[Edu-sig] Just ran into Kevin Altis...

[kirby urner]

On 5/14/06, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

> Anyway, I am confronted with a series of choice points and paths as I look
> at how to build a Self-like inspector (which needs GUI widgets including a
> text editor):
> * 3D right now?
> * How to put up interactive widgets (custom vs. wx, tk, pyGame, GLUT, other)?
> * Whether to keep the programming widgets in the same world window as the
> application or have them in another window (and/or world) or even another
> VM interacting over the network?
> Likely there is some deeply Pythonic (glue-ish and platform agnostic) way
> to approach these decisions I don't see yet.

All good R&D Paul.  In my book, these are some of the deep issues, and
finding the right combination of libraries is not an easy job.
Regardless of the ultimate fate of your particular project, you're
adding to your repertoire plus carving out the basis of some kind of
graphical framework others might use, and that's a positive thing.

Incidentally, I just bought Civilization IV for my daughter [1], so we
could give my wife's new computer a workout in the newly rented
workspace [2], and she (my daughter) noticed right away that it
contains Python bindings of some kind.  I haven't researched this yet,
but I do find it exciting that a high powered game engine would make
Python a part of its commercial front end, even mentioning Python on
the box.

>From the on-line docs:
"""
The Python scripting language is fully integrated throughout the game
and offers experienced modders a chance to really strut their stuff!
People with some programming skills will be able to do things to alter
the game in interesting and extraordinary ways. For instance, all of
the game interface screens are exposed to Python, so modders will be
able to change the information that's displayed, as well as how it's
positioned on the screen. We also use Python to create and generate
all of the random map scripts that are included in the game. So,
players will now have the ability to add scripted events to the game
like automatically generating units when a tile is reached, having
specific situations trigger automatic war, or get this, bringing back
Civil Wars caused by unrest, Civ II style!
"""
[ http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/blog_03.htm ]

We can use Python to bring back automatic civil wars caused by unrest,
woo hoo.  How about automatic peace?  Maybe its time to cue the
Quakers, get 'em more into snake charming.  Russ?[3]

Kevin is a big gamer by the way, but mostly Mac OS X based.

Kirby

[1]  http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/home.htm

[2]  http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2006/05/personal-workspace.html

[3]  Russ is Python programmer I know from OSCON and Quaker-P.  But he
calls himself an "angry economist" so is he part of the solution or
part of the problem? http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/