PyGame Implementation

PyGame Implementation Specification

What this document is about

We want to enable game development in a way that allows a variety of levels of use.

1. Beginners who want to experiment with game development techniques in a simple environment. This document does not consider this case.
2. Slightly more advanced beginners and students who are starting to experiment with Python but might need a lot of handholding. This document is not primarily concerned with this case but may discuss it.
3. Advanced students and game developers who want to code in Python and can handle an API and the API documentation. The rest of this document discusses this case.
4. Hardcore professional game developers wanting to build games that push the limits of the OLPC and want to code in C or C++. This is discussed elsewhere: SDL Implementation

Choice of API: PyGame

The overwhelming leader for Python game development is PyGame. PyGame is built upon SDL, which is a cross-platform library supporting a variety of game-related interfaces, including graphics, sound, video, and input devices. SDL has been implemented on a very wide variety of hardware.

PyGame works on most major computer systems and has been in use for some time. Some commercial games have shipped with PyGame, and a whole lot of tutorials and sample code, as well as open source games, have been written using PyGame.

In a world where we would like end users to be building their own games and developing for the OLPC environment, PyGame will give those users a leg up with all of the available material for game development. See Content and OLPC on open source software.

If you're thinking of developing games in Python for the OLPC, please start by prototyping them in PyGame. At the moment, there is no guarantee that the code will run unmodified, but the port should be simple.

API details

(undergoing editing RIGHT NOW)

PyGame standard modules that will or should be included

• Cursors -- manages the hardware cursor. We may not need/want to support the load_xbm module; instead we may want to add support for a standard image file format supported by the tools on the XO.
• Display -- required support for setting up a display, but the number of modes is limited and the fullscreen option should be ignored. Existing PyGame code that tries to set up displays intelligently should still work if it was coded correctly, but all roads should probably lead to the same display setup result.

PyGame standard modules that will not or may not be included

• Cdrom -- manages CD drives; we don't have a CD so no need or value for this API.

Additional items that are not in PyGame but need support

<more to come -- kentquirk>