So here it is the initial release of the Dodger Editor. You can download the source from the google code page. Originally I wanted to wait longer to release the first version, but as time went on and it kept taking longer and longer I realized that if I didn’t release the first version at some point in time I might never release it.

If I had gotten done everything that I wanted to get done then I would be releasing the full first version of the project instead of this incredibly alpha release. So if something doesn’t work don’t be surprised. That being said you should be able to use it for it’s basic functionality. Or at least that’s what I’m hoping.

Installation

Once you have met the requirements:

• Python >= 2.5 http://www.python.org/download/
• GTK+ >= 2.10 http://www.pygtk.org/downloads.html
• PyGTK >= 2.10 http://www.pygtk.org/downloads.html
• pyGObject >= 2.10 http://www.pygtk.org/downloads.html
• pyglet >= 1.1 http://www.pyglet.org/download.html
• PyYAML > 3.0 http://pyyaml.org/wiki/PyYAML
• PyOpenGL 3.x http://pyopengl.sourceforge.net/
• PyGtkGlExt? http://www.k-3d.org/gtkglext/Main_Page

You should be able to install dodger by downloading the and extracting the source tarball. Once you have extracted the source change into the source directory and install using:


python setyup.py install


If you don’t want to install and just want to test dodger out simply follow the above instructions except instead of installing dodger run the following:


python runner.py


Contributing

I still want to setup a dedicated site that will host a mercurial repository of the code but for now I’m going to use the fabulous http://freehg.org site. For now if you want you can pull the source from  http://freehg.org/u/selsine/dodger/:


hg clone http://freehg.org/u/selsine/dodger/


For now any changes that you make or fixes will have to be emailed as a patch but eventually I want to make it much much easier for people to submit fixes.

If you are really interested in contributing to this project let me know via a comment to this post and or an email. Then once all of the source issue are setup we can start working together.

New Features

Since the last release there has been a lot of changes under the hood. The most visible changes for anyone using dodger is the addition of the zoom feature:

zoomed out example

zoomed in example

General Usage

For general usage information please read the README file or General Information page on the google site. It’s pretty rough right now but hopefully over time we’ll be able to work on it.

History

If you are interested in the history of this project you can read the following blog posts to see how everything came about:

• A Simple Python Game Engine?
• More thoughts on the simple Python Game Engine
• Pyglet Level Editor
• Level Editor 0.2
• Level Editor 0.3 (Dodger)

Beware

If you do decide to use or test dodger remember that you are going to find a lot of bugs during the iteration. Please be kind and report the issue.