David has posted a couple times now about python. We certainly had a good time going to PyCon and had a good time doing PyWeek. I really am a fan of Python. I think it worked really well for us during PyWeek and the other times I’ve used it. I have other thoughts on both items, but I think they’re better left for another day. What I want to focus on is how is all this affects our work on Crown and Cutlass.
If anyone is still with us, watching the blog or the forums for activity, you probably have noticed a considerable slowdown in work. This has been caused by a couple things. First, and I think most importantly, is that fact that David went back to school 8 months ago. Since we work together on Crown and Cutlass quite a bit, our motivation often ebbs and flows together. Since David has less time to work on it, I find myself with less motivation. The other issue I have, is that when I take time off from Crown and Cutlass, I have a very hard time jumping back into the code. Getting back into a C++ mindframe from Delphi (which I use at work) is really difficult.
Based on that, we’re going to be writing as much of the game play code as possible in Python. By exposing our Protocce engine to Python, we’ll be taking advantage of the rewrite work we’ve been doing as well as moving to a more hospitable development environment. I think this will speed up development on Crown and Cutlass by removing accidental complexity.
We’ve long talked about scripting as a major component to our game engine, but have always put it off for another day. Now, by using Python, all (or most) of our actual game code will be done in script. It gains us the flexibility of Python, while maintaining the speed of C++ in the engine. Anything that needs to be sped up can be implemented in C++.
I think is an exciting development for Crown and Cutlass. It gives us more opportunity to think about the gameplay and avoid the problems we’ve had at times in C++. You should be seeing more exciting developments over the summer as we make more progress on Crown and Cutlass.