Pygame Zero, a zero-boilerplate game framework for education | Hacker News Reader

Pygame Zero, a zero-boilerplate game framework for education

mauveweb.co.uk

60 pointsingve8 comments

Speaking of zero-boilerplate game framework for education, you may also want to look at big-bang framework which is part of HTDP 2e course[1]. Also you could compile those Racket games to run on your browser[2]

[0] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP/Worldv300/

[1] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/

[2] https://github.com/soegaard/whalesong

Nice work! I like the idea of automatically loading resources from known locations so they're ready to use right away.

I got my taste for software development by starting with games programming, and finding a friendly environment that gave fast results was very important to stay motivated and continue learning. Back in the 2000s', that environment for me was Fenix (now known as BennuGD - http://www.bennugd.org/).

This is an excellent option to teach programming to kids. Pygame has been always the recommended game library for Python due to its maturity. But Pygame had been my preferred option as it had less boilerplate and seemed more Pythonic. However, its project activity is quite low.

Pygame Zero seems like the best of both worlds.

I submitted Kivent the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9624193

Just as another option for Python-based game development if you're interested. Personally, I find Pygame really annoying and Pyglet is great but not really game-focused so it takes some extra footwork. I haven't had a chance to really dig into Kivent yet but it seems promising, especially because it should simplify distributing a game.

Wait, pygame is recomended, but you prefer... pygame?

His preference is probably "pyglet" :)

Sorry, you are right. I had meant to write pyglet as my preferred option.

As much as I love python, when it comes to low boilerplate 2d game engines for programming newbies, Love2d (https://love2d.org/) is still unmatched in my experience. This certainly does close the gap.

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