Re: [pygame] More Pygame Articles...

[Pete Shinners <shredwheat@mediaone.net>]

> But, doesnt it come down to speed? Isnt
> that what say most game hackers at the studios for Activision or
> THQ or wherever would say. They use C to get down to a lower level to
> get more from the hardware? 


it doesn't just come down to "speed". otherwise game developers would 
still be using only assembly to get rid of the overhead of C compilers.
:] actually, if you look at quake3, id recommends all mod authors and 
developers create all their work in bytecode, not native instructions. 
sure compiling to native code gives a 10-20% speedup, but id seems to 
believe running as interpreted bytecode is worth the performance hit.



> How does SDL really compare with other native Directmedia layers?


directx has the advantage of getting better access to real hardware 
acceleration. SDL certainly can get hardware acceleration, but it's a 
little more "generic" than directx.

on the otherhand, programming for directx is a pain. there's entire 
chapters of books needed to do basic things like open a window. sdl on 
the otherhand is very well put together, plus you get the crossplatform 
compatability.



> And Python is so suited for the evolving handheld game market - thinking
> more next-gen pda/cel phone market 


the biggest problem for python in the embedded world is memory usage. 
it's not made to be stingy on taking up resources. on the other hand, 
python certainly isn't wasteful, and only needs a fraction of the memory 
needed for anything in java.

still, there's projects liky pippy which has a stripped python running 
well in handhelds. the latest generation of handheld devices are 
offering much more memory and processing speed. getting python running 
well on these should really be possible. SDL already has at least some 
level of support for wince, but i'm sure pygame could use some stripping 
down for use on handheld (for example, dropping stuff like 
cdrom/joystick support)




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