Hi there, where may i find some more learning ressources on Panda, especialy on Panda? Like some tutorials on certain games making specific things? Like filling a playfield with certain items on a random, but controlled base (like preventing certain things appearing in certain areas).
I allready dug my way trough the phython beginners learning books from the phyton website.
Then: I plan seriously on starting to make something with panda, and therefore i really would love to see a forum section where bloddy newbies like i am one, can post their stupid questions. And also can see the stoopid questions of other newbies, which are much more relevant to them, than the posts of the cracs. Therefore i would like to suggest something like that, anybody else sharing that opinion?
Aside from that: I allways get the info that there is a major difference between a scripting and a programming language. But up to this point, i was not able to figure out what the real pro and cons in therms of “make a cool looking game”. With C++ you can do anything (at least thats what i have heared so far) where are the limitations of phyton compared to C++?
Thanks and best regards
Stiller
The difference between a programming language and a scripting language is basically, that a programming language is compiled into bytecode, while a scripting language is run in a interpreter. Scripting languages can be platform independant, while compiled code is never (the sourcecode might be).
Ppl who still say it’s impossible to write a game in a scripting language, eighter dont know the modern scripting languages or dont know what game development is.
Game development is implementing game engine logics. In contrast to engine development which usually has to be done in a “programming language” for speed reasons. Game development is often made in scripting languages, while some speed critical stuff is implemented in a compiled language (for example pathfinding).
The huge advantage of using scripting languages is that you dont need to recompile everything to test a small code-change. Some languages (for example python) even can be changed at runtime (check yinjo’s panda3d ide).
You can basically do everything in python that you can do in c++, python is just slower. When using the right techniques this does not make a big difference for a game. While python is slower in execution you will be faster in development. And if you try to make a game in a small team or alone, this is way more important (if you consider that current games often take several hundert men-years).
Yeah, that answer cleared up a lot of confusion in my head, and in fact, it was setting a lot of info i allready had in a understandable relation to each other.
After all, i am now completeley confident, that i came to the right place for what i am trying to archive (making some kind of casual style mini games).
but one further qestion: You where reffering to speed as one of the major differences between scripting and programming. As far as i have seen, one can also acess (or programm) Panda via C++. If i would do the same things in a C++ programm and in a Phython script, would be the C++ programm faster?
Thanks
Stiller
depends a little bit on your application.
in most cases there wont be any noticeable differences. the engine itself already is in c++ , thus all speed critical functions are already fast.
so for most games you wont see a difference. there are exceptions like when you do special things which require calculation intense algorithms. like pathfinding, a new terrain-generator, something like that. so it’s not like a python-coded game runs at 30fps while the same in c++ would run at 70.
those really are exceptions and you’ll notice them imediately 
so most of the time you’r fine with python. and if you really hit a bottleneck just port the function in question to c++, the rest of the game can still be coded in python (which makes development easy and fast)
also… the word “slow” is relative. if you compare python vs c++ python really IS slow. but it’s still powerfull enough to hande an insane amount of game-logic.
I seconds Thomas.
My game does AI and lots of networking with tons of python executed each frame. But that is still only 10-5% of the time of the app is spent in python. Moving next to ship (more fragment shader instructions) has bigger impact on fps then python …