Hi. I wish to learn panda3d and python, and make a simple 3D racing game.
First, I want to know how to learn the basic techniques. However, the panda3d manual is too difficult to understand. I can hardly follow the guidelines because it’s too abstract for me to assemble one element of the manual on another.
For example I have just finished a racing car on Blender, but problems just came arise. First, I don’t know how to make the tyres of my car roll as I control my car move in panda3D. Second, I don’t know how to make the terrains. I have drawn the circuit myself in Blender though. I don’t know how to output them as .egg files correctly. I don’t know what the differences are for outputting animated .egg and static .eggs. I searched the manual but could not find the answer. The manual did not even teach me how to use CHICKEN!
I made some .egg but they could not be shown by typing “pview car.egg” something. I was frustrated.
I really want to learn something useful and professional. I am an information engineering university student. My course are for dummies and principle-reciters. I don’t like the computer knowledge my course teaches. It seems that no professors could help me anything about panda3d. Therefore I am going to learn DIY.
In addition, I think I can solve the collision problem as I understood the Roaming-Ralph tutorial. However, I think it is still too hard to understand every line’s meaning
One question, how to establish collision tags for models in Blender? I saw Roaming-Ralph but I could not edit its .egg files so I don’t know the principle.
The only thing I can advice is to start by learning Python. Buy yourself some patience , put Panda aside for now, go to Python’s website and read the Tutorial. Don’t come out of it until you’re sure you understood it well. Python is quite simple when compared to other languages, such as C++, but you can’t expect the Panda’s manual to teach you that, because Python itself is beyond it’s scope. Also, you can’t expect both of those manuals to teach you actual programming.
After you’re done with that and really sure you understand Python alone, come back to Panda’s manual. Dive into it. Have the Panda Forum and Google open so that you can search for things you don’t understand. If you don’t understand something but can’t find an answer - ask on the forum. Be precise, you can’t expect anyone to explain the whole Manual to you.
Go through all the examples and make sure you understand the code.
After that go back to Chicken. The Chicken manual is not within the Panda manual - it’s separate and you get it with the chicken package. It should open when you click “Help” in the Chicken UI. If it doesn’t, just search for it in the Chicken files. It explains everything you need to know about exporting things.
And as for collisions, forum search is your friend - this topic has been coming back like a boomerang lately, so start off by reading everything there is about it on the forum.
There’s no other way than reading, reading and a little more reading. Sorry
I learned Panda3d by using the tutorials coming with it
I tried to remove each code and then run the game to see the difference and so know what is the function of this code…I didn’t try to read the python manual cause this may waste my time, besides I was knowing the programming technique cause I was using Game Maker and use GML (Game Maker Language) in the that software,I think it was like Delphi but programming language have similar rules although they are different
About the collision you will see that each code in Roaming Ralph example has its explanation in the manual page, you don’t need to read the whole page to understand it, but just two or three lines to just get general information until you become familiar with it then dive deeply.
To learn well, try to simplify the tutorials (e.g in Asteroid tutorial try to remove the codes of the game and let only the codes that make the ship shoot and move)
I have the tutorial of making the ship hits bullets in directions and example on how to make Ralph move,run and jump if you want them
Just a thought: for attaching and properly moving the car wheels you should have a look at the solar system example, it’s well documented, done in steps, and it accomplishes what you need: a moving object with another moving object rotating around it (the earth and the moon).
, put Panda aside for now, go to Python’s website and read the Tutorial. Don’t come out of it until you’re sure you understood it well. Python is quite simple when compared to other languages, such as C++, but you can’t expect the Panda’s manual to teach you that, because Python itself is beyond it’s scope. Also, you can’t expect both of those manuals to teach you actual programming.