What to play with?
Written by on in Snaking.


I'm hoping to have a few weeks to work on my own projects before I dive into working on other people's projects again (that might not pan out, but I'm hoping), so, here's a brain-dump of what I'm considering playing with:

  • write a simple, generic shader-based legacy-free scenegraph engine (basically transplant the modern parts from OpenGLContext and leave behind the old crud, then translate the core into C/C++)
  • turn Sillescope into an Android app (that shouldn't take too long, I just got annoyed at the GLES limitations last time and stopped 1/2 way)
  • learn Haskell (though the "Haskell for Python Programmers" article honestly left me thinking "this is dumb" much of the time)
  • contribute to a game engine (maybe Ogre, maybe 0AD)
  • add a GLES binding to PyOpenGL
  • play with PyPy now that I have a machine that compile it
  • build a basic HTML5 Canvas or WebGL game engine
  • update and modernize StarPy (I think no, as I have spent the last 18 months on VoIP and Django)
  • update Django-jqm with latest JQuery Mobile, provide a JQM admin interface (again, not likely, just spent the last 18 months in Django)

Any other suggestions? I'm not currently concerned about utility or practicality, just fun things with which to spend a few weeks to recharge my programming-enjoyment batteries.

Comments

  1. Adam

    Adam on 02/03/2012 7:20 p.m. #

    """write a simple, generic shader-based legacy-free scenegraph engine (basically transplant the modern parts from OpenGLContext and leave behind the old crud, then translate the core into""" http://golang.org

    ;)

  2. scape

    scape on 02/04/2012 3:18 a.m. #

    if you contribute to an engine how about panda3d it has the best python support i believe

  3. Myles Braithwaite

    Myles Braithwaite on 02/04/2012 9:17 a.m. #

    "build a basic HTML5 Canvas or WebGL game engine"

    It's the most awesome of the choices.

  4. Mike Fletcher

    Mike Fletcher on 02/05/2012 3:56 p.m. #

    Biggest problem is that there's already so many people on that train... though maybe GLES/WebGL based one would be reasonably entertaining.

  5. Mike Fletcher

    Mike Fletcher on 02/05/2012 3:57 p.m. #

    That would definitely match on the "doesn't need to be useful" criteria ;) .

  6. Kent Tenney

    Kent Tenney on 02/06/2012 3:21 p.m. #

    The one I always suggest:
    A wrapper for strace, grabbing at least all file activity: which is then parsed, analyzed, persisted and presented: offering an explanation of What Happened. (and why ...)

    Pretty straight up utility, but has great potential methinks.

    Thanks,
    Kent

  7. horace

    horace on 02/08/2012 8:10 a.m. #

    """write a simple, generic shader-based legacy-free scenegraph engine (basically transplant the modern parts from OpenGLContext and leave behind the old crud, then translate the core into C/C++)"""

    why couldn't the core be in cython? an engine like soya3d but more modern and cleaner would be awesome.

    maybe combined with the opengl es binding thing? :)

    the raspberry pi will be a lot about python coding and it will support opengl es 2.0. so an opengl es binding and maybe a scenegraph engine would be awesome!

  8. Mike Fletcher

    Mike Fletcher on 02/08/2012 9:11 a.m. #

    I don't know that I can make something better, of course, I only have so long to play with this before I need to find clients and make money again :) .

    Cython is actually at the core of OpenGLContext. All of the scenegraph (PyVMRL97) is accelerated by Cython (if available), but it uses pure Python/PyOpenGL for the rendering and PyDispatcher for the observability.

    The subset I want to pull out should make it easier to code the whole "render pass" in Cython/C/C++ where higher-level code (scene-graph/retained-mode) just populates those structures. The structures actually in that low-level engine would look (loosely) like the shader nodes in current OpenGLContext (they need to be quite a bit more flexible, but that's the basic idea).

  9. anatoly techtonik

    anatoly techtonik on 02/09/2012 2:44 p.m. #

    Small, cross-platform, pure-python, user/gamer/housewife-friendly, public domain, utility. That explains if my system is compatible with OPENGL ES 2.0, why, why it is slow and what to do?

    Surely a challenge nobody will accept. =)

  10. Mike Fletcher

    Mike Fletcher on 02/10/2012 7:41 a.m. #

    Well, it certainly doesn't sound *fun*.

  11. anatoly techtonik

    anatoly techtonik on 02/10/2012 8:52 a.m. #

    Well, but at least it will be extremely useful.

    For *fun* I'd start with this stuff - http://pyppet.blogspot.com/2012/01/pyppet-webgl-streaming.html

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