[Tutor] Help

[Kent Johnson]

wesley chun wrote:
>> I am trying to learn a programming language good for programming entire
>> games (core functions too)
> 
> check out the PyGame engine:
> http://pygame.org
> 
> download the games written on top of PyGame that appear to match the
> functionality you're looking for.  if you learn Python at the same
> time, tweaking those games and changing their functionality will help
> you learn it even faster.

You should also look at the PyGame Challenge web site:
http://www.pyweek.org/

I'm not a game writer either but I have a few thoughts...my impression 
is that Python and PyGame are a good foundation for hobbyist games. The 
PyGame and PyWeek games are good examples. I doubt that you could write 
a commercial quality game like Final Fantasy using just these tools 
though. Commercial games have highly optimized game engines. Some of 
them use Python as scripting engines for high-level game play; I doubt 
that any commercial games use Python for their core game engine.

On the other hand, you are a long way from being able to write Final 
Fantasy. You need to start small and develop your skills. Python and 
PyGame should be well suited for this.

You might want to read this:
http://tinyurl.com/hc6xc

which says in part, "Starcraft, Everquest and Quake were all made by 
teams of professionals who had budgets usually million dollar plus. More 
importantly though, all of these games were made by people with a lot of 
experience at making games. They did not just decide to make games and 
turned out mega-hit games, they started out small and worked their way 
up. This is the point that anyone who is interested in getting into game 
development needs to understand and repeat, repeat, repeat until it 
becomes such a part of your mindset that you couldn’t possibly 
understand life without this self evident, universal truth."

and here are more links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_programming
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/gameprog.html

I found these all by Googling "game programming language"; there are 
many more interesting links there.

Good luck,
Kent