Python game programming?

Jurie Horneman jhorneman at pobox.com
Mon Jan 7 16:38:34 EST 2002


I am a game developer. I have a little experience with Python, but I
haven't used it in an actual game yet. However, I am very impressed by
the language. I think for many games, game development can be sped up
and quality increased if the game logic is written in Python, because
it is easy to change and can be written by people who need not be
expert programmers. This makes a lot of business sense.

In my experience, most games nowadays use one of three scripting
languages: Lua, Python, and custom languages, the latter still being
very popular. I think scripting languages can do more than they do
now, but changing production methods, proven architectures, and team
structures takes time.

My instinct tells me you could write a whole game in Python as long as
you're not expecting to achieve the state of the art in performance -
which you don't really need. I think languages such as Python with the
appropriate libraries can lower the barrier of entry on game
development, which is a big help to injecting more sorely needed
creativity into the industry.

I would like to see numbers (ie profiling) on an actual game before I
would believe that AI or game logic on a game such as Diablo 2 would
be too complicated to do in Python.

I also am skeptical about the claim that a lot of Playstation games
use Lisp. Having worked on one and having seen many in development, I
can say that in my experience most are written in low-level C / C++
mixed with assembly language. This is necessary to get the required
performance out of a five year old platform with a 33 MHz processor
and 2 Megs of RAM. However, scripting languages are still used even
under these constraints, and Naughty Dog, the developers of Crash
Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter have developed their own version of Lisp
for their games.

Jurie Horneman



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