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gsoc2008 and pygame - Jun 1, 2008

The Google Summer of Code(gsoc) has started, and students have officially begun their work this week.

Already design, and code are starting to appear from them.

Here are the pygame related projects, and their blogs:

Zhang Fan, "minz", blog: physics stuff

Zhang Fan went through the earth quake in China, but luckily him and his family are ok. Zhang has been studying various physics libraries, algorithms and code. As well he has begun work in a separate branch. So hopefully his work will then be merged in at a later time after his project. You can view his branch here: http://www.seul.org/viewcvs/viewcvs.cgi/branches/physics/?root=PyGame (updated to correct link 2008/06/16)

Nicholas Dudfield, "akalias", blog: tests for pygame

Nicholas's test work is going into the pygame trunk, and he has been working on some tools to help generate most of the test bodies. So this way we will be able to see the number of tests needed to implement. As well he began to write some tests for some parts of pygame that need more tests for the pygame 1.8.1 release(coming soon).

Nirav Patel, "nrp", blog: computer vision stuff (through the OLPC project, not mentored through pygame)

Nirav has been working in his local git repository since he doesn't always have internet access where he is. He's proposed some ideas for how his camera access API would work on the mailing list, and discussion has begun there. He plans to upload his work onto the internet when he has access for people to look at.

SDL gsoc projects

Also there are SDL related GSOC projects which will help pygame too (pygame uses SDL)...

Edgar "bobbens" Simo: Bobbens is an undergrad in industrial engineering, and will be working on developing a force feedback API.

Aaron Wishnick: Aaron is an undergrad in mathematics, and will be working on audio resampling and pitch shifting.

Holmes Futrell: Holmes is an undergrad in computer science and mathematics, and will be porting SDL to the iPhone.

Darren Alton: Darren is an undergrad in computer science, and will be porting SDL 1.3 to the Nintendo DS, using the hardware capabilities of the DS to showcase the new features in SDL 1.3. http://lifning.americankryptonite.net/blag/

Szymon "Wilku" Wilczek: Wilku is an undergrad in computer science, and wants to add support for pressure sensitive devices to the SDL API, specifically using the Wacom tablet as an example. http://wilku.ravenlord.ws/doku.php?id=start

pyweek 6 winners announced! - Apr 21, 2008

The theme for the latest pyweek challenge was "Robot".

The winners were: Individual: invention Team: Robot Underground

Congratulations to everyone who entered!

Ludumdare this weekend! - Apr 15, 2008

Ludum Dare 11 is coming! Ludum Dare is a regular community driven game development competition. The goal is, given a theme and 48 hours, to develop a game from scratch. Ludum Dare aims to encourage game design experimentation, and provide a platform to develop and practice rapid game prototyping.

(img by MrFun).

Hope to see you there! -Rene

Pygame 1.8.0 released! - Mar 29, 2008

Yes, it's finally done. Pygame 1.8.0 is now available for download.

Besides features such as

  • pygame.mask for collision masks
  • pygame.scrap for clipboard support
  • new and improved sprite groups
  • blending support for filling and blitting surfaces
  • saving surfaces as jpeg and png
  • buffer access for Surface and Sound objects
  • numpy support for pygame.surfarray and pygame.pixelarray
  • New Windows and Mac installers.
it contains tons of bug fixes and improvements in nearly all areas. See the WHATSNEW list for a full list of changes.

-- Marcus

Google summer of code 2008, and pygame. - Mar 25, 2008

Here are the different mentoring organizations that would be interested in doing pygame related projects in the google summer of code 2008.
  • Python Software Foundation (ideas page)
  • One Laptop per Child (ideas page)
  • Simple DirectMedia Layer (ideas page)
  • BBC Research (ideas page)

    Here's our pygame ideas page. Things like webcam support, video effect plugins, sound input support, better tests, pygame for tinypy, pygame for flash, easy networking, maths types like vectors, matrices, and quaternions, an AI module, decent movie support, and better drawing primitives.

    Sign up with the relevant organization to discuss and submit your proposal.
  • Pycon game goings on. - Mar 24, 2008

    Here's a picture of people sprinting on game related things at the pycon in chicago. Picture from richard at pycon.

    Here's the pygame chimp example running in your browser.

    First it was a spoof on a flash advert done as a pygame example program, now it is back as a flash advert. Thanks to the people at pycon who worked on the flex pypy project, they got this prototype working! How cool is it?

    There's some more pictures here of people porting pygames to run on the OLPC. Here's the “port your pygame game to the OLPC” tutorial that Mike Fletcher, and Phil Hassey worked on.

    -- Rene.

    PyGame at PyCon!! - Mar 7, 2008

    PyCon is coming up in just a week! There are going to be quite a few pygame regulars there, so of course it's going to be a great time :)

    Here are the pygame/gamdev-related events that I know about:

    PyGame on Flash sprint - http://us.pycon.org/2008/sprints/projects/#pygame-on-flash Some of us are going to work on getting pygame working in flash. Imagine being able to play pygame games in any browser anywhere! I'm quite excited about this one so if you're staying for the sprints, join us! Lucio Torre is leading this sprint.

    Galcon Tournament - Saturday - Ballroom II - 8pm-11pm - http://www.imitationpickles.org/galcon/forum/7/745/ Galcon is one of the top 10 indie games of 2007 :) Feel free to come even if you don't have a Galcon license, they will be provided. Be sure to download it in advance so we don't swamp the conf. network. I'm running the tourney. If you want to hang out, just look for the guy wearing the Galcon t-shirt, that's me :)

    There are also a few really great gamedev talks too - Richard Jones is giving one on pyget, John Harrison is giving one on his interacive Halloween game, Mattie Casper is giving one on integrating python into Counterstrike. On Thursday (tutorial day) there is also a pygame tutorial available. These are all detailed in the conf. schedule.

    I don't know of any other pygame related things going on, but if someone wants to run some BoF tutorial sessions, or whatever, that'd be great :) The more pygame the better! I'm going to post this info to pygame.org news now, but I'll update it in a day or so if any other events are organized.

    -Phil

    Ludum Dare 11 - Coming soon! - Mar 3, 2008

    Ludum Dare 11 is coming! Ludum Dare is a regular community driven game development competition. The goal is, given a theme and 48 hours, to develop a game from scratch. Ludum Dare aims to encourage game design experimentation, and provide a platform to develop and practice rapid game prototyping.

    Hope to see you there! -Phil

    Pygame RC 4 is available for testing - Mar 3, 2008

    Rene just made up the 4th release candidate for pygame. This hopefully will be the last one before 1.8.0 will be officially available.

    You can get it from http://rene.f0o.com/~rene/stuff/pygame-1.8.0rc4.tar.gz

    PyWeek 6 - Coming Soon!! - Feb 12, 2008

    PyWeek 6 will run from 00:00 UTC on March 30th through to 00:00 UTC on April 6th. Registration will open on Feb 29.

    If you're new (or even coming back again) please have a look at the rules and help pages at http://www.pyweek.org/

    The PyWeek challenge:

    1. Invites entrants to write a game in one week from scratch either as an individual or in a team,
    2. Is intended to be challenging and fun,
    3. Will hopefully increase the public body of game tools, code and expertise,
    4. Will let a lot of people actually finish a game, and
    5. May inspire new projects (with ready made teams!)

    Entries must be developed in Python during the challenge, and must incorporate some theme decided at the start of the challenge.

    Ludum Dare X - Dec 14-16th - Nov 14, 2007

    Ludum Dare 10 is coming! Ludum Dare is a regular community driven game development competition. The goal is, given a theme and 48 hours, to develop a game from scratch. Ludum Dare aims to encourage game design experimentation, and provide a platform to develop and practice rapid game prototyping.

    We're also building an archive of entries from previous compos. Goto the compo site and add your old entries! They will be added to the screenshot grids:

    Lastly, if you have participated in previous LD's and have a game-dev related blog, I'd be thrilled to aggregate it onto the site. Create an account and then contact me with your blog info and I will add it ASAP.

    Hope to see you there! -Phil

    Project cleanup - Nov 3, 2007

    A first cleanup has been done within the projects. Spam and empty entries, which laid around for more than 5 months were deleted, so some of you might miss their project (sorry for the inconvenience in those cases).

    Please fill the project description with some information and a link to where it can be received from to avoid a deletion on the next clearing day :-).

    The cleanups will be done more or less regularly from now on.
    -- Marcus

    Website Tags - Nov 2, 2007

    If you have any projects on this site be sure to update them to add appropriate tags to integrate them into the tagging system :)

    Numenta Challenge - Nov 1, 2007

    Numenta has just started a series of Challenges that incorporate their AI-like technology, called Hierarchical Temporal Memory. This first Challenge, GAME, involves a developer creating a fun, playable game out of their Python-based example called Pictures. The first prize is an Xbox 360 with over 10 games, valued at over $900. Submission deadline is January 15th, and Electronic Arts will be the official judge.

    Details can be found at http://challenge.numenta.com

    PyWeek #5 - Jul 13, 2007

    PyWeek 5 registration is open soon!

    People who have joined previous pyweeks can set up entries and join teams already.

    Registration for new comers opens 3rd of August (2007/08/03)

    The dates of this challenge are are 00:00 UTC 2007-09-02 to 00:00 UTC 2007-09-09.

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