Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
Hackety Hack was a project originally started by _why the lucky stiff to teach kids programming in Ruby. It often comes up in "I want to teach my kid programming" forum threads. So I downloaded Hackety Hack and decided to give it a try.
I found Hackety Hack to be frustrating and was very unimpressed with it, and do not recommend it as a way to teach programming to a beginner.
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
I've created Python & Pygame script that lets you walk around the overworld map of the original Legend of Zelda game on the 8-bit Nintendo. There are no monsters or levels or items; it is simply a walking tour. The Link walking sprite animation is implemented by my Pyganim module.
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
A button is a common user interface (UI) control that is used in many software applications. It seems simple enough: there's a button on the window and you click on it and something happens. But there's a lot of details we should plan out ahead of time. Remember, we want to make a generic button class so that other programmers can use this in their games and programs. Once you've read through the process here, you'll be familiar with how to make your own modules for UI elements.
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
"Zip" programs that can compress multiple files into one smaller .zip file are fairly popular for downloads since the fewer bytes you have to download the faster it will download. But how do you compress files? Files are made up of ones and zeros, which can't be squished like clothes into a tight suitcase.
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
This is a continuation from Part 1 and Part 2, where I go through the source code of Square Shooter, an Asteroids clone, and try to redesign the code to be more readable.
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
This is a continuation from Part 1, where I go through the source code of Square Shooter, an Asteroids clone, and try to redesign the code to be more readable.
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
In this blog post, I'm taking a game off of Pygame.org and going through it to make it more readable and extend its functionality. You'll see an example of how to take code that works and changes to improve it's design (but more importantly, I explain why I make those changes).
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
If you need an idea for a game, try this random game mechanic generator.