[OLPC-Games] Games Digest, Vol 3, Issue 7

[Kent Quirk]

Jennie Stenhouse wrote:
> Heya..
>
> My name is jennie and I would love to be involved but I am not really
> sure where I should start! I can program as well as having experience
> in game design. I briefly introduced  my self earlier on the list but
> due to shifting countries I have been out of the loop for a little
> while. I am particularly interested in making all access games  for
> the laptop, utilising the camera if possible so kids who have poor
> motor control can still participate.
>
> this question may already of been answered but is the laptop
> compatible with the U3 type  tech of running programs of usb flash
> drives?
>
> also I am running mac. is there a how to guide to set up the
> development environment?
>
>   
Welcome, Jennie.

We're working on the whole development environment for games, and it 
will improve very significantly in the next few weeks. But the thing to 
do is to write games in Python using PyGame, which runs just fine on the 
mac (it's what I use). That will enable you to make games that are 
likely to run unchanged on the device.

The next level is getting the Sugar emulation environment to run, which 
appears to be on the list of things that are not necessarily impossible 
but probably not worth it, mainly because GTK development on the Mac is 
pretty far behind other platforms. I haven't found anyone else who does 
it and stopped trying once I looked into it. But honestly, if you're 
developing in PyGame, you should be in pretty good shape for a while.

We don't yet have PyGame support for cameras, but that's on the list of 
things to do "soon". We're building out the development roadmap if you 
look into the OLPC wiki -- search for Game Development and for PyGame.

U3 is a windows-specific solution, and the OLPC is Linux-based, so U3 
isn't going to work. But you can plug USB drives into the device and 
they work, and there are many other ways of sharing, including the mesh 
network.

    Kent


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Kent Quirk           I'm making a game about global warming.
Game Architect                        Track the progress at:
CogniToy                http://www.cognitoy.com/meltingpoint