The Invent with Python Blog

Writings from the author of Automate the Boring Stuff.



Mon 20 February 2012

"I Need Practice Programming": 49 Ideas for Game Clones to Code

Posted by Al Sweigart in programming   

You want to practice writing code but can't seem to find any open source projects that are at your level or easy for new people to contribute to. Here's a list of game clone ideas for you to implement. Each has a short description of the game, links to videos of the game, and descriptions of what kind of algorithms you'll need to know in order to implement them.

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Fri 07 October 2011

Pygame Cheat Sheet

Posted by Al Sweigart in pygame   

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.

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Sun 18 September 2011

Virtual Caesar Cipher Wheel program

Posted by Al Sweigart in pygame   

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.

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Wed 07 September 2011

Rough Drafts of My Next Two Books Are Available

Posted by Al Sweigart in news   

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.

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