Re: [pygame] pygame on iPhone

["Jack Nutting" <jnutting@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 5:45 AM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm quite disgusted by Apple's whole approach to the iPhone,
> and because of it, I currently have little interest in buying
> an iPhone or attempting any iPhone development. The restrictive
> atmosphere would just suck all the fun out of it for me.

I can see where you're coming from.  I cut my teeth on game
programming with pygame, I love python, and I'd love to be able to
write iPhone games with python.

However, the fact is that what you *can* write with, Objective-C, is
not too shabby at all.  Compared to the previously available
widely-spread mobile development technologies (j2me), Objective-C is a
breath of fresh air.  Considering that the system has libraries for
image-handling, input, opengl, and audio, you've got a pretty
high-level interface to most of what pygame/sdl gives you right from
the start.  The only major bits of pygame-style functionality that
aren't present out of the box are things like sprite groups and
collision detection, which I implemented myself for the game I'm
working on in just an hour or two.

> My recommendation is to forget about the iPhone and get behind
> Android instead. And let Apple know clearly why you're doing it.
> Maybe if they see that they're turning large numbers of their
> friends into enemies, they'll rethink their attitude. Or maybe
> losing enough iPhone sales to Google phones will do it. Perhaps.

So far, Apple's position on the iPhone has been a continual
loosening/expansion of what is possible.  For example, remember that
less than a year ago, the official Apple line was that the only
officially-sanctioned development was going to be web apps, but
there's clearly been a huge about-face there.  I am pretty hopeful
about the prospects of Apple removing the onerous clause that rules
out language interpreters in the iPhone.

-- 
// jack
// http://www.nuthole.com