Re: [pygame] Is PyGame dying?

[Stuart Axon <stu.axon+pygame@xxxxxxxxx>]

Given the slow speed of SDL updates, I wonder if it would help if the
pygame site drew more attention to SDL and how to develop for it (and
help pygame) ... at least until SDL 1.3 happens ?

On 27 January 2010 21:20, Olof Bjarnason <olof.bjarnason@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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
>