New SolarWolf, 1.5

[Peter Strempel]

Pete Shinners wrote:
> Definitely all Python.

I admit I already had looked at the sources to make sure. :)

I suppose a significant amount of the low-level graphics stuff happens
inside the SDL C libraries, which should help performance. But I guess I am
not the person to lecture you about Pygame architecture. :)


> 'Binary Installers'

I noticed the Linux binary installer bundles Python. This annoyed me two
days ago, but right yesterday I got complains from a user of one of my
projects which is linked to Python 2.3 (and expecting this on the endusers
box) who is running Fedora which still has Python 2.2. I think I see your
point. Deployment on Linux sucks...


> When writing a game like this in Python, performance is always a concern. 

SolarWolf runs okay on my old PII 333 MHz box with acceptable performance,
but it's pushing the limits. And I know this isn't what the average user has
at home. I guess with todays hardware even graphic intensive games using
scripting languages should become less of a problem, as SolarWolf
demonstrates. And there is still the option to do some stuff in C, I
personally am an adept fan of a Pyrex and a profiler.


> There's a few other great looking Python games that have gotten pretty mature.
>
>      Pydance, http://icculus.org/pyddr/

Seen it, not my taste (that doesn't mean it's a bad game).

>      Pathological, http://pathological.sourceforge.net/

Addictive stuff, this lives on my harddisc since a couple of months already. :)

What I found interesting with SolarWolf is that it's the game written in a
scripting language which pushes graphics most among those programs I've seen
so far (including FrozenBubble, which is not Python but sort of the same
class). I'm not really a scripting zealot (right tool for the job, rather),
but it's pretty cool to see what actually is possible with Python, and
SolarWolf is a good demonstration concerning this point.

Another interesting Python & Games related project is Devils Whiskey, which
seems to make heavy use of Python as well. Vegastrike comes to my mind, too.


 Peter