Python vs. C++ Builder - speed of development

[Bengt Richter]

On Mon, 03 Feb 2003 06:16:38 GMT, "Brandon Van Every" <vanevery at 3DProgrammer.com> wrote:

>Bengt Richter wrote:
>>
>> You may find that if you separate them, Python may be best for one
>> part and
>> C++ for another. And Python will let you integrate the parts easily.
>
>Have you tried writing a game AI?  It's clear enough to me that Python is
>useful for *some part* of the problem.  But I'm the kind of guy who believes
>a lot of so-called AI is just heavy duty number crunching.  That's what the
>C++ and the understanding of domain specific topology is for.  It has to go
>fast, so that lotsa possibilities can be tried.  Python is for glueing those
>possibilities together.
I haven't gotten much of a picture yet of what kind of game you are making.
Spherical parcheesi? Why are you interested in meshing a sphere with pentagonal
regions of triangles (I got that impression anyway)? Do you want to paint
regions as woods, fields, roads, etc. and have a way to look up things associated
with particular triangles? And be able to walk from triangle to triangle and
know where you are both in 3D and in your data base? Are you looking for help
translating a mouse click on the 3D image to triangle id/coordinates to data indices?
Or are you just navigating via neigbor boundary crossings, walking N/S/E/W etc?

(Is your "sphere" undeformed in the radial direction, BTW, or can you have
hills and valleys -- or even caves and tunnels, which could all be deformations
of a spherical surface? That would start to get tricky as far as location info
tied to data is concerned (at least it wouldn't just be arrays and tricky index
calculations).)

Do you need to zoom out to view the curved 3D sphere, or are you always looking at
a small region, so the neighbor connectivity is what matters, the view being
essentially flat? Or are you going to have views from a spaceship continuously
from outer space to landing?

IOW, what are the elements of the playing environment, and how is the environment
space connected and described. Is it all just a sphere? Etc., etc.

Bottom line: What did you come to c.l.p to find?

Regards,
Bengt Richter