Gaming API!

[tannewt]

Improve our existing APIs for game creation and add more as needed.

Please dump links and ideas here!

[deshipu]

There is a very nice fantasy console with a big community called pico8 (https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php), but it's closed-source and LUA. Then again, there is a similar open source project with Python support written in Rust: https://github.com/Gigoteur/UnicornConsole

The löve2d engine (https://love2d.org/) is also LUA, but they are very popular and have good API.

[deshipu]

I also need to add a 2x2 pixel mode to the Stage library (https://github.com/python-ugame/circuitpython-stage) so that it can be used with those huge 320x240 displays without having to strain your eyesight to see the 16x16 sprites.

[deshipu]

If you want to see some examples of PyGame games, there is a bunch that I wrote over the years: http://sheep.art.pl/Games

[tannewt]

Looks like most of the fantasy consoles have single files they use to distribute. Should we have ours be zip files that can live zipped on the fs or require they be unzipped into a folder?

[ladyada]

personally - i think its ok to tell people they need to put raw files down in a folder, that way we dont have to write to the FS which can cause corruption

[deshipu]

Some more fantasy console links: https://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2018-05-15_Game_Development

[tannewt]

Apple's SpriteKit: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/spriteKit

[kattni]

Someone suggested looking at TIC-80 as well. It's open source: https://tic.computer/

[superkahuna]

I'm not sure what APIs you have already, but having basic physics, movement, basic collision detection and easing functions would go a long way to adoption. I used a lot of game engines and honestly those functions are not hard to write from scratch, at least the basics. I'm not talking about box2d physics, pixel perfect collision or anything that would over tax the MCU, just the basics.

I've personally found this site helpful (note, the code is processing not python but is easy to understand): https://natureofcode.com/book/introduction/

[tannewt]

@superkahuna I started with https://github.com/python-ugame/circuitpython-stage in my testing. I ported Celeste from PICO-8. My plan is to add C apis where we need the performance.