Pygame or C++?

[dan300891]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, couldn't see anywhere else more appropriate

Long story short, my wife just got me a pandora rebirth mega-pack for our anniversary, and I wanted to delve right in and start programming.

Now, I'm quite exsperianced with python and pygame (and vb.net, but I like to try and forget that...), But really fancy learning something a bit faster and more powerful, and figured this is my chance to learn C++

so, having done some poking around, there doesn't seem to be a lot of resources or help for a beginner getting started. Can anyone point me at a good article to get me started (preferably in 2d game programming) or am I better sticking to python?

thanks

dan

 

[ekianjo]

so, having done some poking around, there doesn't seem to be a lot of resources or help for a beginner getting started. Can anyone point me at a good article to get me started (preferably in 2d game programming) or am I better sticking to python?

Speed wise you are better with C - for documentations you should check anything related to the SDL library since it's the standard for 2D game creation on Linux (and its multiplatform too). 

Python / Pygame is great too, you can do a lot of things with it - simple games should run well with that too, but more demanding ones will require C/SDL to run at high framerates.

 

[alxm]

Since you already know Python, basic C++ won't be difficult to try. Check out Lazy Foo's SDL tutorials, they cover everything you need for graphics, sound, and input in C. That's how I learned basic game development for the GP2X in 2006, and they're still the best resource I know of. Once you get set up on PC, you can cross-compile for the Pandora with one of the SDKs around (I used Ivanovic's guide) or compile natively with the CodeBlocks PND or other tools.

 

[pmprog]

and vb.net, but I like to try and forget that

Why? You can run VB.NET code on your Pandora with the mono PND. It's not perfect and the WinForms stuff is pretty slow, but I think that's just Mono in general.

 

[rohezal]

When you want to learn C try C for Dummies it is a beginner book, but it is very well written and has a long chapter about pointers.

 

[ptitSeb]

Löve is also nice for 2D dev. It's Lua based, very easy to program with, and quite powerfull!

 

[Night]

There's also a port of the GoDot Engine for the pandora. Its GDScript language is pretty much a costum (and very similar) version of Python, while the core engine itself is written in C++.

Also iirc, decent PyGame games worked great on the pandora before, i think you can start off by working with whatever you're the most familiar with and continuing on from there if you like.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

When you want to learn C try C for Dummies it is a beginner book, but it is very well written and has a long chapter about pointers.

Or do it the hard way and break lots of stuff! Contains a lot of useful stuff that is lacking in pretty much every other beginner's book.

 

[dan300891]

Thankyou everyone for your informative responses. I will certainly take a look at all options presented

and vb.net, but I like to try and forget that

Why? You can run VB.NET code on your Pandora with the mono PND. It's not perfect and the WinForms stuff is pretty slow, but I think that's just Mono in general.

didnt know that? cool. Worth a look at, although, I have been looking at GAMBAS aswell which looks like a good alternative

 

[mongrol]

For python there's also libsdl bindings. Look for pysdl2 and pysdl2-cffi.