Book Image

Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

Panda3D is a game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs. It includes graphics, audio, I/O, collision detection, and other abilities relevant to the creation of 3D games. Also, Panda3D is Open Source and free for any purpose, including commercial ventures. This book will enable you to create finished, marketable computer games using Panda3D and other entirely open-source tools and then sell those games without paying a cent for licensing. Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide follows a logical progression from a zero start through the game development process all the way to a finished, packaged installer. Packed with examples and detailed tutorials in every section, it teaches the reader through first-hand experience. These tutorials are followed by explanations that describe what happened in the tutorial and why. You will start by setting up a workspace, and then move on to the basics of starting up Panda3D. From there, you will begin adding objects like a level and a character to the world inside Panda3D. Then the book will teach you to put the game's player in control by adding change over time and response to user input. Then you will learn how to make it possible for objects in the world to interact with each other by using collision detection and beautify your game with Panda3D's built-in filters, shaders, and texturing. Finally, you will add an interface, audio, and package it all up for the customer.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Time for action – creating a World Object


  1. Edit your .py file to look like this:

  2. Save the file as "chp02_02.py" in the same directory.

  3. Run this python file the same way you ran chp02_01.py.

What just happened?

A number of things are going on there, so we'll take a moment and talk about them.

First, we used the class command to create a new class called World.

class World:

In Python, code is grouped by using indentation. In order to tell Python we're starting a new group of indented code we end the line with a colon. We can't just throw colons where ever we want, though. They need to follow specific commands. We'll see more uses of colons as we continue coding.

Next, we defined a method with the def command and called it __init__.

def __init__(self):

A method is a function that belongs to a class. To better understand what a method is, we need to talk about functions.

Essentially, a function is just a block of code that is given a name. Later on, we can call the function by name and all the code in it...