Re: [pygame] Is PyGame dying?

[Olof Bjarnason <olof.bjarnason@xxxxxxxxx>]

2010/1/27 René Dudfield <renesd@xxxxxxxxx>:
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 1:47 AM, Olof Bjarnason <olof.bjarnason@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>>
>> 2010/1/27 Thomas Ibbotson <thomas.ibbotson@xxxxxxxxx>:
>> > 2010/1/27 Olof Bjarnason <olof.bjarnason@xxxxxxxxx>:
>> >> 2010/1/27 Jon <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> >>>
>> >>> Personally I think PyGame is a wonderful API for building any sort of
>> >>> complex animation that is secondary to pure 3D.
>> >>>
>> >>> For example, building beautiful animated menus, or sub-games, or
>> >>> simply
>> >>> handling I/O, it fits like a glove.
>> >>
>> >> Sure, me too, but do you agree there is a certain uncertainty
>> >> concerning PyGame's future?
>> > If you look on the www.pygame.org website you'll notice that
>> > pygame2.0.0-alpha3 was released recently.
>>
>> Cool!
>>
>> >>
>> >> Is someone working on Python3, for example?
>> >>
>> > Yes pygame2/pgreloaded has Python 3.1 support.
>>
>> Nice, I admit I had missed this announcement on the web page.
>>
>> The impression that PyGame was dying came into my mind because a new
>> friend of mine asked about writing Python 2d-games, and that he too
>> had the impression PyGame was not actively developed. Also, my
>> sndarray-question was left undiscussed for five days. It still is left
>> undiscussed. That might however be due to the maintainer of sndarray
>> being on vacation or something, I guess.
>>
>> >
>> > Tom
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://olofb.wordpress.com
>
>
> hi,
>
> yeah, there has been a bit of a slowing down in pygame development recently
> compared to 6 months ago.  Not quite dead... more undead... in zombie mode.
>
> The last pygame release was pretty draining for me personally... with 3
> students and other new developers joining... and the most changes of any
> pygame release so far.  I'm sure it was also draining for other pygame
> contributors too.  The pace was probably too hectic, and after a big push it
> takes time to recover before putting in another big effort (or perhaps going
> back to smaller efforts).
>
> The last couple of months have been difficult for me personally with moving
> countries, a death in my family, and a job change.  So in the past I've
> tended to help out a lot on the mailing list - and haven't been active so
> much recently.  However lots of other people also help out answering on the
> mailing list... I think most questions are being answered by people though.
>
>
> Here is a run down of things that have been happening in pygame development
> terms(that I know of)...
>
>
> Marcus has begun working on pgreloaded again, and made a release recently.
> Hopefully some of these changes can be ported to pygame as well.
>
> Lorenz has been working on his math branch (vectors and such) on and off.
>
> jug & co have been working on their website.
>
> Phil has updated his tinypy python implementation to tinypyC++.  So that it
> can compile a subset of python into C++ code that can run on the iphone.
> This means you can prototype your iphone game with pygame and then use
> tinpyC++ (with type hints) into an iphone game.  You can also target windows
> mobile phones with not too much extra effort.
>
> Pygame is now on other mobile devices, like moblin, nokia s60, pandora, and
> nokia maemo.
>
> A new pygame book has been released for free!
>
> 10-20 games are released on pygame.org every week.
>
> Other pygame related stuff I've been working on since 1.9.1 was released:
>     - SDL 1.2.14 was released (which addressed a couple of hundred bugs)
>     - numpy python3 port (I started on a port, and now there are a couple of
> people who have also begun on getting numpy ready for python 3).
>     - a bunch of website updates
>     - trying to get pygame updated in various distros - mainly through bug
> reports.
>     - getting a pygame category on pypi (this took over 8 months from when I
> first started trying and years from when pypi first started up).
>     - game distribution work (to make it easier for people to release their
> games on different platforms).
>     - investigating techniques to speed up pygame development.
>     - bug fixes/patches.
>
> SDL 1.3 work continues... but maybe this is the year 1.3 will be finished?
> In the mean time it's got a new nick name... 'SDL forever'.
>
> There's lots of other stuff going on around python... libraries and such
> being released.  Probably too much stuff going on for anyone to keep up
> with.  A lot of the interesting things are made around pygame, rather than
> on pygame itself.  eg, http://pygame.org/tags/libraries
>
>
> Unlike commercial efforts, most don't get paid to work on pygame(except for
> the GSOC students once a year).  We also don't care if people use pygame or
> some other library(I've often suggested other libraries or languages to
> people where it's appropriate).  So we don't publicise what we do much, and
> sometimes we don't do much at all either!  On the plus side, people work on
> bits they find fun, no one gets charged for pygame and there are no ads.
> People come and go, as they get interested in things and then move onto
> other things.  It's kind of a nice little community where people make things
> for fun to show their peers and friends.  Being able to distribute our
> games/apps easier and also seeing what is happening in the rest of the
> 'scene' should be easier too.  Also, it should be easier to see what is
> happening in pygame development... so pygame appears less dead.
>
>
> Anyway... in short, development should start picking up again now... but
> hopefully not as frantically as before.  Somewhere inbetween sonic the hedge
> hog speed development and zombie pace would be nice.
>
>
> cu,
>

Thanks for your rigorous answer René.

It was not at all my intention to complain - I just wanted to "wake
up" this mailing list / pygame.

I love pygame, and feel a bit sorry about my initial tone in this thread.

Also, if there is a possibility of donating some dough to pygame, I'd
love to do that to help releave some stress.



-- 
http://olofb.wordpress.com