Pygame

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Pygame
Developed by Pete Shinners
Latest release 1.8.0 / 2008 March 29
OS Cross-platform
Genre API
License GNU Lesser General Public License
Website http://www.pygame.org

Pygame is a cross-platform set of Python modules designed for writing video games. It includes computer graphics and sound libraries designed to be used with the Python programming language. It is built over the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) library, with the intention of allowing real-time computer game development without the restraints and low-level mechanics of the C programming language and its derivatives. This is based on the assumption that the most consuming functions inside games (mainly the graphics part) can be completely abstracted from the game logic in itself, making it possible to use a high-level programming language like Python to structure the game.

Pygame was built to replace pySDL after its sudden death. [1]

Pygame was written by Pete Shinners and is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

[edit] See also

Free software Portal

3D Engines with a Python binding.

  • Irrlicht Engine[1] (Binding is no longer maintained and seriously out of date)
  • PyOgre, a Python binding for OGRE

Both are very good free open source C++ 3D game Engine with a Python binding. However the Python binding is an afterthought so most often late versus the C++ engine when usable at all.

3D Engines designed for Python from scratch.

  • Blender is an impressive 3D tool with a fully integrated 3D graphics creation suite allowing modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, realtime interactive 3D and game creation and playback with cross-platform compatibility. The 3D game engine uses an embedded python interpreter to make 3D games.
  • Soya 3D is a 3D game engine with an easy to understand design. It's written in the Pyrex programming language and uses Cal3d for animation and ODE for physics. Soya is available under the GNU GPL license. Soya
  • PySoy primaly branched from Soya 3D, later rewritten.
  • Panda3D is a 3D game engine. It's a library written in C++ with Python bindings. Panda3D is designed in order to support a short learning curve and rapid development. This software is available for free download with source code under Panda3D Public License v2.0. The development was started by Disney. Now there are many projects made with Panda3D, such as Disney's Pirate's of the Caribbean Online, ToonTown, Building Virtual World, Schell Games and many others. Panda3D supports several features: Procedural Geometry, Animated Texture, Render to texture, Track motion, fog, particle system, and many others.

2D Engines and Libraries

  • Phil's Pygame Utilities (PGU) is a collection of tools and libraries that enhance Pygame. Tools include a tile editor and a level editor (tile, isometric, hexagonal). GUI enhancements include full featured gui, html rendering, document layout, and text rendering. The libraries include a sprite and tile engine (tile, isometric, hexagonal), a state engine, a timer, and a high score system.
  • Pyglet is a cross-platform windowing and multimedia library for Python with no external dependencies or installation requirements. Pyglet provides an object-oriented programming interface for developing games and other visually-rich applications for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Pyglet allows programs to open multiple windows on multiple screens, draw in those windows with OpenGL, and play back audio and video in most formats. Unlike similar libraries available, pyglet has no external dependencies (such as SDL) and is written entirely in Python. Pyglet is available under a BSD-Style license.
  • Rabbyt A fast Sprite library for Python with game development in mind. With Rabbyt Anims, even old graphics cards can produce very fast animations of 2,400 or more sprites handling position, rotation, scaling, and color simultaneously.

Miscellaneous

[edit] References

  1. ^ Libregamewiki's article on Pygame

[edit] External links