[pygame] Re: Pygame, pyglet, 2d, 3d, and performance (reflexions/discussion)

[Santiago Romero <sromero@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm answering to all in a single message:


I was asking to all you because I'm trying to select the technology to work on for the next years (for coding 2D stuff), and I don't want to select one that forces me to stick to powerful computers (discarding tablets/phones) or low-res modes (640x480 / 800x600) that does not look nice in nowadays native-hires monitors (and that show pixels-like-fists in fullscreen mode).


[Zack Baker]
> Pygame 2.0........

What is supposed to give us Pygame 2.0? maybe the option to use opengl as a backend for the blitting (rendering)?


[Ian Mallet]
> But, in fact, CPUs are fast enough to run 2D graphics.

Yes, I know that CPU-power nowadays is OK. I wrote lots of 2D stuff in my old 486DX 33Mhz that ran at 30 or even 60 fps... and today the simplest computer has > 1 Ghz of CPU and 2D-accelerated cards... Yes, I agree that CPU power *on computers* is OK.

But I don't want to be asking for a 3Ghz-quad-core computing so that the player can run a simple game in his TV in FullHD, not to mention that tablets and mobile phones have 3D acceleration but poor 2D performance and <= 1 Ghz ARM processors...


[Toni Alatalo]
> So with old style, do you mean pushing pixels to an display surface?

Not really, but it's nice to have the chance to do it. I don't mean also that I write functions to draw primitives (nowadays, a few years ago I prefer to do it instead of using libraries like SDL_gfx). I really meant that I like to deal "manually" with things.

> Some do have used OpenGL with Pygame for ever, with PyOpenGL etc. I think ..

Can pygame (event system, "game loop", etc) can be used among with PyOpenGl, using the last one just for "the blitting"? 

I mean: can an already working pygame game be modified only in the "blitting" part to render the sprites with OpenGL (modifying only the blit()?

> Some people are enthusiastic about WebGL as it allows them to make *2d* games powerfully with the browser techs.

 I've tested HTML5 / _javascript_ and got very disappointed with the results. I ported an old sdl game I wrote and it worked perfectly in desktop browsers but performance was ridiculous in iPad and Android dual-1Ghz tablets, because canvas is not 2D-accelerated... I hope WebGL works diferently ...


[Carlos Zuniga]
> Another nice library you can use is PySFML, programming in it is
> somewhat similar to pygame (compared to pyglet which I have tried just
> a little, no idea about cocos) but with opengl behind it.

> 
> www.sfml-dev.org

 I'll take a look, thanks.


-- 
Santiago Romero
Ubuntu GNU/Linux
http://www.sromero.org