RE: [Pythoncard-users] More questions.

> i'm looking to develop apps like games (eg tetris & the stuff at
> www.shockwave.com). Also, i'm interested in developing interactive
> courseware (eg
> http://www.macromedia.com/resources/elearning/examples/ucsf.html).

Games and courseware are certainly doable, but there aren't many examples
out there to draw from yet. PyGame http://www.pygame.org/ is focused on
building games in Python and has an active mailing list and many examples.
It does not come with a large set of pre-built GUI widgets, menus, etc. so
additional libraries that people in the PyGame community have been working
on would be necessary depending on what you want on screen.

PythonCard should be effective in the interactive courseware area, but again
nobody has done specific samples that I know of. You could ask on the
edu-sig mailing list to see what tools people might already be using.

> Can pythoncard apps work in a web browser?

No

> What is webware? Is this required if i want to accomplish the task in
> the previous question?

WebWare is geared towards building web applications which mostly means stuff
server-side. I doubt this is what you are looking for.

> Is SVG and SMIL supported in pythoncard?

I don't know what those are, so I'm guessing the answer is no.

> Can pythoncard buttons be "bitmappeable"? Can i create round or
> triangular buttons?

You can create buttons with bitmaps (Image and ImageButton) and with a mask
the shape will be that of the bitmap, not a rectangle. However, the button
will still be rectangular as far as mouseClicks. As long as your rectangles
don't overlap that shouldn't be a problem. If you do need to have them
overlap, then more likely you need to do your own hit detection, which is
the kind of support PyGame already has since that is a common need in games.

> Can MP3 sound be used in pythoncard apps?

Not directly, you would have to drive an external MP3 player. I don't know
when direct cross-platform MP3 playback will be supported by Python. I think
the SDL library which PyGame sits on top of does MP3, but I don't know of a
general solution for playback that any Python/wxPython/PythonCard program
could use today.

> Can pythoncard apps have a custom-shaped bitmap mapped on eg. a triangle
> or a bean shape? Can they be "skinnable" like Winamp?

Same answer as above for bitmaps. There is no direct skin support today, but
it is possible.

> Is 3D supported in pythoncard? What is my path to create interactive 3d
> games using pythoncard (eg Stuntracer
> http://stuntracer.sourceforge.net/)?

wxPython and thus PythonCard can use OpenGL. Again, for game stuff in Python
you are probably better off using PyGame if for no other reason it has a
better mailing list group to answer the types of questions you'll have once
you start your game programming.

ka