Pygame

This year, with our intro programming class, James and I used Pygame as an example API in our weeks on using-external-libraries. There was some debate amongst the class as to whether Pygame is such a good choice (as oppose to, say, using a full-blown games engine from a popular game). I think our approach is very defensible: Pygame is a fast API to write with (in terms of development time) it's powerful enough to enable very creative games to be written, and so on. However, Jay Barnson, of Rampant Games has written about his week-long game hack which -- not surprisingly -- used Pygame. He puts the case very eloquently:


Lesson 4: Python rules!

I can't believe how quickly many features came together using Python as opposed to, say, C++ or even Java. Things like typeless variables, dictionaries, and extremely easy-to-declare lists (allowing a mixing and matching of object types) made it very easy to implement content lists, attribute handling, spell effects, and so forth. I was already a fan of the language, but now the prospect of using Python, tied into a high-level 3D engine, has become extremely appealing to me.