Sorry about the lack of updates and responses here everyone. I’ve been away on holidays so I haven’t had any time to access this blog or work on the level editor at all. I’m going to try to get the code up as soon as possible so that anyone interested can start playing with it and hopefully fix all of my mistakes.

Thanks for you patience everyone, I’ll be back with more soon!

Note: The blog was hacked. I spent all night trying to clean it up. If you have registered here you may think about changing your password. Sorry about this folks it pretty much sucks.

Hey everyone,

Just to let you know there is a strong possibility that this blog was hacked recently. A helpful user (Eoin) informed me that when trying to visit the blog from Google he was re-directed to an advertising website.

In response I’ve updated the blog and tried my best to ensure that anything that was hacked is back to normal.

If anyone noticed anything strange happening on this blog please let me know.

Thanks.

Fraking hackers…

Is there anyone else out there that is looking for this? A simple Python (2D) game engine? I’m not talking about something like PyGame, PyGlet, or Rabbyt, all of which are very good at what they do. What I’m talking about may use these technologies (I’m thinking PyGlet and Rabbyt) but would do so in a way to create an actual “game engine”.

This is something that I have tried to do many times in the past, and I’ve always gotten stuck on the idea of trying to make it very very flexible, so that you could use whichever technology with the engine that you wanted to. But lately I’ve been thinking of a different approach. What about a very specific engine? Something that is very geared to performing one task well. Lets say a 2D scrolling engine. Something with a set level format, easy save and load, a screen system, and maybe some widgets.

Basically I’m thinking of something that will let people who are interested in creating simple games do so very easily. Something that isn’t that doesn’t necessarily do everything, but if you follow some simply steps you can get a “game” going very quickly.

Anyone else interested in something like this? Anyone else interested in working with me on something like this? Or perhaps you have information on a technology that is already there? Or maybe you have information on simple game engine design? I’ve feeling the itch to create some games again using Python, but I havn’t yet found the tool to scratch that itch…maybe the solution is to create on? If you are interested, or have some information, drop me a comment or shoot me an email.

mark…signing off after a long day on the computer not programming Python or video games, and definitely not doing it for himself.

I’d like to thank everyone that commented on my last post, and everyone that has emailed me ideas. They are all very much appreciated. It’s hard keeping up with everything that is happening in the Python world, and sometimes the coolest things are happening in far off places.

I got a few suggestions for Pycairo, which is something that I have considered in the past, but I’ve found it a little bit difficult and time consuming do to the lack of Python specific documentation.

The MDP toolbox also looks pretty cool, I just have no idea what I could possibly do with it!

If anyone else has anymore ideas please let me have them. Anything graphical, non-graphical, game related, swarm theory, random generation, AI, a Rorschach test creator…anything! I’m collecting ideas for this blog and my monthly column so anything that would also really interest new Python programmers would be a huge plus.

Take care and get ready for 3000!

No I’m not dead…even after the recent car accident….I’ve just been busy. Busy writing for columns for the monthly Python Magazine. But that does not mean that his blog is dead! In fact I’ve been spending the last hour looking around the web for something new and cool in the world of Python.

I’m looking for something new to sink my teeth into, something different. I’m looking forward to Python 3000, I’ve been trying to keep up with many of the changes and so far it’s looking really good. But in the mean time there must be something happening in the far off corners of the Python world…where someone is doing something extremely cool.

Please if you have an idea let me know, send me an email, or add a comment to this post. Is there anything that you want me to cover here? A tutorial that you would like? A tutorial that you have written? A new module you wrote? Whatever it is let me know! A new visualization tool? More Python on the web?

I’ve been spending too much time in the world of C++ lately and I’m hungry for some Python…

The first issue of Python Magazine is finally available and they’ve made it freely available via PDF.

The magazine is quite good and I’m please to announces that I’m writing a monthly column for it entitled “Welcome to Python”. So if any of you are wondering why the posts on this blog have slowed down a little, well it’s because I’ve been trying to do double duty lately, writing posts and columns!

Hopefully I’ll be able to balance the two a little bit better in the future, but for October you can check out my article!

I just stumbled on this and I thought I’d pass it onto my fellow python programmers, it’s a python 3000 status update from Guido van Rossum.

Personally I’m looking forward to Python 3.0, I don’t know if I’ll like the break in backwards compatibility but a lot of the changes seem great.

Making the print statement a function is a good choice in my opinion.

So instead of:

print "this is printing"

We’ll be using:

print("this is python 3.0")

Also instead of % to format strings, there will be a format() function, which is so much clearer in my opinion.

There are many other changes (say goodbye to old-style classes) so give the link a read and let me know what you think!

Hello everyone,

I know that this blog has been rather quiet lately, but you can talk to my boss about that…but I think things are going to cool down a bit soon and I will be able to start posting here again regularly, and not just tutorials.

For the next little while I will be away from the computer so I won’t be able to read any posts or moderate any comments…sigh…this means that I will have to turn the comment moderation off and try blocking some words or phrases.

In the meantime please ignore the spam as best you can.

I hope you are all doing well and that you python programming is good.

Also, if anyone has any python projects that they would like me to highlight or take a look at please let me know.

Hey everyone, I’ve been getting hit with a bunch of spam comments over the last few days so I’ve made it so that all comments must be moderated before they will appear.

Sorry about this, I don’t like this form of comment posting, but hopefully after a few days I will be able to switch it back to normal.

And sorry about the lack of posts here, yes I am still alive, it’s just that real life has been working me pretty hard these last few weeks.

I’ve been playing around with my PyGTK app and a new PyGame engine that I am working on from the ground up. Something that I can understand and that I can use. I’ll post more information about it when there is more information…right now it does next to nothing!

So I’ve been working on PyGame for PyWeek lately and I’ve been having a lot of fun. I also took a weekend off from my email so I did not notice that Lord Taran has been creating Spanish translations for a bunch of my PyGTK tutorials.

If you are interested in the Spanish tutorials check them out, or if you are interested in seeing what happened at pyweek and the car crash that was my entry check it out as well.