
These action 2d games are fairly intensive:
http://pygame.org/project/596/
http://pygame.org/project/991/
On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 8:01 PM, Christopher Night
<cosmologi...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Whoever said that didn't do a good job distinguishing between casual games
> and huge professional games. Presumably they would also say that Flash is
> too slow for making games, but that doesn't stop people from making Flash
> games.
>
> My very rough estimate is that you can easily get Flash-level performance
> from python+Pygame, and with some work you can get better-than-Flash-level
> performance. You're unlikely to get C++-level performance without a lot of
> work, though. Python may be too slow to write Portal 3 or something, but
> I've never seen a Flash game that I thought python couldn't handle (if
> someone would write a good vector graphics library for it).
>
> -Christopher
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 1:35 PM, Nick Arnoeyts <nickarnoe...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Yeah, I'm probably worrying prematurely.
>> I'm very easily influenced by FUD and there are a lot of messages
>> floating around that Python (and Ruby) are too slow for making games.
>>
>> yours truly
>> armornick
>>
>>
>> 2011/11/23 Christopher Night <cosmologi...@gmail.com>
>>
>>> I don't know why you would be concerned about performance in a visual
>>> novel game. Aren't they pretty undemanding? I haven't played these games
>>> very much, but isn't it just a series of still images (no animations) and a
>>> simple GUI?
>>>
>>> You might want to look at a pyweek entry called Gregor Samsa. I know
>>> that team put some effort into optimizing things and wound up with a
>>> respectable framerate even on mobile devices running Android:
>>> http://www.pyweek.org/e/tihoas/
>>>
>>> But again, I feel like performance is the least of your concerns if
>>> that's your kind of game. If there's some specific thing you're expecting
>>> to cause low performance, maybe you can ask about it specifically.
>>>
>>> Good luck!
>>> -Christopher
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 11:46 AM, Nick Arnoeyts
>>> <nickarnoe...@gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> 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
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
