PYGAME -- Python Game Development

Today we are checking out PyGame, with a step by step getting started tutorial. I'm actually somewhat amazed that I have never talked about this 2D game framework yet, as it's perhaps the most popular way to learn game development using the Python programming language!

Links:
For Python Game Engine Alternatives check out:

[gamefromscratch]

For Python Game Engine Alternatives check out:

[kumarcgowda]

I have never seen a YouTuber that is so enthusiastic in making such a good content. Your video speed is also really good, not like stretching words or sentences unnecessarily.

[pingandpong]

This is how I got into to game dev! Like everyone else seems to have...
I'd never recommend it though, this gave me some terrible habits and python was not a great language to start game development in, however it's what bought me here so I'm glad it exists :D

[unfa]

Congratulations on breaking 128K subscibers!

[riidom]

I'm more in the Lua camp, but of course have heard of pygame several times - was great to get that little hands-on overview!

[paulwhiterabbit]

my first game was a school project using pygame, you manage dirty rects manually and controlling fps is very challenging even for a very simple project. It taught me the fundamentals of how games run and I'm indebted to it.

[alexnoman]

I thought it was abandoned/outdated? I used it for a while, it's good. I now have Raylib, though, and I'm very happy with it.

[JH-pero]

I learned a lot of gamedev with Pygame in the mid-2000's. Later on I contributed to a game server backend for the Ace of Spades beta versions, "pyspades" that was all Python/Cython and Twisted and it got decent performance. The author of that server also went on to make a Python/PyOpenGL (No Pygame, in fact) client for the game which I believe turned into the Steam commercial release(after a lot of deal-making and the project changing hands a few times).

Python can be pretty fast if you learn all the performance tricks and apply a lot of Cython, however, you are going to fight the language at some point; the other reason to avoid it is that the deployment model is restrictive - a big, complex runtime with modules that aren't designed to be easily modified. If you're using Godot and GDScript you basically have a Python-like language already, and in a context better suited for games.

[lmelior]

I was a software engineer using python for almost six years. I seriously love the language so much, but it's not ideal for general game development. It can be used for certain types of PC games, but in addition to the aforementioned performance issues, mobile support is iffy and fragile at best.

The linters are indeed very thorough; we had a few checks turned off by default, but in a production environment you *want* it to flag all those quality/maintainability issues that you don't really care about when you're just trying to get things running. Some of those are still important: for example, that warning about using import star. It's valid code, but bad practice for many reasons. Of course it doesn't help that pygame itself encourages this usage and was kind of developed with this paradigm in mind...there are import *'s all over the place in pygame. You won't find that in more recently developed python libraries like Arcade. Their code is much cleaner and easier to follow (IMO) as a result.

On the other hand, you just demonstrated the downfall of flagging too many issues by default: you tend to ignore even the most important ones.

[sebastianwardana]

honestly, if you are nervous about game dev or programming for game dev... get this for the start of your journey!

[WillTaplin]

Pygame, now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Saw one of my games when you were showing made with Pygame on itch!

[teharchon]

Switchcars is a fantastic commercial game made with pygame and I think (I may be wrong) that Ren'Py, the visual novel game engine, is built on this but I might be wrong as it isn't able to export to anything ever made (but to most platforms that count).

[pranavchaudhari]

Arcade library for python is also very beautifully documented. I made my first game using it.

[HE]

Wow, pyGames is still around?? pyGames is what I started with back in 2008 when I first began game development. I started with pyGames and then moved to BlitzBASIC. But then, I stuck with BlitzBASIC simply because BlitzBASIC was easier to get started with back then. With BlitzBASIC, I could just downloaded, click on the icon and get going vs pyGames there were a few more steps. And that's a bit about my game making history and how I got started Lol.

[karlstenator]

I looked at Pygame years ago, along with several other game engines for 2D development, but ended up settling on Gamemaker Studio 2 which has server me very well, especially with the recent 2.3 update.

[mansodev]

Python has a snail slow interpreter, especially when it comes to game development, even when using a JIT compiler it is still slow, if you are looking for the closest alternative to python but with a faster interpreter I’d recommend Lua, it’s fast and simple, and with LuaJIT a just in time compiler for lua, you can compile times nearly identical to c++ compile times.

[jarrellmark]

hi I really like your videos and watch them daily on my lunch break. the super fast intro always makes me very anxious perhaps because of too much coffee but maybe could it be slowed down a little bit?

[bity-bite]

Alright, I'm now convinced that GFS is a well-made bot that spies on you.
I was literally searching for a good game development library for Python.

[selsuru]

Pygame was what I used to write my first from scratch game (called it Bead It). I use SDL2 for C# and would love to see do a video on that topic as SDL 2 is great for 2D game development

[leonardoxavier]

I started developing games using pygame as well.