Python’s robust string manipulating, an abundance of libraries and an easy shell accessibility makes it a useful language for automation tasks. Python also plays a key role in building tools for game designers and facilitates in tasks like level design and dialogue tree creation. In this article, we will discuss two important Python tools — Pygame and PyKara.
Pygame
Released in the year 2000 and built to be an open source component in Python, Pygame is has been designed for games and multimedia. It is essentially a library built on high compactable SDL (simple direct media layer). Pygame is accessible on various platforms and operating systems through which we can control the logic and graphics of a game without bothering about the backend ramification for engaging audio and video. Some of the requirements to master Pygame are:
- Getting a specific module: Games are advanced and complex applications which require many modules like the following to run the programmes
- Sprite module, which is a collection of classes that help managing structures found in almost every game-type.
- The camera module, which gives a scope of capturing images, watching live streams, and do basic computer vision.
- Understanding variables
- Implementation of while and for loops
- knowledge about conditional statements and boolean logical operators
With the aid of SDL library, Pygame allows real-time computer game development without the interface of mechanisms related to a low-level programming language. The idea behind this method is that most upscaled functions in the games can be obtained from the game logic, which makes it utilise high-level programming language, such as Python to design the game. The games built with Pygame are accessible on Android phones and tablets.
Some of the popular games designed using Pygame are
- Save the date (2013 IndieCade finalist)
- Frets on fire
- Dangerous high school girls in trouble
PyKyra
The fastest and the most recent game development framework for Python is PyKyra. This framework is an extended feature of the Kyra engine. To work on PyKara it is important to understand the Kyra engine:
- It is designed to support top-down, side and symmetric translation
- It is comprised of well-advanced toolchain including sprite editor and encoder
- Kyra is a fast, capable engine with specialised coded algorithms for rendering updates
- The engine supports colour transformations and blending alpha values
- All objects in Kyra are embedded into a regulated hierarchy
- Complex objects can be pointed up or down when drawn. Or mapped in a pre-cached
- The screen can be divided into sub window views with each view having its own object transformations
The extended feature is specially designed for software development in the fields of games and entertainment. PyKyra is an independent package that can be run on various platforms like UNIX, POSIX, Solaris, Linux, and windows. It also supports sound, MPEG videos, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, war multi-channel module files and direct image reading, among others.
