Archive for the ‘ CG ’ Category

Processing in Eclipse

I think that Processing‘s default IDE, the PDE, is pretty accessible to the new programmer.  I’ve had a lot of fun with it.  But since Processing is based on Java, it could be presumed that it could be authored in a Java IDE.  And indeed it can.  Via the processing site, there is a tutorial that walks you through the process of setting up a simple Processing sketch inside the Eclipse Java IDE.  Why would you want to do this?  For me, mainly code reuse:  The PDE doesn’t allow for a lot of easyconvenient code reuse:  Say you make a particle class in sketchA, and you want to use it in sketchB:  You’ll need to physically duplicate the code inside of your new sketch.  Ouch.

After completing this excersize, it just makes me realize how little I know about Java!  But I think Eclipse is a great place to start learning it.

processingeclipose

2009
05/12
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CG
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New Processing sketch: glowMotes01

See the goodness over on its page…

2009
04/22
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CG
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Visual guide to Tkinter widgets

Over on my Python Wiki, I’ve started making a ‘visual guide to Tkinter widgets’.  I’ve found a lot of good online Tkinter reference, but nothing with pictures… so I figured I’ll make my own :)  I find this to be a good exercise when first learning a new UI system, plus it makes for a nice quick-reference when authoring them later.

As an asside, I’ve also started this process for Maya’s Extended Layer Format (ELF) UI system on my Mel Wiki HERE.

See the growing Tkinter widget list HERE, but a few examples are pasted in below:

etc…

2009
04/11
CATEGORY
CG
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First PyGame program

Based on my previous post of researching viable applications to make a simple game in, I decided to delve a bit into PyGame.

Since my brain is so heavily inundated with making Processing sketches, I based the code structure around core Processing concepts (setup() function, draw() function, etc).  While it’s probably not the best solution for writing a PyGame app (the liberal usage of ‘global’ calls), it does actually run, which is all I wanted :)

What does it do?  Spawn a bunch of random circles and have them bounce around the screen.  Exciting?  Not very.  But, you gotta start somewhere 😉

# pyGameTest02.py
# Eric Pavey - 2009-04-06
# Writing a PyGame app that emulates the general program layout of a Processing sketch.
# Makes a bunch of random circles bounce around.

import pygame
from pygame.locals import *
import random

RES = [640, 480]
MAXCIR = 128
window = None
screen = None
circles = []

class Cir(object):
    # Make our circle objects

    def __init__(self):
        self.xPos = RES[0]/2
        self.yPos = RES[1]/2
        self.xDir = random.choice([random.uniform(0,2),random.uniform(-2,0)])
        self.yDir = random.choice([random.uniform(0,2),random.uniform(-2,0)])
        self.radius = random.uniform(8,64)
        self.width = random.uniform(2,8)

    def move(self):
        self.xPos = self.xPos + 1 * self.xDir
        if self.xPos + self.radius/2 + self.width > RES[0] or self.xPos < self.radius/2 + self.width:
            self.xDir = self.xDir * -1

        self.yPos = self.yPos + 1 * self.yDir
        if self.yPos + self.radius/2 + self.width > RES[1] or self.yPos < self.radius/2 + self.width:
            self.yDir = self.yDir * -1            

    def draw(self):
        # must make all vals int:
        pygame.draw.circle(screen, Color('white'), [int(self.xPos), int(self.yPos)], int(self.radius), int(self.width))

    def run(self):
        self.move()
        self.draw()

def setup():
    # Initialize startup parameters
    global window
    global screen

    pygame.init()
    window = pygame.display.set_mode(RES)
    pygame.display.set_caption('PyGame Test 02')
    screen = pygame.display.get_surface()
    screen.fill(Color('black'))

def draw():
    # Run main loop:
    global screen
    global circles

    run = True
    while run:
        screen.fill(Color('black'))
        for c in circles:
            c.run()
        if len(circles) < MAXCIR:
            circles.append(Cir())
        pygame.display.update()

        for e in pygame.event.get():
            if e.type == QUIT:
                run = False
                break

if __name__ == "__main__":
    setup()
    draw()
2009
04/06
CATEGORY
CG
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What to make a game in?

I’ve been wanting to do a simple interactive game for some time now.  Conceptually, it’d not be very complex, and stylistically, look like childrens drawings.

I’ve been teaching myself Processing for some time now, and am fairly well versed scripting in Python via my day to day tasks working in Maya.

Processing seems like a good medium for this, and I’ve seen some fairly complicated games written in it recently.  But it’s strengths are based more around making good quality  ‘generative art’ (in my opinion), rather than full-featured game applications.  Plus its provided IDE (coined the ‘Processing Development Environment‘) doesn’t seem robust enough to handle larger scale game dev.  And… I really don’t feel like tackling installing Eclipse, learning more about Java, and getting Processing to run in that (but it would be a more viable option at that point).

Python has a very extensive library called PyGame, that seems like a real contender.  Since I’m (currently) only interested in doing a 2D side-scroller, this could be the method of choice.

However, lately I’ve been researching Blender.  It’s a full featured 3D DCC that’s both open-source and based entirely on Python.  Furthermore, it comes with it’s own built-in game engine.  I find this whole package very attractive, but as of yet have no experience with it.

Finally, most robust (seemingly), but something I have the least amount of experience with, would be Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio Express.  You can use Visual Studio Expression Edition to author it (I believe this is in C#), and then play games directly on your Xbox 360.  Very slick.  But the most learning required.  More info at that XNA Creators Club.

So time will tell!  But the best part is whatever I choose, I still win.  Good fun.

2009
04/03
CATEGORY
CG
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2 comments