Re: [pygame] taming the circus of modules

[Vince Platt <vinceplatt@yahoo.com>]

Pete et al,

This isn't directly related to your message, but it got me thinking a
bit about backwards compatibility in general.  You (and all the
contributors, I don't know your names, but you're included here) must
have taken great pains to keep things compatible as you've been going
along.

How do I know this?  Well, back when pygame 0.2 was released, I
started working on a game.  As a sort of proof of concept I wrote a
little demo that moved some animated sprites (wrote my own sprite
class doncha know) over a background, played music, played sound,
used a graphical button, had a pause function, etc.  Then I started
designing the real game.

Well, time passed and I've kept telling myself I'll get back to it
"real soon now".  All the while, pygame has kept improving and
changing.  I knew someday I'd get back into it and have to sync my
code with the new pygame APIs.  I expected a real mess to come of
that.

Well, guess what?  After I had everything installed, retro-fitting my
game and demo to the new API took about 20 minutes. 

So, consider this a pat on the back!  It takes some real foresight to
develop an API that will stand the test of time, and it's pure genius
(or maybe just luck?  :+) to do it for a version 0.2.

As far as your idea goes, I think it's a good idea.  I also
appreciate that the SDL libraries are now distributed directly with
the pygame package (I use Win32, so this can be a real pain).  The
only other thing I would like to see bundled with pygame is the smpeg
and python numeric libraries, but that's just my preference.  

So, there you have it, and thanks!



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