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I'm looking to teach my kids programming, and it looks like I've narrowed it to two options:
jMonkeyEngine 3 (jME 3)
Unity 4.3
I couldn't find any "current" comparisons, and so I thought I'd ask:
Which is better jME3+ or Unity4.3+ for Teaching Programming vs Engine Benefits?
I'm not a game developer, but as a corporate & control systems developer I have experience in both C# and Java.
I'm currently leaning towards Unity4.3+ because:
From a Programming perspective, I think C# is a little cleaner than Java, though this means little if the Engine Coding & Object model encourage poor programming
Engine Benefits: Unity4.3+ will "supposedly" have upcoming support for both XBox One & PS4
Note: in fairness to jME, I will make note of this "pre-alpha state" iOS option for jME which is better than a marketing "supposed" perhaps: (http://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/wiki/doku.php/jme3:ios)
If they are equal in all other regards, which one has better Service integration?
Glad that you interesting in JME3.
I’m also working for a project that target making education programs (youngs and adults) in gaming enviroment.
If you going to let your children learn programming via game developing, it’s a good idea. But both JME3 and Unity are far more complicated to start with ( I assume your children are still young )… There are also few projects suitable for children to learn programming visually.
Greenfoot ww.java.com/en/java_in_action/alice.jsp
Alice ww.greenfoot.org/door
Kojo ww.kogics.net/sf:kojo
Those things (languages come with IDEs) have short learning curve and easy to get with, require minimum knowledge and suitable for children and starter. That’s the education side.
For the engine side. [This is my personal opinion]
I prefered JME.
I’m also left Unity ( did about 4-5 commercial games in unity my self) to go to JME. Before Unity, i also worked in Ogre, UDK, Torque and a lot other engines ( 10 more). I also worked with commercial engine in daytime job in C++, which code dirty as hell but run extremely smooth and cost millions dollar.
The reason is: Those engine tied you up with its limitation and pre-made sollutions. Of course that’s also half of the reason why you choose and engine at first. But when you hit that limitation, for example the license fee or the closed technologies. You will hate them as much as i did.
So that’s why i come to JME in a search of “complete” game developing and entertaining technology.
If you are an experienced Java and C#, in association with JME and Unity developer, i will name you a few things that can be *strong text*compared between the two:
License : free open source vs free / commercial
IDEs : Netbean – an open and extensible platform ( leading quality) vs MonoEdit (the most buggy IDE you can find on earth)
** The based technolgy:**
Graphics: OpenGL v2+ vs Modified renderer ( openGL compatiable v3+) Unity win in this one i suppose :( . It’s sad for a long term java developer like me seeing this. But we can improve the graphics from time to time i hope.
Data management: You choose ( H2, HyperTable, Neo4j …from Java world 100+ of those) VS Unity database
Data oganization: You choose (ES, OO, COD, data driven …) VS ES and data driven only.
Networks: You choose ( Java rocks in this one) VS Unity network ( high performance but never… ever defeat Java)
Cloud and distributed: You choose (Storm, Hadoop..) VS home grown "cloud techs”
Note that i still usually using Unity and JME3 at the same time, for my job and for my hobby. I used Unity 4 with fancy mecanim animation, sub stance material … at day, and using JME3 for research and improve it at night. IMO, JME3 is the game engine which worth to learn, and it will rocks and shine in the future!!!
Hope this help!
It's hard to make a comparison when I have never actually used Unity. I have seen demo's and it's interface however. But having used the jMonkeyengine for about 2 and a half years, I can say I am a happy customer :).
Unity probably has a bit more of everything: developers, users, bells and whistles, but there is a cost associated to that.
Similarities between the 2:
- Big communities (Unity is bigger)
- Many free tutorials
- Rapid development (here's a link to a couple ludum dares I've been involved with using jME http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/comment-page-3/?action=preview&uid=16152, http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/comment-page-1/?action=preview&uid=16152)
- Easy to distribute to Windows/Mac/Linux/Android
The jMonkeyEngine is completely free and all open source (New BSD License). So you can see all the inner workings of the engine, and even change it if you do not like something (of course you are welcome to commit the changes back :)). So you will learn a lot more by delving into the jME source code.
C# and Java is a debate that can go on for ages, but I don't think it should be a defining factor, they are very similar in nature. There doesn't exist a usable iOS version in jME, and I don't think there is any immediate plans for Xbox One and PS4, so Unity will win there.
JME is a bit more hardcore engine than Unity.
JME:
- strong community (english language mostly)
- OpenSource and free to use.
- has many cool tools. But Unity has much more i guess.
- Simple to compile and code with all platforms.
- Supports Linux. You can develop games in Linux OS.
Unity:
- Strong community (with many local communities and languages)
- Non free. But it has professional tools.
- Has javascript support. You can add scripts inside of the editor.
- Has really cool world editor. But coding is better in JME SDK.
I use JME. But it's hardcore in many cases.
It really depends on what you aim for.
The pro on unity is especially way to get assets into the engine (via the shop).
With jme3 you need to be able to at least partly work with blender/3dsmax or similar. Or use a graphic style where it does not matter (eg 2d or blockworld)
Also it has better state of the art features in terms of lighting and shadowing.
But you kinda need to pro license sooner or later, as even basic stuff as lod is tied to it
http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses and it is not that cheap.
The pro with jme3 is that it does not limit you. It is only a core engine but also not tailored for some use-cases.
As far as I understand Unity uses a kinda Entity-component system but without separate systems. (The components contain the logic)
In jme3 you are free to use whatever you want, and are encouraged to make a clean split between logic and graphic. You are free to use whatever programming type you prefer (eg ES,OO) As jme is jvm based you also have access to other jvm languages, eg for functional programming via scala.
So it depends on what your target(and budget) is, more about developing and their specifics, or more about making a own game.
Regarding the version controll,
JME3 works fine with git and svn and kind everything else. As there are no special files or logic tied to any of them.
I can't say I've ever used Unity but here are some things I love about JME3:
Completely free & open-source under BSD license
Awesome SDK based on awesome NetBeans
Deployment to Linux, Mac & Android (as well as windows) with 1 click, I have no idea if Unity can do this
Amazing active community, constantly creating new plugins and features (IOS deployment coming soon, possibly), they will also help you with any trouble you run into
Networking is awesome
Can use other Java libraries or features alongside
As far as features of the engine go, Unity probably has more. However, I highly recommend JME, it is a great engine. Somebody else said you need knowledge of blender, whereas with Unity they have an asset shop. While Blender knowledge is (very) useful, there are hundreds of websites online that sell or give away for free assets (for instance www.turbosquid.com).
I have to ask, is whomever you're teaching actually ready to program for a game engine?
If the first thing that has to be taught is a hello world script followed by learning what variables are, then both options do nothing but over-complicate what needs to be a simple learning environment.
Even if they have the basics of programming down, they should know what the basics of game programming are. They should know what a vector is and how matrix math works with some underlying understanding of how an engine operates.
I don't know about jME, but with Unity, this would be the point where they could actually write code that does something in which they can earnestly say they understand why (which should be the most important part of teaching someone). I describe Unity as the simplest, big boy toy out there. That still means they have to be ready for the big boy toys in the first place.
Oh, and stick with the free version of Unity. Most pro features are graphical elements like bloom lighting that don't effect a programmer's capabilities.
Related
I am very sad because a few days ago the SDK I was using called Marmalade was announced to be shutting down. I was using that SDK to bring my game to the iOS and Android platforms with great ease.
I am considering switching to Unreal Engine 4, however I have 0 experience working with it. How simple would it be to port my C++/OpenGL codebase to it?
I know there is a million ways to work with unreal, like blueprints and so on, but let's say I already have an engine, what steps would I take to port it?
If anyone could provide a rough step by step process of how you would do it and possibly link me to some learning materials I would be very greatful!
Thanks all
The question is too broad but I'll try to answer it anyway.
The low level part of your engine (input, rendering, serialization, file operations, etc) is taken care of by UE4. You pretty much won't be able to use parts of your engine in that regard.
GUI is also something that you are going to have to remake the UE4 way.
Your gameplay logic can be reused. But UE4 has its own approach for gameplay handling as well so you should familiarize yourself with it. Blueprints are very powerful and to use it you gonna have to carefully go through all of your gameplay classes, reparent them from UE4 basic classes (UObject, AActor, AController etc), then mark methods and class members with UFUNCTION and UPROPERTY so it would be exposed to Blueprints.
I would recommend to try making a simple project to get a hang of how things are done in UE4 and only then to try to reimplement your game in UE4. UE4 has a good documentation so study it.
I personally had an experience to switch from a different engine to UE4 and it took our team around 4 month, but our project is big. We pretty much used none of the code from our old engine. We followed the same approaches and same logic, but we pretty much reimplemented everything.
I'm getting into game development right now, and I want to do 3D games. I have been checking out UDK, Unity, and CryEngine 3 SDK. All of them, I can see, have their pros and cons. Unity, however, I am starting to rule out because I'm wanting to do Game Development as a job in the future. Since the Unreal Engine (which, as I understand, is 99% the same as UDK) and CryEngine 3 are the industry standards, apart from GameBryo etc.. (which I don't have money to buy as I'm 16 haha)
From what I understand the pros of UDK are:
Simpler (In terms of Scripting)
Runs on more computers than CE3
Industry standard, used in MANY top-notch games.
Kismet is really nice (for level-wide editing)
Development for iOS is possible, and free (minus the $99 fee to become an "Apple Developer"
Cross Platform (PC, Mac, iOS) for the UDK. UE3 (as I understand) is PC, Mac, iOS, PS3, Xbox360, and Android?
$99 to sell games, first $50,000 in sales is royalty-free
The cons are:
Must exit the editor to recompile the code every time you change the UnrealScript code.
Worse workflow than CryEngine 3
Soon to be replaced by Unreal Engine 4
Crashes often.
Not many tutorials.
The pros of CE3 is:
AMAZING Terrain Generator
True next-gen-top-notch graphics
Best water ever seen
Much better workflow than UE3
Rarely Crashes
The Cons are:
Must log in to use, if you lose Internet connection while editing, you won't even be able to save.
Expensive if you want to make commercial games.
Doesn't run on as many computers
Only on PC, PS3, and X360
More complicated scripting?
Is what I said the basis? Are there any pros or cons I have missed? Which do you recommend for a beginner (to game development, not programming in general. I am well versed in Python, know VB.NET, C#, HTML, and CSS) Is Unity a possibility for a game-development company to see potential in you?
EDIT: P.S. I thought I should mention this... I do not plan on making FPS as my main genre. I know it will be hard to do anything else with either UDK or CryEngine, but I don't mind. I need the learning experience. Mainly, can UDK AND CryEngine do this? I KNOW UDK can, but I'm only about 50% sure CryEngine can, I haven't seen many people ask this.
I'm learning UDK at the moment. Click on the welcome screen to access online video tutorials. This Buzz3D dude makes the best tutes ever. Although he uses an older version of UDK, I'm able to keep up and I've learned heaps. UDK is a very exciting editor. I plan on checking out CE3 at some stage. Dunno much about Unity. Might be good for developing to the upcoming ouya console (which is a bit of a dark horse for the industry).
I have played a little bit with UDK before and I think the pros and cons you mentioned are valid.
I don't know anything about the internal workings of game company recruitment, but I think for a beginner Unity3D is a choice worthy considering. Unity is not as powerful/productive/market-standard as UDK, but it does have some advantages:
C# scripting
Comprehensible documentation, tutorials and active community
Friendly and easy-to-use IDE, Script Editor and (most importantly) Debugging Tools.
Anyway, if you follow some tutorials it shouldn't take more than a few days to learn the basics of Unity and make some game prototypes. I would recommend it as a staring point even if you are going to migrate to another engine later.
Just on the pricing of each, Read the notea correction to UDK pricing.
Here is the cost of each currently
Crytek: For Indy Developers
-"Crytek require only 20% of the developer’s revenues from the commercial launch of their game." -I find this more appealing for sheer simplicity's sake
UDK:
-"US $99 up-front, and a 0% royalty on you or your company's first US$50,000 in UDK related revenue from all your UDK based games or commercial applications, and a 25% royalty on UDK related revenue from all your UDK based games or commercial applications above US$50,000*"
*Note there is this to,
-"If you are using UDK internally within your business and the application created using UDK is not distributed to a third party (i.e., someone who is not your employee or subcontractor), you are required to pay Epic an annual license fee of US$2,500 per installed UDK developer seat per year. This license fee only applies to UDK seats used for development; no license fee is required for hardware where only the resulting applications are installed."
Alright I am not the best but what this seems to be is if you are a small dev team you could get away with only one charge of 2,500 by listing every one under on "employer" but I am not even sure If it applies to indie devs.
LINKS:
Cryengine: http://mycryengine.com/index.php?conid=43
UDK: http://www.udk.com/licensing
Thanks for you post,
Robert
I don't see where you get the idea UDK crashes often and "doesn't have many tutorials"?
You can also get away with having to recompile each script change with a system called "archetypes", I won't explain in detail, but you get the gist.
if you try to get anything outside of CE3 other than an FPS, you're going to have to dig into their C++ code which I can tell you now is the least documented, least commented, code to date.
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With the interest of creating a roguelike RPG (such as Nethack, Rogue, and ADOM), which programming language would be most suitable and why?
With the language that you choose, be sure to list any libraries or facets of the language that make it particularly well-suited.
Way back in the day I tried to write Roguelike games using QuickBASIC out of all things (it was 1988.) Not the recommended approach...
There are still some development circles out there. Here's an FAQ on Roguelike Development and also a blog dedicated to the same.
My language of use (I'm trying to create roguelike too) is Python, because:
It's high level programming language, I don't need to think about memory allocation all the time, etc, but keep my mind on algorithms.
There's tons of useful libraries for almost everything. Recently I've found TDL/libtcod which can be useful for roguelike development.
With bindings you can easily use C/C++ libraries or even write few critical functions in C/C++, and use them.
It's the most readable programming language I've ever seen.
While programming in Python I've learned to use internal documentation. It's very helpful thing, I just read my code few months later and I still know what it's doing.
That's a very personal choice as always :-)
I wrote my Roguelike game (Tyrant) in Java for the following reasons:
Very portable (even with graphics)
Garbage collection / memory management
Lots of good free / open source libraries available (helpful for algorithms, data structures and manipulating save game files etc.)
It's a statically typed language - this has performance and robustness benefits which I judged to be worth the additional coding complexity
I wanted to hone my Java skills more generally for use in other projects
EDIT: For those interested it is open source, all code is available at SourceForge
Well I've made a couple roguelikes in C, spending a fair amount of time at roguebasin, which is a great site for anything related to roguelike development.
As for what language you should use, I don't really see it making a huge difference. I pick C because of the portability, and a lot of libraries work well with it.. But an object oriented language can clean up some things that you may not want to keep track of.
There aren't any languages that I would consider to be specifically greater than the rest for roguelikes. If you're making it graphical, you may prefer something that has that built-in, such as flash / silverlight. But even then there are libraries for any other languages that bring them to about the same degree of difficulty in that regard.
So I'd say take a language you know and like, or that you don't know and want to learn..
Most of these answers are great, but there's something to be said for the combined power of object-oriented stuff and low-level commands that can be abused in C++. If you're looking for some inspiration, the C sourcecode to NetHack is widely available and documented well enough that you can certainly poke around to learn some things. That said, it's a huge project that's been growing for decades, and not everything is as clean as you're going to want things for your own project - don't get roped into making poor design choices based off of what you find in NetHack.
Honestly, though, in terms of what you use it probably doesn't matter at all - though I'd highly recommend using an OO language. There's so much crap to handle in a roguelike (heck, any CRPG really) that OOP is the easiest way of staying sane.
The original nethack was written in C, and the source is available if you want to get some ideas about how it was written, and the challenges you may find which might be a good way to start deciding on a language.
My first question would be whether the game is going to have a web based UI or be some kind of console/window affair like the original Rogue-like games? If the former I would say that any language you're comfortable with would be a good choice. Ruby on Rails, Python/Django, PHP/CakePHP, etc. would all be great.
But if the answer is the latter, this is a game that you want people to be able to download and install locally, I'm going to go with Java. It's a great language with no memory management for you to deal with. It achieves very high performance thanks to just-in-time compilation and optimization, and it has an extremely rich library to help you with data structures, Swing makes for some really beautiful UIs, and the 2D library allows for the most rich cross-platform rendering outside of PostScript. It also has the availability across Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux that you're not going to get from some other choices.
Finally, distribution of your application is easy via Java Web Start as well, so people can download and install the game with just a couple of clicks once they have Java and keep it on their machine to run as long as they like.
For making any game, any language will be right if :
you can use it (you are able to use it, by knowledge or if it's easy enough to learn right now for you or your team)
it produce applications that runs on your client's computer
it can easily produce applications that runs fast enough for your game's needs.
I think that for a Rogue-Like, any language you know will be right as far as it runs on you target. Performances are not really a problem in this kind of game. World generation can require high performance if your world generation is really complex though...
just go with something that will handle the low-level details for you. whatever you know should work.
hey, they can write one in javascript.
I recommend Actionscript for those games.
You could consider Silverlight.
It sits on top of C# and .Net so theres not much need to worry about memory management. With SL you'll get built in support for scene graph type rendering - culling of things not on screen, Key board, mouse events, clicks on objects etc.
There's an initial learning curve, but I find it's a great environment to work in.
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I just found out about Alice and Scratch. I will be implementing those pretty soon. But, I wonder, what would be good material for kids from 1st grade thru 4th/5th?
Toontalk is something to look at. I used it successfully with group of ten- to eleven-year-old children, and it's been used with much younger kids. Of course, I think Scratch has too. But Toontalk is specifically built to feel more like a game. It's essentially a 3D world that kids can explore and interact with, and in which they create programs by training robots. Highly recommended.
http://www.toontalk.com
http://playground.ioe.ac.uk/ABOUT.HTM
http://playground.ioe.ac.uk/games.htm
The Toontalk 3d environment ingeniously operates as a metaphor for sophisticated programming concepts. There are quite a few academic papers linked on Toontalk site about the educational theory behind Toontalk. Here's one interesting paper that describes how the Toontalk 3d objects map onto abstract programmming concepts.
I'll admit, I'm not a professional educator. And my info on kid's programming education may be too obsolete, but my mom was as close as they came to a computer educator in the 1980s, and here's some tricks from her book.
When I was 8, she had no problem teaching me logo
I would think that before reading skills are somewhat developed, it would be hard to teach the semantics of any programming language - however simple. And the first "aha!" for programming (to me) would be realizing that if you give really simple commands to the computer, it will do neat stuff for you.
If I had to teach kids that were still working on reading fundamentals, I'd probably focus it on games that are not directly connected to a programming language, but which do involve logic development. Things like:
Assigning letters to codes and translating from letter to code
Games where you follow simple rules to move things around, emulating data structures.
Puzzle games making use of computer science concepts - like shortest path algorithms. Not in analyzing the algorithm, but in developing it in the first place.
I'm afraid I don't know of a pre-built set of material for this sort of stuff. But I think that you might be able to create your own.
The limits would be the cognitive abilities of the kids -- I know that there are certain points where the theories say that kids can't do certain types of abstract concepts. For example, I was just listening to an example that mentioned that pre-schoolers can't handle the idea that something may have more than one name. Not quite knowing where those points of cognitive growth typically occur, I'm not 100% certain of what game would be right for what age group -- it might be trial and error.
I use Alice to teach children ages 11-14. It works well for them, but I would not use it for children much younger than that unless it was a one-on-one situation. I can't speak for Scratch.
One thing I can speak for though, is Lego Mindstorm programming. There is a cost to it, unlike Alice and Scratch, but it is very approachable for 1st through 4th grade. See if the First Lego League has a group near you so you can join up with others to help with costs.
Scratch is the simplest programming language I have found for kids. You can use it like logo, but it is much nicer.
I think Alice is too hard for kids of age 8 years.
Microsoft has also Small Basic and shipped v0.2 recently.
This version also includes a cool new
feature that allows students to easily
graduate from Small Basic to Visual
Basic with the touch of a button.
Check out the full release notes in
the Small Basic blog.
Small Basic is a project that's aimed
at bringing "fun" back to programming.
By providing a small and easy to learn
programming language in a friendly and
inviting development environment,
Small Basic makes programming a
breeze. Ideal for kids and adults
alike, Small Basic helps beginners
take the first step into the wonderful
world of programming.
Download and for more information : MS Small Basic v 0.2
When I was really small we were taught things that have similarities to programming but aren't quite programming, games with puzzles to solve, tangrams, and even choose-your-own-adventure writing programs. Later we learned LOGO.
There are some systems like toontalk, but to do anything like programming, you need to cope with sequence - this follows that, follows that, follows that - and basic arithmetic. Which is why 8+.
Younger, you want the children you work with to either have a good sense of what sequence might be - say from following instructions - and to be supported by a good interface, where drag and drop isn't as fiddly as scratch.
RoboMind is a simple educational programming environment with an own scripting language that allows beginners to learn the basics of computer science by programming a simulated robot.
In addition to introducing common programming techniques, it also aims at offering insights in robotics and artificial intelligence. RoboMind is available as stand-alone application for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. It is free and open source.
Worth to give a try!
www.robomind.net
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Summary:
Can I program a "thick
client" game in C without reinventing
wheels, or should I just bite the
bullet and use some library or SDK?
I'm a moderate C programmer and am not
afraid to work with pointers, data
structures, memory locations, etc. if
it will give me the control I need to
make a great "thick-client" game.
However, I'm thinking of eschewing
high-level languages & frameworks for
the sake of power and control, not
ease of use.
I'm interesting in tinkering with a 2D fighting/platforming game as a side project sometime. I'm primarily a Linux server-side programmer with experience in Python, Ruby and PHP. I know that there are excellent frameworks in some of these languages, like PyGame. I am also aware of the success people have had with stuff like Air and .NET... but I have some concerns:
Performance: Scripting languages are notoriously slow. If I'm making a real-time game, I want it to be as snappy as possible.
Huge binaries: Using frameworks like .NET or scripting languages like Ruby often result in big CLRs or libraries that you wouldn't otherwise need. The game I want to make will be small and simple--I don't want its CLR to be bigger than the game itself!
Extra stuff: Honestly, I just don't like the idea of inheriting some big game library's baggage if I can wrap my head around my own code better.
I'm asking this question because I know I'm very susceptible to Not Invented Here Syndrome. I always want to program it myself, and I'm sure it wastes a lot of time. However, this works out for me remarkably often--for example, instead of using Rails (a very big web project framework with an ORM and GUI toolkit baked in), I used an array of smaller Ruby tools like rack and sequel that fit together beautifully.
So, I turn to you, SO experts. Am I being naive? Here's how I see it:
Use C
Cons
Will probably make me hate programming
High risk of reinventing wheels
High risk of it taking so long that I lose interest
Pros
Tried & true - most A-list games are done in C (is this still true today?)
High level of control over memory management, speed, asset management, etc., which I trust myself to learn to handle
No cruft
Use framework or SDK
Cons
Risk of oversized deliverable
Dependent on original library authors for all facets of game development--what if there isn't a feature I want? I'll have to program it myself, which isn't bad, but partially defeats the purpose of using a high-level framework in the first place
High risk of performance issues
Pros
MUCH faster development time
Might be easier to maintain
No time wasted reinventing common paradigms
What else can I add to this list? Is it a pure judgment call, or can someone seal the deal for me? Book suggestions welcome.
I believe you are working under a fallacy.
There are several frameworks out there specifically for game programming --- written by people with much experience with the complication of game design, almost certainly more tha you do.
In other words, you have a "High risk of performance issues" if you DON'T use a framework.
My current thinking is:
If you want to learn to program, start making the game engine from the base elements upwards (even implementing basic data structures - lists, maps, etc). I've done this once, and while it was a learning experience, I made many mistakes, and I wouldn't do this a second time around. However for learning how to program as well as making something cool and seeing results I'd rate this highly.
If you want to make a proper game, use whatever libraries that you want and design all of the game infrastructure yourself. This is what I'm doing now, and I'm using all of the nice things like STL, ATL/WTL, Boost, SQLite, DirectX, etc. So far I've learnt a lot about the middle/game logic aspect of the code and design.
If you just want to make a game with artists and other people collaborating to create a finished product, use one of the existing engines (OGRE, Irrlicht, Nebula, Torque, etc) and just add in your game logic and art.
One final bit of wisdom I've learnt is that don't worry about the Not Invented Here syndrome. As I've come to realise that other libraries (such as STL, Boost, DirectX, etc) have an order of magnitude (or three) more man-hours of development time in them, far more than I could ever spend on that portion of the game/engine. Therefore the only reason to implement these things yourself is if you want to learn about them.
I would recomend you try pyglet.
It has good performance, as it utilizes opengl
Its a compact all-in-one library
It has no extra dependencies besides python
Do some tests, see if you can make it fast enough for you. Only if you prove to yourself that it's not move to a lower level. Although, I'm fairly confident that python + pyglet can handle it... at worst you'll have to write a few C extensions.
Today, I believe you are at a point where you can safely ignore the performance issue unless you're specifically trying to do something that pushes the limits. If your game is, say, no more complicated than Quake II, then you should choose tools and libraries that let you do the most for your time.
Why did I choose Quake II? Because running in a version compiled for .NET, it runs with a software renderer at a more than acceptable frame rate on a current machine. (If you like - compare MAME which emulates multiple processors and graphics hardware at acceptable rates)
You need to ask yourself if you are in this to build an engine or to build a game. If your purpose is to create a game, you should definitely look at an established gaming engine. For 2D game development, look at Torque Game Builder. It is a very powerful 2D gaming engine/SDK that will put you into production from day 1. They have plenty of tools that integrate with it, content packs, and you get the full source code if you want to make changes and/or learn how it works. It is also Mac OSX compatible and has Linux versions in the community.
If you are looking for something on the console side, they have that too.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned XNA. Its a framework built around DirectX for doing managed DirectX programming while removing a lot of the fluff and verbosity of lower level DirectX programming.
Performance-wise, for most 2D and 3D game tasks, especially building something like a fighting game, this platform works very well. Its not as fast as if you were doing bare metal DirectX programming, but it gets you very close, and in a managed environment, no less.
Another cool benefit of XNA is that most of the code can be run on an Xbox 360 and can even be debugged over the network connection was the game runs on the Xbox. XNA games are now allowed to be approved by the Xbox Live team for distribution and sale on Xbox Live Arcade as well. So if you're looking to take the project to a commercial state, you might have am available means of distribution at your disposal.
Like all MS development tools, the documentation and support is first rate, and there is a large developer community with plenty of tutorials, existing projects, etc.
Do you want to be able to play your game on a console? Do you want to do it as a learning experience? Do you want the final product to be cross platform? Which libraries have you looked into so far?
For a 2d game I don't think performance will be a problem, I recommend going with something that will get you results on screen in the shortest amount of time. If you have a lot of experience doing Python then pyGame is a good choice.
If you plan on doing some 3d games in the future, I would recommend taking a look at Ogre (http://www.ogre3d.org). It's a cross platform 3d graphics engine that abstracts away the graphics APIs. However for a 2d project it's probably overkill.
The most common implementation language for A-list games today is C++, and a lot of games embed a scripting language (such as Python or Lua) for game event scripting.
The tools you'd use to write a game have a lot to do with your reasons for writing it, and with your requirements. This is no different from any other programming project, really. If it's a side project, and you're doing it on your own, then only you can assess how much time you have to spend on this and what your performance requirements are.
Generally speaking, today's PCs are fast enough to run 2D platformers written in scripting languages. Using a scripting language will allow you to prototype things faster and you'll have more time to tweak the gameplay. Again, this is no different than with any other project.
If you go with C++, and your reasons don't have to be more elaborate than "because I want to," I would suggest that you look at SDL for rendering and audio support. It will make things a little bit easier.
If you want to learn the underlying technologies (DirectX, or you want to write optimized blitters for some perverse reason) then by all means, use C++.
Having said all that, I would caution you against premature optimization. For a 2D game, you'll probably be better off going with Python and PyGame first. I'd be surprised if those tools will prove to be inadequate on modern PCs.
As to what people have said about C/C++/Python, I'm a game developer and my company encourages C. Not b/c C++ is bad, but because badly written C++ is poison for game development due to it's difficulty to read/debug compared to C. (C++ gives benefits when used properly, but let a junior guy make some mistakes with it and your time sink is huge)
As to the actual question:
If your purpose is to just get something working, use a library.
Otherwise, code it yourself for a very important reason: Practice
Practice in manipulating data structures. There WILL be times you need to manage your own data. Practice in debugging utility code.
Often libs do just what you want and are great, but sometimes YOUR specific use case is handled very badly by the lib and you will gain big benefits from writing you own. This is especially on consoles compared to PCs
(edit:) Regarding script and garbage collection: it will kill you on a console, on a recent game I had to rewrite major portions of the garbage collection on Unreal just to fill our needs in the editor portion. Even more had to be done in the actual game (not just by me) (to be fair though we were pushing beyond Unreal's original specs)
Scripting often good, but it is not an "I win" button. In general the gains disappear if you are pushing against the limits of your platform. I would use "percent of platforms CPU that I have to spare" as my evaluation function in deciding how appropriate script is
One consideration in favor of C/C++/obj-C is that you can mix and match various libraries for different areas of concern. In other words, you are not stuck with the implementation of a feature in a framework.
I use this approach in my games; using chipmunk for 2D physics, Lua as an embedded scripting language, and an openGL ES implementation from Apple. I write the glue to tie all of these together in a C language. The final product being the ability to define game objects, create instances of them, and handle events as they interact with each other in C functions exposed to Lua. This approach is used in many high performance games to much success.
If you don't already know C++, I would definitely recommend you go forward with a scripting language. Making a game from start to finish takes a lot of motivation, and forcing yourself to learn a new language at the same time is a good way to make things go slowly enough that you lose interest (although it IS a good way to learn a new language...).
Most scripting languages will be compiled to byte code anyway, so their biggest performance hit will be the garbage collection. I'm not experienced enough to give a definite description of how big a hit garbage collection would be, but I would be inclined to think that it shouldn't be too bad in a small game.
Also, if you use an existing scripting language library to make your game, most of the performance critical areas (like graphics) can be written in C++ anyway (hopefully by the game libraries). So 80% of the CPU might actually be spent in C++ code anyway, despite the fact that most of your project is written in, say Python.
I would say, ask yourself what you want more: To write a game from start to finish and learn about game development, or to learn a new language (C++). If you want to write a game, do it in a scripting language. If you want to learn a new language, do it in C++.
Yeah unless you just want to learn all of the details of the things that go into making a game, you definitely want to go with a game engine and just focus on building your game logic rather than the details of graphics, audio, resource management, etc.
Personally I like to recommend the Torque Game Builder (aka Torque 2D) from GarageGames. But you can probably find some free game engines out there that will suit your needs as well.
I'm pretty sure most modern games are done in C++, not C. (Every gaming company I ever interviewed with asked C++ questions.)
Why not use C++ and existing libraries for physics + collisions, sound, graphics engine etc. You still write the game, but the mundane stuff is taken care of.
There are alot of different solutions to the issue of abstracting and each deals with it in different ways.
My current project uses C#, DirectX 9, HLSL and SlimDX. Each of these offers a carefully calibrated level of abstraction. HLSL allows me to actually read the shader code I'm writing and SlimDX/C# allows me to ignore pointers, circular dependencies and handling unmanaged code.
That said, none of these technologies has any impact on the ease of developing my AI, lighting or physics! I still have to break out my textbooks in a way that I wouldn't with a higher-level framework.
Even using a framework like XNA, if most video games development concepts are foreign to you there's a hell of a lot still to take in and learn. XNA will allow you to neatly sidestep gimbal lock, but woe betide those who don't understand basic shading concepts. On the other hand, something like DarkBASIC won't solve your gimbal lock problem, but shading is mostly handled for you.
It's a sufficiently big field that your first engine will never be the one you actually use. If you write it yourself, you won't write it well enough. If you use third party libraries, there's certainly aspects that will annoy you and you'll want to replace.
As an idea, it might be worth taking various libraries/frameworks (definately make XNA one of your stops, even if you decide you don't want to use it, it's a great benchmark) and trying to build various prototypes. Perhaps a landscape (with a body of water) or a space physics demo.