Python for Commercial Games?

[John Roth]

"Kevin Riggle" <vj$ri^gg#guess#l55e at mt$*guess#&cn1e#t.!@n()et> wrote in
message news:9haoiv$jnv$1 at mtc1.mtcnet.net...
> I *do* realize that I'm posting to comp.lang.python , so please humor me
> anyway...
>
> I am in process of designing a computer game;  problem is, I want to at
> least have a snowball's chance in Hades of selling the game.  My question:
> Would it be possible to write the dang thing in Python (PyWin), or is
C/C++
> the better option in the Windows-centric world of game development right
> now?  Thanks in advance,
>
> Kevin

Most commercial quality games use two languages. The "game engine" is
usually written in C/C++ with Assembler for the really time critical pieces,
and the actual "game" is written in a scripting language of some kind. Older
games tended to use purpose built scripting languages, some recent languages
use Perl or Python.

In other words, the game engine itself does the common infrastructure, the
script
does the actual work of figuring out that you can get the hammer out of the
box
when you open it, but you can't get the sword out unless you close the box
and then
break the glass with the hammer (example from Zork: Grand Inquisitor.) The
seperation of function is absolutely vital for a commercial game team of a
dozen
or six (dozen) people. You don't want your game designers writing in C, and
you
don't want to tie your C coders up doing the designer's scripting for them.

So, yes. Python is absolutely appropriate for commercial quality games.
However,
you're not going to do any modern, graphics intensive game completely in
Python.
You could do a wizard text adventure, however. I don't think there's any
market for
them at the moment. <sigh>

John Roth
>
>