PyGameZine launched. See http://pygame.org for details.

2011-11-20 Thread illume
Hey ya,

today we launched the first issue of PyGameZine.

For more info, please see the pygame website: 
http://www.pygame.org/


cheers!
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Python 3.0 C API migration tools, or docs?

2008-12-04 Thread illume
Hi,

are there migration tools for C API migration to python 3?

I'm sure there must be some code somewhere to help change stuff over
right?

I don't see any docs for migrating code from 2.x to 3.x either:
http://docs.python.org/3.0/c-api/index.html


Help needed with this!


cheers,
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Re: Python 3.0 C API migration tools, or docs?

2008-12-04 Thread illume
Cool thanks Benjamin!

Maybe it should be in a wiki as well?  So that as people convert their
modules we can add notes as well.

I started a wiki with that in mind here:
http://wiki.python.org/moin/cporting


It'd be good if there was a link from the 2to3 docs, and in the C API
docs to either/both of these resources.


I thought there'd be much more help for people migrating considering
the 2to3 tool exists... but I'll get over it... hehe.


cheers,



On Dec 5, 1:23 pm, Benjamin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Dec 4, 7:45 pm, illume <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
>
> > are there migration tools for C API migration to python 3?
>
> > I'm sure there must be some code somewhere to help change stuff over
> > right?
>
> > I don't see any docs for migrating code from 2.x to 3.x 
> > either:http://docs.python.org/3.0/c-api/index.html
>
> At the moment all that is officially available is this rather
> incomplete howto:http://docs.python.org/howto/cporting.html
>
>
>
> > Help needed with this!
>
> > cheers,
>
>

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Re: Strengths and weaknesses of Pygame vs. pyglet vs. PyOpenGL?

2008-12-07 Thread illume
hello,

PyOpenGL also has a raw module which includes python bindings closer
to the C calls... however mostly you want to use the nicer more
pythonic versions of functions.

Recent pyopengl 3.x versions have been optimized for speed, including
optional C level optimizations.  So I imagine they are faster than
pyglets wrappers(profiling/testing needed).  PyOpenGL is also used a
lot more by non-game people, so a wider array of functions are used.

It's very unfortunate that pyglet and pyopengl don't share code...
however recent versions of pyopengl tried to reuse some of pyglets
code... not sure how much has been shared though.  Maybe at some point
they will come together.

For now pyglet has created a fork in the python+opengl community,
where the same code can't be reused automatically between the two as
the opengl wrappers are slightly different.  However it's not terribly
difficult to port code from one to the other, as some projects have
done.



pygame doesn't require opengl be supported by the video card - it can
use many different video drivers to get the job done.  It's nice to be
able to avoid using the 3D parts of gfx cards if you can - to reduce
power consumption, and make your game run on more computers.

pygame is also much more portable, has more people using it, has more
developers, and a stable API.  Code you wrote 5 years ago will most
likely still work.  Code you wrote for older versions of pyglet will
not work without changes.

pygame is simpler to learn, since it doesn't require you to know how
to create classes or functions.  Whereas pyglet requires you to sub
class to do anything.

http://pygame.org/wiki/about


* disclaimer - I'm a pygame developer, and have in the past
contributed to pyopengl - so obviously I prefer pygame and pyopengl.




On Dec 8, 12:53 pm, alex23 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Dec 8, 11:23 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > Does pyglet use PyOpenGL as its OpenGL wrapper? If not, any idea why?
> > Seems like it would be a fairly substantial duplication of effort.
>
> Taken from:http://groups.google.com/group/pyglet-users/msg/832b15389fccd28d
>
>
>
> >> IIRC pyglet tries to minimize dependencies, so PyOpenGL won't be
> >> used.  However, pyglet's wrapping of OpenGL isn't meant to be
> >> complete; it's only what pyglet itself uses.  You'll need to use
> >> PyOpenGL for the rest.
> > That was more or less the original plan.  pyglet wraps OpenGL at the
> > lowest level, so it only provides glVertex3f, glVertex2d, etc.,
> > whereas PyOpenGL also provides polymorphic functions such as glVertex.
> [...]
> > pyglet provides all of the error-checking functionalities that
> > PyOpenGL does (though these can be disabled for performance).  At
> > last check, pyglet was significantly faster than PyOpenGL 3, but
> > slower than PyOpenGL 2.
>
>

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Re: Strengths and weaknesses of Pygame vs. pyglet vs. PyOpenGL?

2008-12-08 Thread illume
On Dec 8, 7:31 pm, alex23 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Dec 8, 2:26 pm, illume <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > pygame is simpler to learn, since it doesn't require you to know how
> > to create classes or functions.
>
> I'm not sure if I'd be quick to tout that as an advantage... :)

Hi,

It's easier to teach only requiring *using* classes, and functions
than *creating* them.  This is important if it's being used to teach
programming - as you don't need to teach people two fairly large
concepts before you can do anything.

People are motivated by seeing results.  So it can be good to let
people do things without requiring much learning.  Anyone teaching
object oriented program will tell you that it's a hard concept to
present to people.  So if you can avoid teaching parts of OO, and a
bunch of other concepts at the same time, it's easier for people to
handle.

It's quite nice to be able to handle events without requiring
callbacks.  Everyone hates callbacks, but lots of people use them for
event systems.  However callbacks aren't needed at all for event
programming.  Instead you can get an event as an object and then
process it.

Callbacks for events made more sense in languages like smalltalk where
events and method calls were closely aligned concepts(method calls are
messages in smalltalk).  However in languages where you don't have
such a close conceptual alignment(such as python), making events
objects instead of method calls is much easier to understand.

Also python has very slow function calls, so avoiding using callbacks
is also faster.

Imagine using callbacks for files?  So you would have to subclass
file, and make a read_data method.  Then your class will call your
read data method when some data arrives.  Kind of annoying, and not
needed.


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Re: Strengths and weaknesses of Pygame vs. pyglet vs. PyOpenGL?

2008-12-08 Thread illume
On Dec 8, 8:59 pm, alex23 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Dec 8, 7:18 pm, illume <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > It's easier to teach only requiring *using* classes, and functions
> > than *creating* them.  This is important if it's being used to teach
> > programming - as you don't need to teach people two fairly large
> > concepts before you can do anything.
>
> I'm just kind of aghast at the idea of "teaching" anyone how to
> program games by using large, imperative chunks of code. I don't see
> functions as being a "fairly large concept" at all, and utterly vital
> to being able to write anything but the most basic 'hello world'
> example code.
>

Yes, teaching hello world without requiring the creation classes is a
*good thing*.  Imagine having to create classes to make a hello world
program? You'd have a typical java hello world program.  This means
you need to explain the concept of OO before they can do hello world.

It's about teaching concepts separately, rather than requiring them to
be taught all at once.  If you don't need to use something, then why
bother using it?  Just for purity?  Python has a long history of not
making everything classes.

So I see requiring the creation of classes to do 'hello world' as
being un-pythonic and overly complex.  I also see it getting in the
way of seeing results, which is important when intially learning
programming.



> > Also python has very slow function calls, so avoiding using callbacks
> > is also faster.
>
> Wouldn't it be better to teach people the basics of coding -before-
> setting out to optimise their code?

I was explaing the advantages of avoiding callbacks, and avoiding
requiring the creation of classes.  I think it's simpler, and faster
to avoid callbacks.  I was not saying that it's better to optimize
peoples code before teaching people the basics of programming.


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pygame 1.8.1 released

2008-08-05 Thread illume
Hello,

Stick a fork in it, it's baked... nice and toasty. 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.

Over 1000 open source games have been released that use pygame, so
there are lots of examples to learn from.

http://pygame.org/whatsnew.shtml
Many bug fixes and improvements, including:

* BLEND_RGBA_* blitters and blenders to go with the BLEND_RGB_* blend
modes.
* documentation updates (mainly for new sprite classes released in
1.8.0)
* sound fixes, and streaming some music from file like objects
* image saving fixes
* greatly expanded tests
* Pixelarray, and surfarray updates and fixes.
* Enhanced Color class, reimplemented in C for speed.
* New Windows and Mac binary installers.


See the what's new page for full details http://pygame.org/whatsnew.shtml

Many thanks to Marcus, Lenard, Brian, Nicholas, Charlie Nolan, Nirav
Patel, Forrest Voight, Charlie Nolan, Frankie Robertson, John Krukoff,
Lorenz Quack, Nick Irvine, Zhang Fan and everyone else who helped out
with this release.


Next release will include the physics engine, Webcam support, enhanced
easy and automatic multithread support amongst other goodies -- they
have been in development for over 3 months full time so far.



cheers,
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Re: Python 2.6 and wrapping C libraries on Windows

2008-04-30 Thread illume
Hi,

after a little research it appears that win9x is not supported by the
msvcr90.dll run time.

Can you confirm this Lenard?

Has anyone tested the new python binaries that link to msvcr90.dll on
win9x machines?

cheers,




On May 1, 3:05 pm, "L. Lindstrom" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> L. Lindstrom wrote:
> > Christian Heimes wrote:
> >> L. Lindstrom schrieb:
> [snip]
> >>> [B]esides heap management and FILE pointers, is there any reason SDL, or
> >>> any C dependency, needs to link to the same C run-time as Python? If I
> >>> ensure SDL frees memory it allocates and does not directly access a file
> >>> opened by Python can I just use another C run-time such as msvcrt?
>
> >> Your analysis of the problem and the implication of mixing CRTs is
> >> correct. However ...
>
> >> It should be trivial to modify the build systemof SDL so that the
> >> manifest is integrated into the DLLs. Everything else is a hack. It
> >> *should* work and in reality it *does* work for most cases. But someday
> >> you'll hit a solid wall and get strange and hard to debug segfaults.
>
> [snip]
> > Linking to msvcr90.dll is possible with MinGW. The problem is with the
> > configure scripts. So I can run configure against msvcrt.dll, then
> > switch to mscvr90.dll for make. If this works I will make SDL and a test
> > program available on-line so someone can find the appropriate manifests.
>
> Here is my attempt to link SDL and a test program with msvcr90.dll. It
> can be found athttp://www3.telus.net/len_l/pygame. The md5sum is:
>
> f5b71d9934d35c35a24b668ad8023146 *VC-2008-Run-Time-test.zip
>
> Both lack a manifest. The test program and SDL work when a surrogate
> run-time is provided, a renamed msvcr71.dll . So if someone can show me
> the necessary manifest to make SDL use the C run-time installed by the
> Python 2.6 installer I would appreciate it. SDL is built with MinGW so I
> doubt I can distribute the run-time with it.
>
> --
> Lenard Lindstrom
> "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" % ('len-l', 'telus', 'net')

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Re: Python 2.6 and wrapping C libraries on Windows

2008-04-30 Thread illume
hi again,

I should have said, the msvcr90.dll does not work on win9x machines -
as well as not being supported by ms.


cu,



On May 1, 4:02 pm, illume <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> after a little research it appears that win9x is not supported by the
> msvcr90.dll run time.
>
> Can you confirm this Lenard?
>
> Has anyone tested the new python binaries that link to msvcr90.dll on
> win9x machines?
>
> cheers,
>
> On May 1, 3:05 pm, "L. Lindstrom" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > L. Lindstrom wrote:
> > > Christian Heimes wrote:
> > >> L. Lindstrom schrieb:
> > [snip]
> > >>> [B]esides heap management and FILE pointers, is there any reason SDL, or
> > >>> any C dependency, needs to link to the same C run-time as Python? If I
> > >>> ensure SDL frees memory it allocates and does not directly access a file
> > >>> opened by Python can I just use another C run-time such as msvcrt?
>
> > >> Your analysis of the problem and the implication of mixing CRTs is
> > >> correct. However ...
>
> > >> It should be trivial to modify the build systemof SDL so that the
> > >> manifest is integrated into the DLLs. Everything else is a hack. It
> > >> *should* work and in reality it *does* work for most cases. But someday
> > >> you'll hit a solid wall and get strange and hard to debug segfaults.
>
> > [snip]
> > > Linking to msvcr90.dll is possible with MinGW. The problem is with the
> > > configure scripts. So I can run configure against msvcrt.dll, then
> > > switch to mscvr90.dll for make. If this works I will make SDL and a test
> > > program available on-line so someone can find the appropriate manifests.
>
> > Here is my attempt to link SDL and a test program with msvcr90.dll. It
> > can be found athttp://www3.telus.net/len_l/pygame. The md5sum is:
>
> > f5b71d9934d35c35a24b668ad8023146 *VC-2008-Run-Time-test.zip
>
> > Both lack a manifest. The test program and SDL work when a surrogate
> > run-time is provided, a renamed msvcr71.dll . So if someone can show me
> > the necessary manifest to make SDL use the C run-time installed by the
> > Python 2.6 installer I would appreciate it. SDL is built with MinGW so I
> > doubt I can distribute the run-time with it.
>
> > --
> > Lenard Lindstrom
> > "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" % ('len-l', 'telus', 'net')

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dropping win98 support? was Re: Python 2.6 and wrapping C libraries on Windows

2008-05-01 Thread illume
Ah, why is that?

There's still at least 1.1% of people using win98, if you believe this
source of stats:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

I just noticed that win9x winme and win nt are all being dropped from
python.

I know they are old and crufty, but there's still heaps of people
using them.

Someone pointed me to the pep, where the un-support seems planned:
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0011/


Seems like a lot of people using it, so it's still worthwhile making
2.6 work with win98.





On May 1, 10:09 pm, Christian Heimes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> illume schrieb:
>
> > Hi,
>
> > after a little research it appears that win9x is not supported by the
> > msvcr90.dll run time.
>
> > Can you confirm thisLenard?
>
> > Has anyone tested the new python binaries that link to msvcr90.dll on
> > win9x machines?
>
> It doesn't matter to use because Python 2.6 and 3.0 require at least
> Windows 2000 SP4. The 9x, ME and NT series aren't supported any more.
>
> Christian

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Re: dropping win98 support? was Re: Python 2.6 and wrapping C libraries on Windows

2008-05-02 Thread illume
On May 2, 8:37 am, "Terry Reedy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "illume" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> | Ah, why is that?
>
> Were any of the reasons given inhttp://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0011/
> unclear?
> It appears you are already aware of MS's non-support of Win98


Hello,

It seems the main reason is for ease of maintenance.  However the Pep
title is misleading with regards to win9x+winMe+win2k - which is where
my confusion, questions and argument came from.
"Title: Removing support for little used platforms"

There are still *lots* of people who still use win95, 98, 98se, me,
and win2k - as shown by the statistics I linked to in a previous
post.  If you want more statistics about the number of people using
what OS they are fairly easy to find with a search engine.  One day
win9x will be finally dead, but that's not yet(and the w3c stats show
it's usage actually increasing in march!).

It is probably way too late in the process to put back code - and as
you say no python developers have volunteered.  So I won't argue any
more for it to come back.

We'll just have to recommend a different python implementation than
2.6 or 3.0 for people who want to support people with these old
computers.


cheers,
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