James Tauber

journeyman of some

blog > 2005 > 07 > 10 >

Isometric Games in Python

A couple of months ago, I started investigating free libraries for developing isometric games in Python.

I found the pygame-based project Pyplace but there hadn't been a release since 2001.

So I decided to start my own, which I've called pyso.

As a starting point, in particular because I have no experience with either pygame or writing isometric games, I've just cleaned up Pyplace (which was, how shall I say this politely, quite idiosyncratic in parts).

You can get my initial effort at:

It currently is really just the last Pyplace release taken apart, cleaned up a little and put back together again.

The next release will likely be quite different and more my own work.

Categories:
prev « python » next
prev « announcements » next
pyso

Comments (12)

anonymous on July 11, 2005:

There is a small typo in line 18, file basics_background.py. The line should be: self.pix["L1_loading"] = gfx.load("L1_LoadingPleaseWait.jpg", self.path, tile=False)

Oh, and by the way, what is the license of the pyso? LGPL as pygame?

James Tauber on July 12, 2005:

Thanks for the correction.

License is currently LGPL.

Chris on July 15, 2005:

I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do with it!

Jamie on July 20, 2005:

I spent a couple of frustrating hours last night trying to debug the broken pyplace - before finding your pyso version. It worked great. My son and I are talking about writing an RTS game (we like to play Age of Empires), and need an isometric base to work from. Many thanks! BTW the escape key would not quit, I have to ctrl-c in the IDLE window.

baris on Aug. 2, 2005:

hi,i was very happy because of this project but when i downloaded it was gave me an error like that:

D:\Documents and Settings\Baris>"D:\Documents and Settings\Baris\Desktop\pyso-0.
1\pyso-0.1\main.py"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "D:\Documents and Settings\Baris\Desktop\pyso-0.1\pyso-0.1\main.py", line
8, in ?
import render
File "D:\Documents and Settings\Baris\Desktop\pyso-0.1\pyso-0.1\render.py", li
ne 4, in ?
from Numeric import resize, array, zeros
File "D:\Python24\lib\Numeric.py", line 91, in ?
import multiarray
ImportError: No module named multiarray


i have numeric installed but i dont understand what is multiarray..i searched every milimeters of web but i cant find anything.in my python folder there is a c file named multiarray but it doesnt seem right file because i tried it to put it same folder as pyso.

i am very confused please help!

thanks

anonymous on Aug. 28, 2005:

numeric 22.0 does include the multiarray module. I don't know about the other numeric versions.

Hope this helps.

Matt Black on Sept. 9, 2005:

Hi, just checking out pyso. Am running under linux, which has case-sensitive file names, and needed to change the filename L1_LoadingPleaseWait.jpg to L1_loadingPleaseWait.jpg (lowercase L) - maybe better to stick to lowercase to ensure portability? Also latency of controls is painfully long, despite running at about 250-300 fps. However looks to be pretty useful, thanks!

Vinicius on Sept. 28, 2005:

I tried to use pyso but I'm a newbie in python... how I install pyso?

Ido Yehieli on Nov. 15, 2005:

great stuff! could you please consider writing a short article/tutorial on how to use pyso?

Joseph Marshall on Nov. 28, 2005:

I am really looking farward to seeing more releases of this. I had tried using pyplace but couldn't ever figure it out! :P

vdepizzol at gmail on Dec. 29, 2005:

I'm trying to on load, show all the map... how I do that?

Simon Gillespie on Feb. 10, 2006:

Hi James and all,

If you just want an easy documented knightlore/Cadaver style isometric system with none of the tiley type limitations try Isotope, its written in python using pygame as well.

Add a Comment

Created: July 10, 2005
Last Modified: July 10, 2005
Author: jtauber