User:Mchua/Braindumps/Getting started developing

Documenting my progress on becoming one of the OLPC Developers (I'm coming into it much later than you'd think).

Installing Sugar

I run Ubuntu Gutsy, so I used the Debian packages.

Navigating Sugar

Since I've played with XOs before, I'm relatively comfortable navigating and using Sugar as a "normal user."

Picking a development stack

My first target project is linking GASP and Pippy in some way (and/or helping to create a GASP activity), so Pygame is my stack of choice. OLPCGames is therefore also something I should learn.

Learning pygame

Having somewhat rustily used pygame for several projects before, but non-recently enough that I could wipe my brain-slate clean and start as a "beginner," I vowed to spend a half-hour setting up and playing with Pygame to get my feet wet and started. I already had pygame installed and knew python, and didn't need to know that much pygame, so a half-hour spent fooling around with this tutorial had me going. (Before doing that, it's useful to download these files first.

My "learning" game: File:Bombsaway.zip (to run, unzip, go into the folder, and run bombsaway.py - you need to have pygame installed.)

Creating an Activity

Next step: making Bombsaway an activity. Game development HOWTO and about an hour later, it is. Renamed "birdsplat."

Learning GASP

About 15 minutes with this tutorial more or less did it. I don't know all the commands, but it seems straightforward enough that if there's a list of commands given, I could follow.

Reading existing code

I want to work with Pippy - specifically, to see whether it's feasible to use GASP within it - so I got the Pippy code and started looking around. cjb said the pygame files were in the library/pippy folder, and putting gasp files in there as well should do the trick. It seemed to.