create map using panda

General Discussion
1

Hi, Im very new to game programming. Ive never used a game engine before. I downloaded panda3d and went thru the beginner tutorial where you basically load a scenery of a tree and some grass and rocks and you put a panda in the middle who walks back and forth.

In this tutorial both the panda and the map (is that the correct word for scenery? ) appeared to have been made in a software like blender or 3dsmax and were just imported in as .egg files. What I was wondering is the following - is it possible to draw out scenery within panda3d itself using a python script?

The reason I ask is I wish to make a simulation/game where the scenery changes. For example I want to be able to place trees and houses in different places of the map and then move them to other locations while the game is running. So I dont want the whole scene to be made in blender or 3dsmax, I want to draw it out using python script so I can change it during runtime (crazy as it may sound). In fact I wish to be able to draw even the models such as a house entirely using python script, not make a model of a house in blender and import an .egg file.

So is this possible in Panda3D ? Or does this engine only allow you to place instances of models and scenes made in a software like blender?

If not could you recommend a game engine where this is possible? Or does one have to write directx code to accomplish this?

(PS I realize there is no visual game editor in Panda3d, but I wish to do the drawing using python itself)

2

Welcome to the Panda3D forums, and happy newyear! :slight_smile:

Of course. You can store all of your models (house, car, tree) separately, load them into Panda, and move/rotate/scale them as you want.
If you need you can even write code to build up every individual polygon.

Panda even provides a handy graphical tool (pops up when you invoke model.place()) that allows you to move models around in your game, to determine a proper position and orientation. But of course you can also just specify the transform in code.

3

Thanks for the reply rdb. I plan to learn panda3d and slowly go thru the examples. Im a little disappointed about how the documentation lists almost everything Ive looked up as “this feature is undocumented”. But then again its free, and I guess I’ll just ask what questions I have on here. Thanks again.

Oh and happy new year to you too !

4

The API reference is not really a good resource for learning Panda, only to find documentation of classes you need to use.
The API lists hundreds of classes that you don’t need, and many of those are undocumented. The manual is a much better resource for learning Panda.