08.07.06
Starting to learn python
Up until about 10 days ago, I didn’t know anything about python other than “it’s a computer programming language a little bit like perl,” and I decided to learn the language. I’m starting a new individual project, and I’m going to do it in python.
What’s the project? I’m going to write a game.
Background: I play Urban Dead, a low-tech turn-based MMORPG about a zombies. My character is Foobarosa. I’ve been playing since about May. It seems odd to me, because I’m really not much of game player. My PS2 hasn’t been turned on in months.
(Side Note: I also blog in-character at Surviving Malton
I don’t play World Of Warcraft because I know how much of a time-suck it is. That’s why I like turn-based games — by definition, you can only play so much per day. Since I got turned on to Urband Dead, I looked at other turned-based games online, like Nexus War and a few others I forget the name of. Looking at the rules and screen shots of these games, I saw a common theme among them.
I wanted to write one.
In mid-June, I started to slowly stew on what type of game I could create. I considered a number of different ideas, discarding them all as unworkable, until about two weeks ago. I thought of an idea for a game that would work well as a turn-based MMORPG. It’s not revolutionary, and I’m still adding details to the mental model, but I can see how the mechanics of the game are going to work.
Once I had the idea, I decided to learn a new language as I worked on this project: Python.
So, about 10 days ago, I started reading the python docs and writing some test code. It’s slow going, though — I’ve got a full time job, a wife, two-kids, and a house that needs to be kept up, and a lawn that needs to be mowed, so I don’t really have a lot of time for an independent project like this. I’m only able to manage an hour here, or a couple hours there.
I guesstimate I’ve spent about 30 hour on the project so far, with only about half of them in front of a computer. (Yes, I jotted down lots notes on *paper*). Most of the rest of the time has been reading python-related documentation.
A bit of information:
* I use vim
* I’m on ubuntu
* I don’t even have enough code to create my subversion repository yet.
And I’ve never written a game. Hell, I’ve never even read any information specific to creating games. This project is going to be lot of different “firsts” for me — which, in the end, is why I want to do it. If the game ends up being fun, that’s a big plus. But I learned python, and that’s the ultimate goal.
