by Radomir Dopieralski for EuroPython 2012
PyGame continues to be Python’s most popular 2D game library, even though there is growing competition from more modern OpenGL-based libraries. It is still an excellent way to learn how our favorite games work internally and to write similar games ourselves.
During this tutorial I want to introduce the basics of using PyGame to create interactive, animated graphical applications (such as games), and then help the participants make their own start at a simple adventure game, which they can later develop further into projects of their own. I want to concentrate on commonly used techniques and patterns in game development, which are useful no matter what library is used in the implementation. In particular I will be discussing animations, tile-based maps, collision detection, event systems, internal representation of game state and different approaches to code organisation and internal structure of games.
I have previously created a (much simpler) tutorial for creating a turn-based tile-based PyGame game and a couple of games, such as Z-Day and Jelly . I will be using the materials and experiences from those projects in the tutorial.
Please bring your laptop with Python 2.7 and PyGame installed.