Chinese Translation of "Invent with Python" Started
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
Yuanle Qiu has started translating the "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" into Chinese.
Pygame Cheat Sheet
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
If you already know a bit of programming and Python, and want to get up to speed on the Pygame 2D game framework, here's a cheat sheet that you can look over. It implements a very short Pygame program covering most of Pygame's basic features.
List of Street Names, List of Last Names
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
I wrote some programs to go through 6 GB of OpenStreetMap data from http://metro.teczno.com so that I could extract a list of street names for an upcoming game project. The game will use procedural generation to create cities, so I need to have a dataset of street names but couldn't easily find one. So I've created this one and wanted to share it.
JavaScript Cipher Wheel
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
I've created a web version of the Caesar Cipher wheel using JQuery and CSS sprites.
Virtual Caesar Cipher Wheel program
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
The Caesar Cipher Wheel is a paper cutout that can be used to perform encryption and decryption in the Caesar Cipher. However, if you don't have a printer but do have Python and Pygame installed, you can use this Caesar Cipher Wheel program to rotate a virtual cipher disk instead.
New Game Source Code: Simon Gesture (Simon clone with mouse gestures)
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
Draw out horizontal, vertical, or diagonal lines in the same directions that the dot moves. The pattern of the dot's movement becomes longer and longer.
Pygcurse - A "curses" Emulator Built on Pygame
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
Pygcurse (pronounced "pig curse") is a curses library emulator that runs on top of the Pygame framework. It provides an easy way to create text adventures, roguelikes, and console-style applications. The mascot of Pygcurse is a blue pig with a skull tattoo on its butt.
Rough Drafts of My Next Two Books Are Available
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
I've decided to make the incomplete rough drafts of my next two Python books available.
Become a Codebreaker with Python
Making Graphical Games with Pygame
The emphasis is on "rough" and "incomplete", but I thought it would be better to give a preview of the direction I was going. These books are also available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license like the first "Invent with Python" book.
Nobody Cares About a Few Million Nanoseconds
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
This is a mistake a lot of new programmers make. The coder comes up with some clever trick or that can save a few bytes of memory or shave a few nanoseconds off of a function. You must learn that these "clever tricks" aren't really worth it.
Recursion Explained with the Flood Fill Algorithm (and Zombies and Cats)
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
This is a programming tutorial for beginner and intermediate programmers who want to learn what recursion is. The programming language used for the examples is Python, but you can probably follow along if you know programming in some other language such as PHP or JavaScript.