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Plan for Paul Malyschko
Plan for Paul Malyschko
| Name: | Paul Malyschko |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Apr 23, 2005 | |
| Rating: |  Not Rated | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
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| Profile Page: | View profile page for Paul Malyschko |
Blog post
It's been a few months since I've posted a .plan, as nothing particularly noteworthy has occured during that time, but today was just so productive that I thought it prudent to record it.
Since September last year, I've been organising a team to begin work on a game I've been designing for about a year or so that forked from an earlier design I wrote up as a teenager. However, for the last three months there's been naught communication, as we've been without an online presence. That has been rectified recently, though we are yet to have a proper meeting to decide some impending issues which will direct the future of the company I am starting very soon.
It all feels so big, but it's cool.
Anyhow, in earlier .plans I've mentioned a music tool we were working on, and after months of research into the best tool for RAD (rapid application development for anyone not in the know), I ultimately settled on wxPython. I had attempted the C++ wxWidgets library, but for some reason found it a pain to get anything done and abandoned it late last year. I also came across a nifty XML-based GUI format called XUL, which works off of the Mozilla platform. Unfortunately, you can't develop standalone applications with it yet, and there seems to be a heap of binding and abstraction of resource files you need to learn to get it all to work. Despite that, XUL (as far as I can tell) was developed by the Mozilla people and has very positive working examples in Firefox and Thunderbird. XUL allows the GUI to be cross platform, and work with very little tweaking, as well as effortlessly allowing cool things like skins to be added.
Yesterday I started researching wxPython to see how easy it *really* was. I already had Python 2.4 installed on my system, so I installed the appropriate wxPython set, loaded up an example I copied off the Wiki and it worked instantly. No endless fucking around to make something work! While not a fan of Python's syntax, it's this smoothness (to hijack Seth Godin's terminology from Unleashing the Ideavirus) that makes programmers want to use Python.
This morning, I prepared myself for a day of more research and programming. I'm a fairly proficient C programmer, but I've never coded anything in Python (I hadn't even completed a tutorial), so I thought I would get nowhere. Not so! By the end of the day I'm about a quarter way to a working application. I have a GUI program that is layed out the way it needs to be, can add lines and delete lines, quit and has it's own about message (which still retains the message I copied from the working examples off of which the program was based). While doing this, I've learned many of Python's nuances, many of which are annoying, but you can't beat it for speed.
I'm anticipating the application will be functional by the end of the week. There will still be some back end stuff that needs working out (the other programmer is working on that), and I need to embed a specialised version of Lua for our macro language, but we could be testing this within the month, something I never thought would be happening.
Screenshots will be coming soon. :)
Since September last year, I've been organising a team to begin work on a game I've been designing for about a year or so that forked from an earlier design I wrote up as a teenager. However, for the last three months there's been naught communication, as we've been without an online presence. That has been rectified recently, though we are yet to have a proper meeting to decide some impending issues which will direct the future of the company I am starting very soon.
It all feels so big, but it's cool.
Anyhow, in earlier .plans I've mentioned a music tool we were working on, and after months of research into the best tool for RAD (rapid application development for anyone not in the know), I ultimately settled on wxPython. I had attempted the C++ wxWidgets library, but for some reason found it a pain to get anything done and abandoned it late last year. I also came across a nifty XML-based GUI format called XUL, which works off of the Mozilla platform. Unfortunately, you can't develop standalone applications with it yet, and there seems to be a heap of binding and abstraction of resource files you need to learn to get it all to work. Despite that, XUL (as far as I can tell) was developed by the Mozilla people and has very positive working examples in Firefox and Thunderbird. XUL allows the GUI to be cross platform, and work with very little tweaking, as well as effortlessly allowing cool things like skins to be added.
Yesterday I started researching wxPython to see how easy it *really* was. I already had Python 2.4 installed on my system, so I installed the appropriate wxPython set, loaded up an example I copied off the Wiki and it worked instantly. No endless fucking around to make something work! While not a fan of Python's syntax, it's this smoothness (to hijack Seth Godin's terminology from Unleashing the Ideavirus) that makes programmers want to use Python.
This morning, I prepared myself for a day of more research and programming. I'm a fairly proficient C programmer, but I've never coded anything in Python (I hadn't even completed a tutorial), so I thought I would get nowhere. Not so! By the end of the day I'm about a quarter way to a working application. I have a GUI program that is layed out the way it needs to be, can add lines and delete lines, quit and has it's own about message (which still retains the message I copied from the working examples off of which the program was based). While doing this, I've learned many of Python's nuances, many of which are annoying, but you can't beat it for speed.
I'm anticipating the application will be functional by the end of the week. There will still be some back end stuff that needs working out (the other programmer is working on that), and I need to embed a specialised version of Lua for our macro language, but we could be testing this within the month, something I never thought would be happening.
Screenshots will be coming soon. :)
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 05/07/06 - Headache - Early Adopter version coming shortly 07/28/05 - Plan for Paul Malyschko 04/23/05 - Plan for Paul Malyschko 10/15/04 - Plan for Paul Malyschko 08/19/04 - Plan for Paul Malyschko 07/19/04 - Plan for Paul Malyschko 07/03/04 - Plan for Paul Malyschko 06/15/04 - Plan for Paul Malyschko |
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Submit your own resources!| Prairie Games (Apr 23, 2005 at 19:06 GMT) |
I now spend around 80% of my time writing in Python and 20% in C++ ... I only code in C++ for execution critical stuff and to modify existing C++ code (where I don't have time to expose it).
Lua is a very well designed language. Their table structure is amazing. I found indexing arrays starting at 1 instead of 0 to be more difficult than I would have expected. Especially when interfacing with C/C++ code, which is what it's designed for... Lua is an extension language, Python is both an extension and an application language.
I wish Python had Lua's execution speed, though dropping down into C/C++ where we absolutely need to hasn't been much of an issue. You may be interested in checking out the TGEPython resource I published here... it works pretty well :)
-Josh Ritter
Prairie Games
| Jay Barnson (Apr 23, 2005 at 19:42 GMT) |
I shouldn't say that, because I am not one to get religious about programming languages. But I am also an old C/C++ programmer, and discovering Python was quite significant for me. I didn't feel that way when I started programming in Java (or even VB.NET, though that one does impress me from the standpoint of building UI-driven business applications).
Python rocks. And wxPython is likewise pretty cool - I wish it was the standard Python UI library instead of the tcl-based stuff. But I guess opinions are pretty mixed between the two - I probably prefer wxPython because it feels more familiar (yet easy) to someone used to working with Windows-based UI's.
| Charlie Malbaurn (Apr 23, 2005 at 19:51 GMT) |
I guess we will see when it comes out.
The only reason that I mention that is because if you use XUL your gonna need the Mozzila back end. Which some people just don't want
| Paul Malyschko (Apr 24, 2005 at 00:20 GMT) |
I've found it great for RAD, but I don't know if I'll be using it directly in any games, since it is such a pain in the arse to embed. That's one reason why I'm using Lua.
Lua makes me horny it's that good. After discovering it, it's all I wanted to use for anything. I'm using a C/Lua combination for our first game, and I anticipate most of that will be Lua code. It's like this supermalleable mould that you can bang around a square peg to make it fit into any round hole.
@Jay: I forgot to mention, that earlier last year, I attempted to make this program in Java, and what a dismal failure that was. I'm not a fan of strict typechecking, let me tell you.
Why wouldn't they make it the standard? Who uses tcl? wxWidgets is a native based cross-platform UI, unlike tcl from what I remember, and since Python is cross-platform as well, it makes sense to adopt it. Oh well, I guess someone has to make the decisions.
While I'm here, how are your new game projects coming along? Need any concept art (while I'm available)? :)
@Charlie: From what I understand, Mozilla has actually submitted XUL to the W3C board, so I'm hoping it gets accepted as an open standard so we can all begin using it. From what I've heard, XAML is just a rip-off of XUL (XUL has been round for a while, it seems), but I have neither enough experience with XUL or XAML to confirm that.
I agree though, no-one wants to have to download the Mozilla platform just to use an application, least of all me; hell if I don't download the .NET platform I'm not going to download the Mozilla platform. That's why I didn't use XUL - I think once they get their libxul project underway (which is what they are building to), then you may find people may be more willing to adopt it. I've done a bit of XUL scripting and it is very handy to have a GUI that is that responsive.
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