Starting from scratch, a few questions.

General Discussion
1

I won’t have internet over the weekend, so I was wondering if I could get a few pointers on what I’ll need on my home computer. I have all that, so I think I’m covered… I realize I’m not going to use all of it effectively, but I’d like to be able to tinker while I learn, so I want to cover all the bases :slight_smile: I’m going to come in tomorrow morning and grab whatever I need and burn a disc.

I basically want to learn by creating a single player RPG style fighting game. Simple spells, so I’ll need to do projectiles. Simple weapons, like a sword, a club, and an axe. I have models, and plan on animating them with blender. It will probably look like crap, but im hoping not.

By RPG style I mean earning points for character advancement based on wins and losses, e.g. “experience”. I’ll probably use the same set of animations for all fights until I learn more, but I think this is an achievable goal for a 2 day stretch.

I have a system worked out abstractly, in relation to the mechanics of the thing, so I will just translate that system to python.

Panda
-Manual
-Tutorials

PyODE
-Manual
-ODE package
-ODE Manual
-Tutorials

Blender
-Tutorials
-Manual

Python
-Manual
-Tutorials
-Dive into Python

Models
Sound
Textures

PyGame
-Manual
-Tutorials

Can anyone recommend any other materials or software I should have? I’m proficient with GIMP, so there shouldnt be any problem there, and I plan on using premade textures for now anyway.

I will just build a single room, like an arena, in which to place the combatant, who will have to fight various monsters (probably a ball or cube, too.)

2

Blah. Those tools will eventually be nice to have, however, I’m still stuck on the basics.

I’m trying to get the point click movement snipplet working, and it’s coming right back at me with

Obviously caused by the line

from keybindings import Controls

so I made the assumption that I need to use cyan’s keybinding addon… so I created a “keybindings” folder and copied his code into Controls.py.

And again, obviously, it’s wrong… so could someone show me the right way, please?

How does the "from X import Y " syntax work? I’ve searched on the forums, the python reference, and other sites and came up dry. I understand the “how”, I guess, just not the particular usage in panda.

My assumptions were based on the fact that in other areas of the code, lines like

from direct.fsm import FSM

meant
“import FSM.py from the …/direct/fsm directory”

So when I encounter snipplets thatother people have created, how to I use them in my own projects, or indeed, even use their own demos?

3

In that code “keybindings” is the name of the module (file.) “Controls” is the name of the class in the module. Therefore the file should be called “keybindings.py”, however you put my code containing in a “Controls” class in a file called “Controls.py”.

To make it work you should change the name of “Controls.py” to “keybindings.py” and put it in an appropriate folder (e.g. the same folder as the importing script.)

See http://docs.python.org/ref/import.html for more information on importing.

See http://docs.python.org/tut/node8.html for more information on modules.

4

Thank you very much!

(edit)On another note entirely, why does Ralph look so pissed off?

:stuck_out_tongue:

Works beautifully. Camera smoothing on the zoom, checking for clicks beneath the z axis location of the character, and WASD movement are all thats needed. The system is nearly identical to the ShadowBane movement system(pvp based mmo.)

Anyway, I’m going to try to smooth the camera zoom, after I load a model of my own.

Tiptoe and Cyan rock!

5

I can’t answer that question completely, but it may have something to do with his original career as a character in the “Carrot Eye” virtual world. Give it a look on the Building Virtual Worlds’ ‘past worlds’ website:

http://www.etc.cmu.edu/bvw/gallery.html

He’s a very put-upon little guy!

Take care,
Mark