Game Programming Clinic and Online Gaming at PyCon

[Jeff Rush]

At PyCon this year we're going to have a multi-day game programming clinic and 
challenge.  This is a first-time event and an experiment to find those in the 
Python community who enjoy playing and creating games.  Python has several 
powerful modules for the creation of games among which are PyGame and PyOpenGL.

On Friday evening, Phil Hassey will give an introduction to his game Galcon, 
an awesome high-paced multi-player galactic action-strategy game.  You send 
swarms of ships from planet to planet to take over the galaxy.  Phil will be 
handing out free limited-time licenses to those present.  He will also be glad 
to talk about the development of Galcon using PyGame.

After the Friday PSF Members meeting lets out around 8:40pm, Richard Jones 
will give his 30-60 minute introduction to the PyGame framework so you too can 
get started writing games.

On Saturday evening, Lucio Torre and Alejandro J. Cura, who have come from 
Argentina to give the talk "pyweek: making games in 7 days" Friday afternoon, 
will help people develop their games in the clinic room with mini-talks on 
various game technologies.

On Sunday evening Lucio and Alejandro will be around to help with further 
development issues, and Richard Jones will be back to present more about 
PyGame and help reach a group concensus on what to work on during the 
GameSprint.  Richard also runs PyWeek, a bi-annual python game programming 
challenge online.

Phil will also be back helping people get into playing Galcon and everyone can 
get into multiplayer challenges against those who show up.

And then during the four days of sprinting, the group will compete to produce 
a working game meeting agreed upon requirements and then decide who has best 
achieved those.

This overall gaming track is informal, with people coming and going, and 
others are welcome to get involved in giving mini-talks or showing off their 
creations.

Specific rooms and times can be found on the birds-of-a-feature wiki page at:

     http://us.pycon.org/TX2007/BoF

The wiki page for collecting game clinic ideas is at:

     http://us.pycon.org/TX2007/GamingClinic

And the wiki page for the game sprint is at:

     http://us.pycon.org/TX2007/GameSprint

---
Want to get a head start?  Follow the online lectures about PyGame at:

     http://rene.f0o.com/mywiki/PythonGameProgramming

And to get your laptop ready, check out the installation and testing 
instructions about half way down the page at:

    http://rene.f0o.com/mywiki/LectureOne#line-50

You can also check out the game Galcon at:

    http://www.imitationpickles.org/galcon/index.html

See you later this week,

Jeff Rush
Co-Chair PyCon 2007