[pygame] Summer of Code 2008

[Michael <zathras@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,


Just a short note to say that BBC Research was accepted as a mentor
organisation again this year. In practice I run the the Kamaelia project which
is python based and we use pygame in a number of components, because
pygame is useful, interesting and we can do interesting stuff with it.

As a result, we'd like to see more pygame based projects again this year. 
(Projects last year and the year before included a fair number of pygame 
based components).

For example, if someone wants to take the nascent multi-core work we
have (which enables multiple windows pygame[1]) and go to town with it that
could be really interesting. (The interest really is that pygame allows for
experimentation with different sorts of user interfaces, and removing the
single window limitation opens up interesting options)

[1] No, really - multiwindow pygame: 
     http://yeoldeclue.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.cgi?rm=viewpost&nodeid=1205626569
     http://yeoldeclue.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.cgi?rm=viewpost&nodeid=1196129474

:-)

To give an idea of something from a previous GSOC project - we had a
student working on PyOpenGL integration with Kamaelia, and one of the
requirements we had was that it should be possible to put a pygame
based component onto a pyopengl texture and have it still function, with
no changes to the component.

To this end he wrote a simple pygame based doodling app which you can find 
here:

http://kamaelia.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/kamaelia/trunk/Code/Python/Kamaelia/Kamaelia/UI/Pygame/MagnaDoodle.py?view=markup

He then made his open gl wrapper pixel perfect for detection of position on 
that surface meaning you could spin that drawing surface in 3D and still draw 
on it. It might be particularly interesting to consider that as a mechanism 
for "carving" 3D objects.

His blog from that summer: http://thfsoc.blogspot.com/

One of our more useful pygame based apps is a networked/manually P2P 
collaborative whiteboard which has featured in Linux Format (including local 
audio forwarding, remixing, session recording & session playback). You can 
find that article here:
   * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/t/TN-LinuxFormat-Kamaelia.pdf

The install process is now somewhat simpler than described there. 

A more general, more technical overview can be found here:
   * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/t/TN-LightTechnicalIntroToKamaelia.pdf

I suppose to summarise, I think pygame utterly rocks, and if you'd like to do 
a pygame based project this summer, please get in touch. We can't guarantee 
anything, but if you have a really cool idea (especially a multiwindow pygame 
based app), we'd love to hear from you. We *are* more interested in apps that 
can use pygame than games per se, but toolkits and toolkit integration would 
be very cool to see.

(reply to kamaelia-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx & #kamaelia on freenode)

Have fun :-)


Michael.
--
Michael Sparks, Snr Research Engineer, BBC Future Media Research & Innovation,
michael.sparks@xxxxxxxxxxxx, Kamaelia Project Lead, http://kamaelia.sf.net/