What can Pygame do in terms of graphics that wxPython can't? - python

I want to develop a very simple 2D game in Python. Pygame is the most popular library for game development in Python, but I'm already quite familiar with wxPython and feel comfortable using it. I've even written a Tetris clone in it, and it was pretty smooth.
I wonder, what does Pygame offer in terms of graphics (leaving sound aside, for a moment) that wxPython can't do ? Is it somehow simpler/faster to do graphics in Pygame than in wxPython ? Is it even more cross-platform ?
It looks like I'm missing something here, but I don't know what.

Well, in theory there is nothing you can do with Pygame that you can't with wxPython. The point is not what but how. In my opinion, it's easier to write a game with PyGame becasue:
It's faster. Pygame is based on SDL which is a C library specifically designed for games, it has been developed with speed in mind. When you develop games, you need speed.
Is a game library, not a general purpose canvas, It has classes and functions useful for sprites, transformations, input handling, drawing, collision detection. It also implements algorithms and techniques often used in games like dirty rectangles, page flipping, etc.
There are thousands of games and examples made with it. It will be easier for you to discover how to do any trick.
There are a lot of libraries with effects and utilities you could reuse. You want an isometric game, there is a library, you want a physics engine, there is a library, you what some cool visual effect, there is a library.
PyWeek. :) This is to make the development of your game even funnier!
For some very simple games like Tetris, the difference won't be too much, but if you want to develop a fairly complex game, believe me, you will want something like PyGame.

wxPython is based on wxWidgets which is a GUI-oriented toolkit. It has the advantage of using the styles and decorations provided by the system it runs on and thus it is very easy to write portable applications that integrate nicely into the look and feel of whatever you're running. You want a checkbox? Use wxCheckBox and wxPython will handle looks and interaction.
pyGame, on the other hand, is oriented towards game development and thus brings you closer to the hardware in ways wxPython doesn't (and doesn't need to, since it calls the OS for drawing most of its controls). pyGame has lots of game related stuff like collision detection, fine-grained control of surfaces and layers or flipping display buffers at a time of your choosing.
That said, graphics-wise you can probably always find a way to do what you want with both toolkits. However, when speed counts or you wish to implement graphically more taxing game ideas than Tetris, you're probably better off with pyGame. If you want to use lots of GUI elements and don't need the fancy graphics and sound functions, you're better off with wxPython.
Portability is not an issue. Both are available for the big three (Linux, OSX, Windows).
It's more a question of what kind of special capabilities you need, really.

Related

What are good libraries for creating a python program for (visually appealing) 3D physics simulations/visualizations?

What are good libraries for creating a python program for (visually appealing) 3D physics simulations/visualizations?
I've looked at Vpython but the simulations I have seen look ugly, I want them to be visually appealing. It also looks like an old library. For 3D programming I've seen suggestions of using Panda3D and python-ogre but I'm not sure if it is really suited for exact simulations. Also, I would prefer a library that combines well with other libraries (E.g. pygame does not combine so well with other libraries).
3D support for python is fairly weak compared to other languages, but with the way that most of them are built, the appearance of the program is far more mutable than you might think. For instance, you talked about Vpython, while many of their examples are not visually appealing, most of them are also from previous releases, the most recent release includes both extrusions, materials, and skins, which allow you to customize your appearance much moreso than before.
It is probably worth noting also, that it is simply not possible to make render-quality images in real time (cycles is a huge step in that direction, but it's still not quite there). I believe that most of your issue here is you are looking for something that technology is simply not capable of now, however if you are willing to take on the burden for making your simulation look visually appealing, Vpython (which is a gussied up version of PyOpenGL) is probably your best bet. Below is a run down of different technologies though, in case you are looking for anything more general:
Blender: The most powerful python graphics program available, however it is made for graphic design and special effects, though it has very complex physics running underneath it, Blender is not made for physics simulations. Self contained.
Panda3D: A program very often compared to Blender, however mostly useful for games. The game engine is nicer to work with than Blender's, but the render quality is far lower, as is the feature-richness. Self contained
Ogre: A library that was very popular for game development back in the day, with a lot of powerful functionality, especially for creating game environments. Event handling is also very well implemented. Can be made to integrate with other libraries, but with difficulty.
VPython: A library intended for physics simulations that removes a lot of the texture mapping and rendering power compared to the other methods, however this capability is still there, as VPython is largely built from OpenGL, which is one of the most versatile graphics libraries around. As such, VPython also is very easy to integrate with other libraries.
PyOpenGL: OpenGL for Python. OpenGL is one of the most widely use graphics libraries, and is without a doubt capable of producing some of the nicest visuals on this list (Except for Blender, which is a class of its own), however it will not be easy to do so. PyOpenGL is very bare bones, and while the functionality is there, it will be harder to implement than anything else. Plays very will with other libraries, but only if you know what you're doing.
Try PyOpenGL. It is a library that provides Python bindings to OpenGL through the Python ctypes library.
Heres a demo of this:
If I needed a visualization package for python, I would start with Processing.py:
https://github.com/jdf/processing.py
This is a python binding for the java-based Processing.org codes. A quick comparison can be found here:
http://wiki.processing.org/w/Python_Comparison
Of course, if you are not constrained to python, then Processing itself would also be a good starting point:
http://processing.org
There are also python bindings out there for Visualization Toolkit (VTK), but most of their examples are either C++ or Tk.
If all you're looking for is scene graph to move geometries around, not native vis, then I have seen some python binding for Open Scene Graph out there, eg: http://code.google.com/p/osgswig/
Good Luck!
From your question, it is not clear what you want to achieve. Do you want to create a standalone application that can be used to control the simulation at runtime, or, create a simulation using Python that can then be viewed offline?
For the latter, you could look at Blender, an open source 3D content creation suite which includes a python scripting interface giving access to most (if not all) of the internals of the application. Blender comes with some physics and particle libraries which might be of use and as an application is indicative of the type of software used to make visual effects for films etc.
If you want to make a standalone application to control the simulation at runtime, this is most likely not a suitable option. However if you want to produce a series of viewable images it might be worth a look.

Framework for paint program

I've decided to start working on a personal project, attempting to develop a cross platform, MSPaint like app. Oddly enough, I find mspaint is one of the applications I miss the most on Linux or OS X, so I want to try to make something similar. Tuxpaint, mtpaint, gpaint, etc. are all old and inactive and ugly. I don't want to make GIMP, just the basics, similar in features to MS Paint.
I'm thinking of doing it in python with the pygtk toolkit, but I was interested to hear your suggestions. Would C/C++ be a better choice, or even C# (gasp!) with mono? How about using Qt as opposed to GTK, or maybe some other fancy library I don't know about (Please, not FLTK!). I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
Thanks!
Qt's canvas object (or its newer replacement QGraphicsView) can do pretty cool things. Whether you choose C++ or python is a matter of personal choice, as Qt is supported in both languages. For a simple project like this I'd choose python because killer performance is not much of an issue, and it will be much easier to write.
Another thing to look into is making this app web based with HTML5's canvas object and Javascript. It can be surprisingly robust, and anything that can be put on the cloud is a win in most cases.
If you decide to go with Python (which would be my choice because it's such a simple language), then TkInter is considered the de-facto standard GUI package. That link should send you to some excellent starting references for TkInter, although I also really like Not_a_Golfer's suggestion of an HTML5 web-app.
Short: You can use both, no third party library is guaranteed to be distributed with all major distributions.
Long:
Gtk+ vs. Qt
What do you want incorporate into your application. If it is just selecting a brush, selecting color you could pretty much use any gui toolkit.
If you are going to run it as a web-based tool, Gtk+ has an html5 backend renderer (I don't know about Qt)
A sidenote:
I recommend to use the toolkit's native programming language (gtk+ C, Qt C++) - if you don't, you will suffer from delays with bugfixes, generally more bugs and delayed releases, though for that case it shouldn't really matter.
Everything else boils down to personal preferences and there already exist some questions to tackling that issue.
if you are using qt,you can use QtitanRibbon

Python toolkit for disk analyzer

I'm creating a Disk Analyzer in Linux. I would like to know which Python toolkit will help me with the GUI. I'm currently trying Tkinter is there something better?
"Better" is subjective. I will gladly offer my opinion that there is no toolkit better than Tkinter for this task. This task seemingly doesn't need much eye candy or the ability to print, which are Tkinter's weak points. Tkinter is easy to use, modern, stable, and very customizable. Plus, you probably already have it. It has a canvas widget that is incredibly easy to use if you are considering drawing heat maps or charts or graphs or whatever.
Others will no doubt say "no way! wxPython is better because...", or "no way! pyqt is better because...". And frankly, we're all right. They are all fine toolkits. For what you are doing I would argue that the toolkit doesn't matter. Pick any toolkit and use it.

How to use python to create a GUI application which have cool animation/effects under Linux (like 3D wall in Cooliris, compiz effects etc...)

I am not sure if my question title makes sense to you or not. I am seeing many cool applications which have cool animations/effects. I would like to learn how to use python to create this kind of GUI applications under Linux.
"cool animation/effects" like 3D wall in Cooliris which is written in flash and compiz effects with opengl.
I also heard of some python GUI library like wxPython and pyQT. Since I am completely new to python GUI programming, can anyone suggest me where to start and what I should learn to achieve and create such application? maybe learn pyQT with openGL feature? pyopengl binding? I have no clue on where to start. thank you very much for your time and suggestion.
By the way, in case if someone need to know which kind of application I am going to create, well, just any kind of applications. maybe photo explorer with 3D wall, maybe IM client, maybe facebook client etc...
http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Languages/Python
Many KDE styles use SVG and plenty of animation. The user can always change themes. I think you should be more specific about what kind of animations you want to do. I don't think 3D wall type affects really fall into the widget category that QT is. It sounds to me like you want to make a 3D interface for an application. If that is the case, you may want to look more into 3D engine type libraries used mainly in games. I know that some have excellent GUI widgets for programming game menus and the like. I guess you'd decide on your engine and the see if there are python language bindings. One of my favorite engines: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/links.html
Another thing you would want to consider is how you want to handle the window management. Do you want to make a full screen interface? Or is to to be windowed? Also how would such an application integrate into a 3D window manager or rather a window manager with compositing.
Edit:
In that case the qtopengl module is probably something to look into: http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.6/qtopengl.html
I do recommend QT. It's clean and easy to use and cross platform. So your app could run on windows as well.
One thing you'd want to think about before hand is the type of FX you want to perform. For example, if you want to create a page curl type effect when renaming the image, you'd have to think about how to program that, or look for libraries/code snipets that do that math. 3D engines that are used in games often have a lot of support for those kind of typical FX or animations that you'd see in a game. If you use something like qtopengl, you'd need to think about this as well. qtopengl can pretty much only render. Think of it as a viewport. However, it is the correct approach to making a 3D application for the desktop.
Programming 3D applications is really interesting and fun. I enjoyed it a lot. However, don't get discouraged be the math. I recommend getting a book about it if you are serious. I liked this one: http://www.amazon.com/Primer-Graphics-Development-Wordware-Library/dp/1556229119
However, IIRC the examples are C++ which you may not be comfortable with. When you understand such mathematical concepts, it easier to think about how you would make a page curl type affect. Of course, if you find libraries or code that shows you how to do the math, that may be fine.
May be, just create a GUI and all effects will make compiz?
Anyway, as I know QT have ability to use openGL.
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.1/examples.html#opengl-examples

embedding plot within Qt gui

How do you embed a vpython plot (animated) within your Qt GUI? so that it has its own display area and would not need to created a new window anymore.
vpython's FAQs claim that vpython's architecture make any embedding a problem...:
Q: Is there a way to embed VPython in another environment?
This is difficult because VPython has
two threads, your computational thread
and a rendering thread which about 25
times per second paints the scene
using the current attributes of the
graphics objects. However, Stef
Mientki has managed to embed VPython
in a wxPython window on Windows; see
the contributed section.
So if with wxPython it takes heroic efforts ("has managed to" doesn't sound like a trivial achievement;-) AND only works on a single platform, I fear it won't be any easier with Qt... one hard, uphill slog separately on each and every single platform.
If you're up for a SERIOUS challenge, deeply familiar with vpython, reasonably familiar with Qt, and acquainted with the underlying window-level architecture on all platforms you care about (and with a minor in wxPython), the place to start is Mientki's amazing contribution. He's actually working well below wxPython's level of abstraction, and in terms of win32gui calls, win32con constants, plus "a finite state-machine, clocked by a wx.Timer" at 100 milliseconds (though he does admit that the result from the latter Frankenstein surgery is... "not perfect";-). Extremely similar approaches should see you home (in a similarly "not perfect" way) on any other framework on Windows, including Qt.
However, nobody's yet offered any ports of this to Mac OS X, nor to any window manager of the many that are popular on Linux and Unix-like architectures (I'm not sure whether the feat could be achieved just at xlib level -- window decoration aspects do seem to be involved, and in the X11 world those DO tend to need window manager cooperation).
So, the literal answer to your question is, "with a huge amount of work requiring lots of skills and/or incredible perseverance, and probably in a platform-dependent way that will require redoing on each and every platform of interest"... sorry to be the bearer of pretty bad news, but I prefer to call them as I see them.
I contacted maintainer of VPython and he confirmed, that he is not aware of any working solution where Visual is embedded into QT window.
That turned me to try VTK and so far I'm pretty happy, no problem with using VTK within PyQT framework.

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