Hi Wondering if anyone here has looked the latest PyGame? http://pygame.seul.org/ Looks like there is some very useful stuff in there - for example CDROM + Joystick drivers etc.. Could be useful for improving installations, tutorials, inteface Joystick to 3D graphics/Math functions, Lightflow, motivational progamming.. lots of blit functions for animation.. for teaching progamming using game context of analyis and design... The recent thread on CS now and in the good old days when computers were driven by rubber bands, reminds me that the prespetn metaphors of widgets and wodgets adn dominance of unimaginative, insanely complex GUIs and operting systems has tended to obsccure some of teh basic things about using computers. For example - when you look ata screen you are looking at a display. How does it get there? How do you change it etc.? I dont mean one shoull take the vacuum cleaner apart everytime you want tidy the house, but at least once in once life, preferably at an early age, take it apart and put it back together. Pygame seems interesting in that you can jump in making stuff and thinkning about logic or gameplay, but also can poke around lower level, deal with interfaces to physical and virtual devices.. some kids really enjoy that. PyGame is thoroughly cross-platform because it is based on SDL http://www.libsdl.org/ <quote> Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide fast access to the graphics framebuffer and audio device. It is used by MPEG playback software, emulators, and many popular games, including the award winning Linux port of "Civilization: Call To Power." Simple DirectMedia Layer supports Linux, Win32, BeOS, MacOS, Solaris, IRIX, and FreeBSD. SDL is written in C, but works with C++ natively, and has bindings to several other languages, including Ada, Eiffel, ML, Perl, and Python. [also jokes: A little girl had just finished her first week of school. "I'm wasting my time," she said to her mother. "I can't read, I can't write - and they won't let me talk!" ] </quote> Personally I have never been a game player, so I don't know about all this. They always bored me. Longest ever was couple of days with Sim City, and last summer for a day 'The Sims' with my niece, but I was fascinated by the idea of Sim City and what kind of stuff one could develop beyond it. My idea of computer games was alsways graphic software, music, Forth/Lingo/Python/Zope/Flash programming, etc.. First thing I ever did on my Amiga was bootup a version of Conways game of Life. Then went on to exploring realtime granular synthesis using RGS, and other magical soudn and graphic software written by a brilliant friend. You can read about them at http://www.echonyc.com/~jhhl/software.html I did not sleep much that first week I remember -- hooked me on computers.and wanting to learn how to program. My Amiga background tells me cross-platform multimedia library + Python abatraction interface is a GOOD thing. What's you opinion? - Jason ___________________________________________________________ Jason CUNLIFFE = NOMADICS['Interactive Art and Technology']