ANN: pygame 1.8 released

[René Dudfield]

Hello,

a new version of pygame is out.

http://www.pygame.org/
        Pygame is a set of Python modules designed for writing games.
Pygame adds functionality on top of the excellent SDL library. This
allows you to create fully featured games and multimedia programs in
the python language. Pygame is highly portable and runs on nearly
every platform and operating system.

http://www.pygame.org/wiki/about
        Silliness built in.  Does not require OpenGL.  Multi core CPUs
can be used easily.  Uses optimized C, and Assembly code for core
functions.  Comes with many Operating systems.  Truly portable.  It's
Simple, and easy to use.  Many games have been published.  You control
your main loop.  Does not require a GUI to use all functions. Fast
response to reported bugs.  Small amount of code.  Modular.

http://pygame.org/whatsnew.shtml
        Some of the changes...

* pygame.mask for pixel perfect collision detection
* pygame.scrap for clipboard support
* new and improved sprite groups, including layers, automatically
selecting fastest update mode(full screen or dirty rect updates), and
blend modes...
* blending support for filling and blitting surfaces. ADD, SUB, MULT,
DIV etc.
* saving surfaces as jpeg and png
* buffer access for Surface and Sound objects
* numpy, and numeric support for pygame.surfarray and
pygame.pixelarray
* PixelArray, which can be used instead of numpy - without the
dependency.
* smooth scale function written in mmx assembly with C fallback.
* More functions release the GIL for multithreaded use.
* lots of speed ups to many functions via better python wrapping.
* color thresholding, bounding box finding for images, and surface
averaging.
* massive documentation updates (which have been available on the
website for a while already).
* pygame.time.Clock.tick() is more cpu friendly.
* updates to example programs.
* new windows, and mac installers.
* hardware acceleration updates for overlays and opengl.
* porting work to different platforms.
* heaps of bug fixes including SRCALPHA blitting fixes, 64bit fixes,
sound system fixes.

Plus there have been lots of changes to SDL itself since the last
pygame release. http://www.libsdl.org/release/changes-1.2.html.

* lots of stuff really... but those are some of the nice things. Read
the what's new page for full details http://pygame.org/whatsnew.shtml


cheers,