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 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list