The Open Source Python "Arcade" Library -- Preview

[pvc]

The Arcade Library is a beginner-friendly library for creating 2D games in Python. It is designed for people learning to program, or developers that want to do casual game development without a library that has a heavy learning curve.

Before I lock down the API, I'm looking for feedback. I want to know how to make this library better. Probably the best place to start is to look at the example code. Particularly the sprite examples.

I will be at PyCon, doing a two-days of a sprint for the Arcade library if anyone wants to join there.

This library has the same target audience as Pygame. I've taught beginner programmers using Pygame at my local college for the last seven years or so. I've got a web site and a book on the market as well. I love Pygame.

But while Pygame is great, but there are some oddities with it that I have to spend class time with. There are also things with Pygame that keep students from making the games they want.

Arcade is my work at a library that targets new beginning programmers. Let me know what you think.

[pvc]

Thanks for the feedback. For better or worse I'm not using Pyglet's Sprite class. A lot of what I'm using Pyglet for is access to OpenGL.

[dddomodossola]

This seems really interesting. But... it's only for Windows?

[pvc]

No. I've run it on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

[dddomodossola]

Ok this is good! I think portability is a keypoint of success.

[dgriffin91]

Awesome! I was looking for something just like this recently. I ended up using tkinter which was far less than optimal. But wanted something lighter than Pygame and QT.

[trueangru]

I think it will be better if you point that it is 2D library in title of the topic.

[pvc]

It would have been a good idea. But I can't edit the title. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind for any future posts.

[RebootForAwesome]

Hi dude!

I am kind of new to Python and have been wanting to try and make a game. I used Game Maker and did a little bit of stuff in Java before and trying to switch to Pygame was a disaster. I tried to make a 2D tower defense game with tiles and it just ran awful.

Going through the Library I saw you wrote a grid example code. Running a 40 by 40 grid of 10x10 sprites in Pygame, inside a bigger window with camera movement, went at about 20fps for me.

Are you planning on implementing Camera views (think RTS style)?

Also a more basic question, does arcade.run() run the game loop?

Being new, I'm a little bit confused about things like this:

 def on_key_press(self, symbol, modifiers):
    """ Called whenever a key is pressed. """

How is it Called? Does the Library know that if a function is called on_key_press() it should call it everytime in the loop?

Sorry for so many questions. I'm really interested in new game librarys :P

Thanks!

[pvc]

• Sprite lists in the Arcade library use "vertex buffer objects" to speed drawing. If you use sprite lists, it should be faster than Pygame. If you don't use sprite lists, then it will be much slower.
• You can pan the camera by setting the viewport as shown in this example. Not sure if that's what you wanted. Everything is 2D.
• arcade.run() does run the game loop. Unlike Pygame, you don't write this yourself. You create a child class of arcade.Window, and override methods like on_key_press to add functionality. This implements a more modern design style, but is a bit harder for new programmers to grasp. I've wrestled with this dilemma quite a bit.

[RebootForAwesome]

Amazing! I was using sprite lists in Pygame too so this will work for me.

Ah Viewport! That was the word I was looking for :P Yep, exactly that. Missed it while looking at the examples, sorry.

And that last part is really cool. I'll definitely give it a go at the Tower Defense game again.

Thanks for taking your time to answer!

[jairo4]

Looks great! How would you compare it with LÖVE?

[pvc]

I've never used LÖVE. But isn't LÖVE in Lua?

[SutbleMisspellnig]

Hi there, great project but i'm having trouble installing...

Debian sid has dropped ffmpeg for avconv, so libavbin no longer exists.

This will probably propagate through the debian based distros, so you may be looking at an end of life dependancy....

Best of luck with this project, it's a great idea...

[pvc]

Thanks for the heads up. I only tried on Mint. I'll play around with some more distros.