Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
Lenard Lindstrom wrote: I remember there was a tradeoff though, with poor playback if the buffer was too small. Maybe that is no longer a problem. It probably depends on how fast your hardware is. I've successfully used buffer sizes as small as 128 (that was in a game where I needed a sound latency of less than 0.1 seconds -- most games don't have such stringent requirements). -- Greg
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
ogg streaming + sound effects together, works fine for me on both pygame windows + android phone. Worked like a charm actually. I love python. On Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 1:13 AM, Zack Baker zbaker1...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks guys!! -Zack On Jan 13, 2012, at 10:45 PM, Ian Mallett geometr...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 7:36 PM, Zack Baker zbaker1...@gmail.com wrote: I use it for my 'soundtracks' in the games. The only problem I run into with it is it takes a 'loop' argument, which is how many times the song should loop, I wish you could set this too infinite but I usually set it too 500 and that seems to work. Assuming no one will play my game for mor than 26 hours in a row... -Zack If I recall, try -1 -- A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. - Abraham Maslow
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
FORTRAN is still used in some circles because it's still very fast for number crunching. A bit off topic, but I've seen this bit of folk wisdom repeated online for a long time and have always been skeptical. How does a C command that gets compiled to a CPU's MUL instruction differ in any way from a Fortran command that also gets compiled to that same CPU's same MUL instruction? Honest question. Alan
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
On Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 12:03 AM, R. Alan Monroe amon...@columbus.rr.comwrote: FORTRAN is still used in some circles because it's still very fast for number crunching. A bit off topic, but I've seen this bit of folk wisdom repeated online for a long time and have always been skeptical. How does a C command that gets compiled to a CPU's MUL instruction differ in any way from a Fortran command that also gets compiled to that same CPU's same MUL instruction? Honest question. Alan Theoretically, the compiler has more information about the fortran code than the C code, so can make more optimizations. So in C, the compiler can not be sure about pointer aliasing, and such things... so it has to be a little safer about the optimizations. In practice, you can provide hints to the C compiler to get pretty much the same performance. For a modern C compiler like gcc, you have things like 'pure', 'restrict', openmp hints, function level optimization optimizations, and various other vectorisation hints that let you do lots of optimizations that fortran can do. See this for more info: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/146159/is-fortran-faster-than-c Also see here that fortran is still speedy: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/which-programming-languages-are-fastest.php cheers,
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
You can check put my repository for pygame examples https://github.com/ankur0890/Pygame-Examples-For-Learning On Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 4:33 AM, R. Alan Monroe amon...@columbus.rr.comwrote: FORTRAN is still used in some circles because it's still very fast for number crunching. A bit off topic, but I've seen this bit of folk wisdom repeated online for a long time and have always been skeptical. How does a C command that gets compiled to a CPU's MUL instruction differ in any way from a Fortran command that also gets compiled to that same CPU's same MUL instruction? Honest question. Alan
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
R. Alan Monroe wrote: How does a C command that gets compiled to a CPU's MUL instruction differ in any way from a Fortran command that also gets compiled to that same CPU's same MUL instruction? Fortran has various rules that prevent aliasing, i.e. having two different names for the same thing. This allows the compiler to perform various optimisations that can't safely be performed in C, where you can get aliasing of just about anything using pointers. Various arcane anti-aliasing rules have been introduced into recent versions of C, but there's still a lot more room for aliasing than there is in Fortran. -- Greg
RE: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
--- On Fri, 1/13/12, Lenard Lindstrom le...@telus.net wrote: Also, though SDL does support streaming, Pygame does not. Everything must be loaded before played. Um... that's not true. pygame.mixer.music is Pygame's streaming module. So if you were to stream audio, would that eliminate the potential delay. The only audio-only game I've seen written in Pygame, Sound RTS, has a bit of noticeable lag when playing sounds. Is there a way to program such that sounds would play instantly when told to do so? Thanks for everyone's help thus far. Ryan
RE: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
--- On Sat, 1/14/12, Ryan Strunk ryan.str...@gmail.com wrote: So if you were to stream audio, would that eliminate the potential delay. The only audio-only game I've seen written in Pygame, Sound RTS, has a bit of noticeable lag when playing sounds. Is there a way to program such that sounds would play instantly when told to do so? Streaming is for music, not sound effects.
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
--- On Sat, 1/14/12, Ryan Strunk ryan.str...@gmail.com wrote: The only audio-only game I've seen written in Pygame, Sound RTS, has a bit of noticeable lag when playing sounds. I don't know about music, but the latency of (non-streamed) sounds can be reduced by specifying a smaller buffer size when you initialise the mixer module. -- Greg
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
On 14/01/2012 2:22 AM, Christopher Night wrote: On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Lenard Lindstrom le...@telus.net mailto:le...@telus.net wrote: On 13/01/12 01:43 PM, Julian Marchant wrote: --- On Fri, 1/13/12, Lenard Lindstromle...@telus.net mailto:le...@telus.net wrote: Also, though SDL does support streaming, Pygame does not. Everything must be loaded before played. Um... that's not true. pygame.mixer.music is Pygame's streaming module. Oh right, I forgot about file like objects. Has anyone managed to use the music module to play streaming audio? I feel like I'm misunderstanding you, but yes I use pygame.mixer.music to stream audio from an OGG file all the time. I've never had a problem with it. Is that what you're asking? -Christopher I was vague. I was referring to streaming audio from a remote server, such as over the internet. If Ryan Strunk intends to develop a web based multiplayer game--he did mention World of Warcraft--then he would want streaming audio, especially if the game is audio only. Pygame has no code specific to remote streaming. I did search if an audio stream could be fed to the music module through a socket or pipe. I found no answer. If I am reading too much into Ryan's intentions then I apologize for sidetracking the discussion. Lenard Lindstrom
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
On 14/01/2012 8:36 PM, Greg wrote: --- On Sat, 1/14/12, Ryan Strunk ryan.str...@gmail.com wrote: The only audio-only game I've seen written in Pygame, Sound RTS, has a bit of noticeable lag when playing sounds. I don't know about music, but the latency of (non-streamed) sounds can be reduced by specifying a smaller buffer size when you initialise the mixer module. I remember there was a tradeoff though, with poor playback if the buffer was too small. Maybe that is no longer a problem. Lenard
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 9:04 PM, Ryan Strunk ryan.str...@gmail.com wrote: If you're working on a game that you could conceivably write by yourself or with a small team, python will probably be up for the job. That’s good to know. With as much as critics of Python harp on the speed, I was worried that resulting software was going to crawl along at a snail’s pace. Are there any situations that come to mind where Python wouldn’t work? It's a little complicated. If you write everything in pure python only using the pygame library, then yes I can easily think of some examples where it wouldn't work at all, or not have good performance. However, some (maybe all?) of these can be solved by finding another library written specifically for that purpose to help you. And, as Sean Wolfe said, there are people working on speeding up python, and don't forget that computers are getting faster all the time. So it might not even be the case in a few years. Given that, if I were making a game that relied heavily one of the following things, I would reconsider python: - 3D - I've only used pyopengl and, I admit, it's kind of slow. When I ported a pyopengl game I wrote into C++, I got something like a 10x speedup. pyglet might perform better. - Huge numbers of sprites, like in the thousands or tens of thousands. - Collision detection and physics between more than ~100 objects. There are certainly libraries for this, but I'm not sure how they perform compared to their C++ counterparts. - Pixel-level manipulation of images, although this has gotten much better with the surfarray module. - Running on a mobile device. - Running in a browser. This has some similarities with Silver's list, which is also good. -Christopher
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
On 12/01/12 06:04 PM, Ryan Strunk wrote: *From:*owner-pygame-us...@seul.org [mailto:owner-pygame-us...@seul.org] *On Behalf Of *Christopher Night *Sent:* Thursday, January 12, 2012 7:54 PM *To:* pygame-users@seul.org *Subject:* Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame Seriously, what kind of game do you want to make? I have a couple in mind: an internet multi-player side scroller based on the rules to Sparkle, a sandbox-type world combining missions and social situations, various sports titles. All of the games will take place solely in an audio medium. If I understand correctly, these games will be sound only. If so, Pygame may not be the best choice. The SDL library, on which Pygame is built, plays background music fine. However, sound effects are another issue. Anything but short sound snippets can show a noticeable delay between when the sound is initiated and when it is heard. SDL does not store sound samples in audio memory. They are fed to the sound card each time. This copy time leads to the delay. Also, though SDL does support streaming, Pygame does not. Everything must be loaded before played. If you're working on a game that you could conceivably write by yourself or with a small team, python will probably be up for the job. In neither case is performance going to be the main consideration of you personally. That’s good to know. With as much as critics of Python harp on the speed, I was worried that resulting software was going to crawl along at a snail’s pace. Are there any situations that come to mind where Python wouldn’t work? Thanks a lot for all your help. Best, Ryan That said, Python/Pygame is still a good way to become familiar with game development. It is a good framework for developing a project, which can be rewritten to performance later. Lenard Lindstrom
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
--- On Fri, 1/13/12, Lenard Lindstrom le...@telus.net wrote: Also, though SDL does support streaming, Pygame does not. Everything must be loaded before played. Um... that's not true. pygame.mixer.music is Pygame's streaming module.
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
On 13/01/12 01:43 PM, Julian Marchant wrote: --- On Fri, 1/13/12, Lenard Lindstromle...@telus.net wrote: Also, though SDL does support streaming, Pygame does not. Everything must be loaded before played. Um... that's not true. pygame.mixer.music is Pygame's streaming module. Oh right, I forgot about file like objects. Has anyone managed to use the music module to play streaming audio? Lenard Lindstrom
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
I use it for my 'soundtracks' in the games. The only problem I run into with it is it takes a 'loop' argument, which is how many times the song should loop, I wish you could set this too infinite but I usually set it too 500 and that seems to work. Assuming no one will play my game for mor than 26 hours in a row... -Zack On Jan 13, 2012, at 9:22 PM, Christopher Night cosmologi...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Lenard Lindstrom le...@telus.net wrote: On 13/01/12 01:43 PM, Julian Marchant wrote: --- On Fri, 1/13/12, Lenard Lindstromle...@telus.net wrote: Also, though SDL does support streaming, Pygame does not. Everything must be loaded before played. Um... that's not true. pygame.mixer.music is Pygame's streaming module. Oh right, I forgot about file like objects. Has anyone managed to use the music module to play streaming audio? I feel like I'm misunderstanding you, but yes I use pygame.mixer.music to stream audio from an OGG file all the time. I've never had a problem with it. Is that what you're asking? -Christopher
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
Or just set it to -1? (Docs are wonderful: http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/music.html#pygame.mixer.music.play ) On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 7:36 PM, Zack Baker zbaker1...@gmail.com wrote: I use it for my 'soundtracks' in the games. The only problem I run into with it is it takes a 'loop' argument, which is how many times the song should loop, I wish you could set this too infinite but I usually set it too 500 and that seems to work. Assuming no one will play my game for mor than 26 hours in a row... -Zack On Jan 13, 2012, at 9:22 PM, Christopher Night cosmologi...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Lenard Lindstrom le...@telus.net wrote: On 13/01/12 01:43 PM, Julian Marchant wrote: --- On Fri, 1/13/12, Lenard Lindstromle...@telus.net wrote: Also, though SDL does support streaming, Pygame does not. Everything must be loaded before played. Um... that's not true. pygame.mixer.music is Pygame's streaming module. Oh right, I forgot about file like objects. Has anyone managed to use the music module to play streaming audio? I feel like I'm misunderstanding you, but yes I use pygame.mixer.music to stream audio from an OGG file all the time. I've never had a problem with it. Is that what you're asking? -Christopher
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
Thanks guys!! -Zack On Jan 13, 2012, at 10:45 PM, Ian Mallett geometr...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 7:36 PM, Zack Baker zbaker1...@gmail.com wrote: I use it for my 'soundtracks' in the games. The only problem I run into with it is it takes a 'loop' argument, which is how many times the song should loop, I wish you could set this too infinite but I usually set it too 500 and that seems to work. Assuming no one will play my game for mor than 26 hours in a row... -Zack If I recall, try -1
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
If you set out to remake World of Warcraft in python, then by the time you finish in 200 years, computers will be more than fast enough that your program will run just fine. Seriously, what kind of game do you want to make? If you want to work on an MMORPG, you'll have to be working for a company, in which case you don't pick a language based on performance, you pick it based on what that company uses. If you're working on a game that you could conceivably write by yourself or with a small team, python will probably be up for the job. In neither case is performance going to be the main consideration of you personally. So yeah, you'd run into trouble writing WoW in python, but that's really not the question you should be asking. -Christopher On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:45 PM, Ryan Strunk ryan.str...@gmail.com wrote: Hello everyone, As I embark on this journey of learning Pygame and game design, I have one last burning question I haven’t been able to find an answer to. I’ve heard that Python, as an interpreted language, isn’t as fast as languages like C++. It follows, then, that Pygame would suffer the same drawback in terms of speed. What I don’t know, though, is how much this potential limitation would affect game play. Using Pygame, is it possible to create games that would rival the scope and complexity of mainstream titles out there. Could you build a World the size of World of Warcraft and still have it be responsive to players? Could you build a game as fast-moving as Mortal Kombat, play it over the internet with a good connection, and still have it be as smooth as the Xbox? I want to make sure I don’t get deep into a project only to realize that the language was better suited to a different style of game. Any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated. All the best, Ryan
RE: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
From: owner-pygame-us...@seul.org [mailto:owner-pygame-us...@seul.org] On Behalf Of Christopher Night Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 7:54 PM To: pygame-users@seul.org Subject: Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame Seriously, what kind of game do you want to make? I have a couple in mind: an internet multi-player side scroller based on the rules to Sparkle, a sandbox-type world combining missions and social situations, various sports titles. All of the games will take place solely in an audio medium. If you're working on a game that you could conceivably write by yourself or with a small team, python will probably be up for the job. In neither case is performance going to be the main consideration of you personally. That's good to know. With as much as critics of Python harp on the speed, I was worried that resulting software was going to crawl along at a snail's pace. Are there any situations that come to mind where Python wouldn't work? Thanks a lot for all your help. Best, Ryan
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
The Eve Online client and server are written in 200,000+ lines of Python respectively. I'd say the only limit is time and knowledge and the real issue is the question that Mr. Night posed, what type of game do you want to make, and based on the answer to that question, is Python (PyGame) the right choice? I can say this though, if you're new to programming or game development, spend some time to remake snake, or tetris, or pong in PyGame and see how it does. Python's syntax is extremely accesible to newcomers to programming so it's going to help immensely when it comes to learning a programming language. Those lessons you learn will be relavent in all programming languages. Then, after you've done those projects, re-address the question of what game you want to make and the question of whether or not to use Python will be clearer. On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 5:53 PM, Christopher Night cosmologi...@gmail.comwrote: If you set out to remake World of Warcraft in python, then by the time you finish in 200 years, computers will be more than fast enough that your program will run just fine. Seriously, what kind of game do you want to make? If you want to work on an MMORPG, you'll have to be working for a company, in which case you don't pick a language based on performance, you pick it based on what that company uses. If you're working on a game that you could conceivably write by yourself or with a small team, python will probably be up for the job. In neither case is performance going to be the main consideration of you personally. So yeah, you'd run into trouble writing WoW in python, but that's really not the question you should be asking. -Christopher On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:45 PM, Ryan Strunk ryan.str...@gmail.comwrote: Hello everyone, As I embark on this journey of learning Pygame and game design, I have one last burning question I haven’t been able to find an answer to. I’ve heard that Python, as an interpreted language, isn’t as fast as languages like C++. It follows, then, that Pygame would suffer the same drawback in terms of speed. What I don’t know, though, is how much this potential limitation would affect game play. Using Pygame, is it possible to create games that would rival the scope and complexity of mainstream titles out there. Could you build a World the size of World of Warcraft and still have it be responsive to players? Could you build a game as fast-moving as Mortal Kombat, play it over the internet with a good connection, and still have it be as smooth as the Xbox? I want to make sure I don’t get deep into a project only to realize that the language was better suited to a different style of game. Any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated. All the best, Ryan -- o/
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
You couldn't build a game that's up to scope with any 3D game, because you wouldn't be able to use 3D. For that, you'd need either PyOpenGL (with Pygame) or Pyglet. The latter is better in some ways; the main advantage Pygame/PyOpenGL has that I can think of is joystick support. On the other hand, Pyglet is compatible with PyPy, which can give you massive speed improvements, and it's easier to use than PyOpenGL (or so I've heard; I haven't done anything with either myself). The Pythonic way is to not worry about speed until it's actually an issue. If speed is an issue, you can re-write parts in C, or there's the aforementioned PyPy. --- On Fri, 1/13/12, Ryan Strunk ryan.str...@gmail.com wrote: From: Ryan Strunk ryan.str...@gmail.com Subject: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame To: pygame-users@seul.org Date: Friday, January 13, 2012, 1:45 AM Hello everyone,As I embark on this journey of learning Pygame and game design, I have one last burning question I haven’t been able to find an answer to. I’ve heard that Python, as an interpreted language, isn’t as fast as languages like C++. It follows, then, that Pygame would suffer the same drawback in terms of speed. What I don’t know, though, is how much this potential limitation would affect game play.Using Pygame, is it possible to create games that would rival the scope and complexity of mainstream titles out there. Could you build a World the size of World of Warcraft and still have it be responsive to players? Could you build a game as fast-moving as Mortal Kombat, play it over the internet with a good connection, and still have it be as smooth as the Xbox?I want to make sure I don’t get deep into a project only to realize that the language was better suited to a different style of game.Any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.All the best,Ryan
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
--- On *Fri, 1/13/12, Ryan Strunk ryan.str...@gmail.com* wrote: As I embark on this journey of learning Pygame and game design, I have one last burning question I haven’t been able to find an answer to. I’ve heard that Python, as an interpreted language, isn’t as fast as languages like C++. It follows, then, that Pygame would suffer the same drawback in terms of speed. What I don’t know, though, is how much this potential limitation would affect game play. Using Pygame, is it possible to create games that would rival the scope and complexity of mainstream titles out there. Could you build a World the size of World of Warcraft and still have it be responsive to players? Could you build a game as fast-moving as Mortal Kombat, play it over the internet with a good connection, and still have it be as smooth as the Xbox? I want to make sure I don’t get deep into a project only to realize that the language was better suited to a different style of game. Any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated. All the best, Ryan Hey Ryan, welcome aboard and I hope you find your journey fun and educational! I certainly have! Right now I am working on an android game in Java and I hate it. Java sucks. I am hoping to contribute to the pygame on android project ( pygame.renpy.org ) to help move that along. I think pygame is a great way to get started and learn. If your experience is anything like mine, you may find that when you have to use other languages it's tough cause Python is just so much easier. I find myself asking why, why, why and most answers are either 'we can't do it the easier way' or 'we don't do it the easier way.' Aww man it's a blast, have fun!
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
Also Ryan, as to your questions regarding speed. There is a lot of work in the python community right now for speed improvements -- pypy, Cython, shedskin, as people here have said. I'm curious to see how pygame evolves over the next few years. Cause here's the deal -- the development time savings is obvious. So if we are able to execute more complex games with pygame, then why shouldn't it become more mainstream? Better faster cheaper. Also did you see the pygamezine? Pretty cool... http://pygamezine.com/
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
On 1/12/2012 5:45 PM, Ryan Strunk wrote: Hello everyone, -[erased] Ryan Hey, as a veteran programmer, what I can say about python's speed is that it is sufficient to do a very many of things. With python/pygame the only speed issues I have run into are: * Programming Language issues that can be fixed with common sense (such as appending to a huge list, which reallocates the whole thing and takes forever) * running a huge for loop * printing lots of text (expect more than a hundred print's a second to bring significant slowness) * Pixel logic. Not gonna lie, python is not so good here. Small images can be done at speed, but anything larger is a pain. (my computer comfortably does 80x80) * 3D -- I personally avoid using python for 3d. I've tried numerous times to get pyopengl working and failed. If you wish to use arrays, I suggest using numpy. For image processing, I suggest scipy. Maybe something else will help too. If you look into multiprocessing to split stuff into separate threads, beware and look carefully at instructions to keep your system from crashing. It's easy to miss one of the crucial details and windows does not have a barrier in place to stop infinite process generation.
Re: [pygame] Capabilities of Pygame
It should also be noted that C++ itself isn't fundamentally a fast language from a design perspective (and if you make the mistake of having a lot of news and deletes going off at inopportune times you'll see its true potential sluggishness). Its primary benefit is that it lets you talk to hardware more-or-less directly which lets you the intelligent programmer (with the help of the compiler) align the interests of the hardware with the interests of the problem you're trying to solve, whereas Python is mostly about just solving the problem even if it takes a long time to compute. Which makes it an excellent platform to learn anything abstractly (like game design) off of while not simultaneously fighting with the language on account of hardware being a particular way. You can focus on learning algorithms and data structures that improve efficiency in a language-agnostic way and with Python's flexibility you can also explore algorithms that don't usually get mentioned in the C++ world that may fit your particular case (and learn to love native dictionaries/hash tables and lists). Sufficiently smart compilers have been able to compile Haskell and (slightly annotated) Common Lisp to code that beats C++ for a long while now, and FORTRAN is still used in some circles because it's still very fast for number crunching. Projects others mentioned like PyPy continue to narrow the margins though they've got a ways to go. Unfortunately talking to hardware directly with Python usually means doing it with C/C++ then talking to those libs from Python. (As is the case for PyGame's core (SDL in C), PyOpenGL, etc.) I'd like to say this is the standard approach for most Pythonistas: write everything in Python, then rewrite the slow bits in C/C++. Fortunately a lot of the reasons we might need to talk to the hardware (graphics drivers, screens, fast number crunching) are general enough that other people have done most of the work for you to take advantage of. Even in the FPGA world where you get to design your own hardware with code, there's the MyHDL project which provides Python with nice sugar for HDL code and compiles your source to Verilog or VHDL which you'd normally write instead at your own peril and frustration.
