Re: [pygame] TMX support in pygame

[Miriam English <mim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Bartoz,

I can understand what you mean, but in my experience if people have more 
tools they actually tend to learn different things and solve 
higher-level problems rather than cease to be challenged.

I used to love programming in assembly code, directly manipulating 
registers in the CPU and peripheral chips, and I have great nostalgia 
for those days, but why would I re-invent so many superb tools anymore 
when other people have done a much better job than I could in so many 
areas? I don't stop learning; I just move on to learning more complex 
things that might have been too difficult for me before.

There will always be a place for low-level programming. That's one of 
the great things, for example, with the Raspberry Pi -- it gets people 
back in touch with experimenting again (especially when coupled with 
things like pygame), but I think that's a result of exposing the inner 
workings. (The big mistake I believe a lot of developers make, 
especially in proprietary systems, is hiding the guts so people can't 
fiddle with them, and are forced to use only a simplified glossy exterior.)

If people have tools to handle physics, manipulate sprites and tiles, 
and to buffer sounds then I don't believe they necessarily become lazy; 
it can free them up to tackle more complex problems that previously were 
too hard.

Perhaps some people who have a low threshold of frustration will be 
attracted to use pygame where before they might have thought it too much 
effort for too little result. That encouragement can help to instill 
patience in those people.

Best wishes,

	- Miriam


On 30/09/14 20:50, Bartosz Debski wrote:
> HI Guys,
>
> Please don't get me wrong here but if Pygame will include PyTMX it will
> also endorse Tiled as a supported tool ?
>
> I personally I'm slightly against putting such things into Pygame.
> Reason being is that peoples (new or not in pygame community) will not
> try develop own things or stop to innovate in this field. I'm not saying
> those tools are bad in any way but giving more and more tools will make
> peoples use the tools and not to come up with own solutions. This leads
> long term to attitude and mindset for game creations like Game Maker
> style or Unity where eventually there will be no need for any dev skills
> to create a game. Creating abstraction layers for peoples to use  is
> great if you have little development skills but also harms as you are
> not trying to understand the mechanics of how stuff works.
>
> Apologies for this random rant and please do not take this personally
> but would leave it outside Pygame package.
>
> Cheers
> Bart
>
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 7:17 AM, diliup gabadamudalige
> <diliupg@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:diliupg@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
>     This is great! There should be more people like you.
>     I sincerely hope that the maintainers will take the initiative and
>     do the needful.
>     Looking forward to a new version of Pygame!
>
>     On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 12:30 AM, Leif Theden <leif.theden@xxxxxxxxx
>     <mailto:leif.theden@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
>         Thanks for the replay.  Sorry we weren't able to chat before the
>         game jam, but I'm in #pygame pretty often, under the nickname
>         bitcraft.
>
>         There are a few projects already using pytmx/pyscroll, and I'll
>         include a few that I know about.
>
>         https://github.com/justinmeister/PyTMX-Examples
>         http://www.reddit.com/r/pygame/comments/27yzex/getting_started_with_pytmx_making_collideable/
>         https://github.com/bitcraft/pyscroll/tree/master/tutorial/code
>
>         http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=7968
>         https://github.com/justinmeister/The-Stolen-Crown-RPG
>         https://github.com/wkmanire/Platakart
>         https://github.com/wkmanire/PyMunkTMX
>         https://github.com/bitcraft/pyweek18
>         https://github.com/fish-face/door-restorer
>         https://github.com/jamesalbert/FinalTrigger
>
>         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK8Mf-pE1gU
>         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74q1t8UPAes
>
>         The quadtree functions might be useful as a part of the sprite
>         module.  It offers reasonably quick collision checking for rects
>         and rect like objects.
>
>         I can contact the people who have used pytmx/pyscroll in the
>         past and see if the api is adequate.
>
>         I realize that pygame hasn't had a release in a while.  If the
>         maintainers of pygame would be willing to include these
>         libraries, that alone should be enough to publish another
>         official release.  If I could get positive feedback and the
>         backing of the maintainers, then I don't really mind putting in
>         the extra effort for documentation and testing.
>
>         Pygame is being embraced by the rasberrypi community, and I
>         think it would reflect well on pygame if that community had more
>         options for making games on that platform.
>
>         On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 4:59 AM, Renà Dudfield <renesd@xxxxxxxxx
>         <mailto:renesd@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
>             Hello,
>
>             Very cool. This has been something many people have asked
>             for before :)
>
>               * Do you know of any other games or examples that are
>                 using them?  We'll need at least one example to include
>                 with pygame, and it would be nice if other people can
>                 try out the API and give feedback.
>               * I think 2.7+ is fine at this point, but it's usually
>                 easy to port to 2.4/2.6+.
>               * We'll need to figure out where internal parts like
>                 Quadtree go. Do we keep them private or make them
>                 publicly available?
>               * For testing, it would be good if at least every method
>                 is tested. 100% coverage tested is not necessary but nice.
>               * There needs to be documentation for every public method.
>               * The other documentation that would be good is a tutorial
>                 in how to use it.
>
>             Maybe we could organise a mini sprint to discuss things?
>             Otherwise we can go over each part on the mailing list.
>
>             I'll be at this game jam thing on Saturday doing pygame
>             things, and perhaps we can meet then on irc to discuss? If
>             you want to do this, then I could work on a little game
>             using your libraries to get a feel for them then too.
>             http://www.berlinminijam.de/2014/09/next-game-jam-announcement-september.html
>
>             It's probably a good idea to discuss the API, and get
>             feedback with a few people on how it could be made more
>             usable before we go ahead and write lots of
>             documentation/tests/etc for it.
>
>             Of course, pygame hasn't done a release for a while. So you
>             may want to take that into consideration before embarking on
>             all this work.
>
>
>
>             cu.
>
>
>
>
>
>             On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 6:10 PM, Leif Theden
>             <leif.theden@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:leif.theden@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
>                 Any specific reason for targeting python 2.4?...  It's
>                 ten years old.  Currently, it is tested again 2.7 and
>                 3.3, but I can't think of any reasons why 2.6 wouldn't
>                 work.  As for 2.4, there might be some issues with the
>                 generator syntax.  Its been a long time since I've used 2.4.
>
>                 On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Jason Marshall
>                 <jmm0@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:jmm0@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
>                     How difficult would it be to make the code
>                     compatible with Python 2.4+?
>
>                     Jason
>
>
>                     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                     *From: * Jason Marshall <jmm0@xxxxxxxxx
>                     <mailto:jmm0@xxxxxxxxx>>;
>                     *To: * pygame-users@xxxxxxxx
>                     <mailto:pygame-users@xxxxxxxx>
>                     <pygame-users@xxxxxxxx <mailto:pygame-users@xxxxxxxx>>;
>                     *Subject: * Re: [pygame] TMX support in pygame
>                     *Sent: * Thu, Sep 18, 2014 11:48:26 AM
>
>                     I haven't used your tools myself, but if they really
>                     work well and have a tutorial and good
>                     documentation, then I'm in favor of adding them.
>                     Batteries included!
>
>                     Thanks,
>                     Jason
>
>                     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                     *From:* Leif Theden <leif.theden@xxxxxxxxx
>                     <mailto:leif.theden@xxxxxxxxx>>
>                     *To:* pygame-users@xxxxxxxx
>                     <mailto:pygame-users@xxxxxxxx>
>                     *Sent:* Monday, September 15, 2014 11:51 AM
>                     *Subject:* [pygame] TMX support in pygame
>
>                     Hello everyone!
>
>                     I'm a long time user of pygame and active member of
>                     #pygame under the handle bitcraft.  I help many
>                     people who stumble into the channel to build their
>                     first game in pygame.  I've also released and
>                     maintain a couple small libraries PyTMX and Pyscroll
>                     to help new users develop using the Tiled Map Editor.
>
>                     https://github.com/bitcraft/PyTMX
>                     https://github.com/bitcraft/pyscroll
>
>
>                     The Tiled Map Editor is widely known in the indie
>                     game community and many popular game development
>                     ecosystems include out-of-the-box support for it,
>                     including pyglet, cocos2d-x, allegro5, libgdx, and
>                     many others.
>
>                     I am confident that PyGame will benefit from a TMX
>                     loader that it is integrated into the core and
>                     documented on pygame.org <http://pygame.org/>.
>
>                     As maintainer of PyTMX and pyscroll, I would like to
>                     nominate these projects to be integrated into the
>                     pygame core.  They both support python 2.7 and 3.3+
>                     and I have tried to make them feel like native
>                     pygame libraries; and they even work well with the
>                     spite/group concept.  The only library that it
>                     depends on outside of the python standard lib is the
>                     six module.
>
>                     There are of other loaders available as well, and I
>                     will list them as well for the consideration of the
>                     pygame core developers.  My apologies if I have
>                     overlooked another tiled TMX map format project.
>
>                     http://www.pygame.org/project/1158/
>                     http://pytmxlib.readthedocs.org/en/v0.1.0/
>                     https://bitbucket.org/r1chardj0n3s/pygame-tutorial/src/a383dd24790d/tmx.py
>                     https://github.com/renfredxh/tmx
>
>
>
>                     Thank you everyone and I look forward to hearing
>                     your comments.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>     --
>     Diliup Gabadamudalige
>
>     http://www.diliupg.com
>     http://soft.diliupg.com/
>
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--
If you don't have any failures then you're not trying hard enough.
 - Dr. Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
-----
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