Python game programming?

[Pete Shinners]

Jordan wrote:

> I'm interested in doing game development with Python, but I'm beginning to 
> wonder about the feasability.  Someone recently posted a real-world example 
> of Python being 700x slower than C, which would obviously be bad for games.  
> I realize that real-time 3d is probably out of the question, but what about 
> a 2d isometric engine like Baldur's Gate or Diablo?  Would it be possible 
> to make something like that using PyGame?  If not, which lang should I use 
> (I have some experience with C/C++, but I'd have to "refresh" my memory)?  
> Would Delphi be a better choice than C/C++ for this sort of thing?  Thanks 
> in advance for your time and help.


also remember games like quake3 and unreal run as intepreted bytecode. 
although, the language is a bit more efficient/simpler than python. 
compiling the quake3 bytecode to native dll's on windows yeilds a 5-10% 
improvement (if i remember correctly).

i've written games like solarwolf and getting over 40fps with python is 
not a problem, in fact a large percentage of the runtime is still spent 
inside C graphics code.

using pygame i'd say your program will run about 15% slower than a 
similar program written in C using SDL. pygame and sdl are good for a 
lot of games, but don't expect high framerates for fullscreen scrolling. 
this is a slightly 'weak' area for current version of SDL on software 
display devices. expect about 20-30 fps for that type of game, but it 
jumps up to around 100 if you use directx hardware or linux dga.