Homework help requested (not what you think!)

[PythonAB]

On 17 jul 2013, at 08:35, alex23 wrote:

> On 17/07/2013 8:43 AM, John Ladasky wrote:
>> The kids all claim to be interested.  They all want to write the next great 3D video game.  Thus, I'm a little surprised that the kids don't actually try to sit down and code without me prompting them.  I think that they're disappointed when I show them how much they have to understand just to write a program that plays Tic Tac Toe.
> 
> One possible approach would be to pick existing games developed in PyGame and assist them to modify or extend them. This can be a lot less overwhelming than starting a game from scratch, and exposes them to the basic concepts such as the main event loop, separating out logic from display etc. Code reading is as valuable a skill as code writing.
> 
> Another possibility is using a more extensive framework like Unity, which provides a lot of the toolchain to simplify the development process. While Unity doesn't support Python by default, it does provide Boo, which is Python-inspired. It's also built on top of the Mono framework, and I believe people have had some success with using .NET's IronPython with it.

another vote for Unity here...
We teach that at the filmschool here in Holland and it's a
really well supported package.
There's a free version and it "exports" to Windows, OSX,
Linux, Playstation, XBOX, iPhone etc etc
But that comes at the cost already mentioned by Alex above...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine)
http://unity3d.com/

One step more advanced, but only available on Windows, is
the CryEngine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryengine
http://mycryengine.com/
They also have a free version but again, no Python scripting
by default.


Another one to bring into attention may be Panda3D:
http://www.panda3d.org/
That has full Python support.

Don't forget that all these engines require you to build your
assets yourself, outside the engine.
This means that you have to go into a 3D program like Blender
to create characters, environments and creatures.

greets
Arno Beekman