pyved-engine 23.9a1

Custom game engine built upon python/pygame

Introducing pyved-engine, a Python package that provides you with our powerful and efficient 2D game engine named pyv. Designed to streamline game development, pyv offers a comprehensive set of tools for rapid prototyping and game production. Don't wait any longer,

Click here to join our vibrant Discord community

Do yourself a favor: unlock the full potential of your game development thanks to pyv!

1. Introduction

Why not opt for Pygame?

Confusion appears to exist within the community regarding the differentiation between a mere Python package and a game engine.

It's crucial to understand that although Pygame functions as a decent Python package, it doesn't provide the extensive array of features present in a specialized 2D game engine! Consequently, it might not satisfy all the prerequisites essential for the development of a fully-realized game.

Furthermore, it's worth noting that distributing games created using Pygame can present challenges. For instance, generating an executable from a Pygame project often requires reliance on third-party tools, adding an extra layer of complexity to the process. Sharing such an executable via platforms like Steam can also prove to be remarkably time-consuming, involving various steps that can be quite daunting, especially for newcomers.

This underscores the importance of considering not just the development capabilities, but also the subsequent distribution and accessibility of the final product. While Pygame has its merits, these distribution-related hurdles can significantly impact the overall experience of bringing your game to the world.

Unveiling the capabilities of a game engine

A game engine provides invaluable time-saving benefits by storing a collection of useful and reusable code snippets within its framework. Instead of reinventing the wheel and wasting your precious time by re-writing generic code for video games, you can leverage the power of the engine.

By referring to the comprehensive documentation, you can quickly learn how to implement various functionalities such as pathfinding or loading spritesheets. With simple function or method calls, you can seamlessly integrate these features into your game, saving precious development time and effort!

Create captivating and bug-free applications effortlessly. pyv offers an array of built-in modules for seamless management of game assets, AI integration, procedural generation, and other advanced features.

Specific goals

As a wise man said:

"It’s Harder to Read Code than to Write it"
— Joel Spolsky

Our general goal is to empower you to:

• Write standardized therefore very easy-to-read code: readability is not to overlook! If you take care of your code readability you'll encounter 30% fewer bugs, you will fix any bug faster, etc. It works like magic!
• Write a type of code that can evolve easily: by using our built-in event system along with the M-V-C pattern, you can reach a high level of code flexibility.
• Be more productive
• Distribute your newly created games via the new awesome https://kata.games platform!

In this way, your Python game can be played directly in any modern browser (Chrome, Brave, etc): a world premiere!

2. Get started

Use pyv and create your first game

To install our Python package, simply type:

pip install pyved-engine

At this point, it's crucial to grasp an important concept: pyv is not constructed like a typical Python library. Indeed, your source code won't directly import pyved_engine...

Instead, pyv ships with a dedicated command-line tool designed for creating what we refer to as "game bundles". A game bundle encompasses your game's source code, assets, and relevant metadata. Consequently, your interaction with pyv differs from how you'd interact with a standard Python library, such as pygame.

When using pyv, you utilize commands to create a game bundle, which can then be played.

Once pyv is installed on your computer the initial steps involve opening a command line and generating a new game. To do so, type the following command:

pyv-cli init DemoGameBundle

That command initializes a new game bundle along with some boilerplate source code. You will be prompted several questions, at this point you can just press Enter at every step to keep default values.

Then, to verify that everything works as expected you would type:

pyv-cli play DemoGameBundle

In case no argument is provided to the subcommand play, pyv assumes the current folder is a game bundle. Of course, the name "DemoGameBundle" is just an example, you can name your game bundle with any name you like.

Customize your game

... TODO ...

Other examples

# TODO fix this example, to match recent versions of pyv

HELP_MSG = 'press ESC to exit, any key to change bg_color...'
CAPTION = 'my first video game, hi mom!'

pve.init(1, caption=CAPTION)
pygame = pve.pygame
screen = pve.get_surface()
color_idx = 0
allcolors = ('pink', 'yellow', 'purple')
bg_color = allcolors[0]
print(HELP_MSG)
gameover = False

while not gameover:  # game loop
    for ev in pygame.event.get():
        if ev.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
            if ev.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE:
                gameover = True
            else:
                color_idx = (color_idx + 1) % len(allcolors)
    # update "game logic"
    bg_color = allcolors[color_idx]
    # update the display
    screen.fill(bg_color)
    pve.flip()

print('done!')

This is only one possibilty, very similar to how you define games using pygame-ce. In the docs you will see better, more efficient ways to define your games.

To sum up design principles

• Code readability matters. Clean, expressive code is not a luxury!
• pyved-engine encourages the use of patterns such as the Mediator or MVC, but people should remain free to use their favorite coding style.
• pyved-engine will be embedded in a versatile toolbox simply named pyved

3. Misc

Contribute

Feel free to join the developer team. It's a super easy two-step process: (a) start by forking pyved-engine, (b) join our Discord to discuss, or create a Pull Request directly!

If you spot a bug, create an issue and tell us how to reproduce the bug. The documentation is built via the mkdocs tool. Feel free to make it more user-friendly! It's as simple as modifying a few text files in the docs/ folder. Pull Requests are much appreciated!

Newcomers are always welcome, below are listed the 10 first contributors –our Hall of fame– ;-)

• wkta-tom architecture, event system, design patterns
• tank-king fancy game templates (flappy bird, match3)
• jwvhewitt isometric engine
• ...

License

Currently, materials in this repo are all licensed under the LGPL3 license. See the LICENSE file for more info.

Read/improve the technical documentation

The documentation isn't finished. Your help would be very appreciated to improve that part. Files used to build the documentation can be found within the docs\ folder, there is also the mkdocs.yml file that is located at the root folder of the project.

To preview the bleeding edge version of docs, you can type:

mkdocs build
mkdocs serve

If it doesn't work, remember that you needed the mkdocs python lib first. To fix this rapidly you can type: pip install -r requirements.txt

For now, the documentation is available in only two languages: English and French.

of video games)

• a wrapper around the popular pygame lib
• the abbreviation for [k]ata [engi]ne

Why "kata"? Kata.Games denotes a new gaming platform that helps indie game developers to create and share digital experiences easily, all around the globe! Via this innovative platform, we're proud to publish all kinds of games powered by pyved-engine.

Feature Overview

The game engine comes packed with useful features:

1. global event queue (simplifies the use of both the Mediator and the MVC design patterns)
2. gamestate stack, state management via events
3. simple GUI creation: buttons, checkboxes, etc.
4. tileset loading, sprite animation
5. tilemap parser (based on .tmx or .tsj file formats)
6. mathematical tools: matrices ; vectors ; gradient noise functions (->procedural generation)
7. helper classes for coding roguelike or RPG games
8. helper classes for coding card games (Poker, Blackjack, etc.)
9. helper classes for adding artificial opponents/intelligent entities (NPCs) to your game
10. ...

Mini tutorial

If you're familiar with pygame, getting used to pyved-engine is really easy. Navigate to the src/ folder. There, you see a very basic example that uses only pygame:

• demo-a-pygame.py

Now try to notice what is different when one uses pyved-engine (only minor details change):

• demo-a-kengi-straightf.py

This is only one way to use pyved-engine but it's most likely that you will start with this one, if you already have some background in creating games using pygame. Actually, one can see pyved-engine as a mere wrapper around pygame. Everything that you can do with pygame can be done the same way when using pyved-engine, but pyved-engine also unlocks many new features that are very worthy of interest!

To explore more possibilities you can take a glimpse of the next demo that implements the same thing but using the M-V-C pattern:

• demo-a-kengi-mvc.py

Note that this program starts with the declaration of a list of user-defined events. User-defined events can have attributes. These events, just like regular pygame events, are processed via a standard method proc_event that you need to re-define when you sub-class pyved-engine.event.EventReceiver...