Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Starting Python
If your operating system is Windows XP, you should be able to run Python by choosing
Start > Programs > Python 3.1 > IDLE
(Python GUI). When it's running it should
looking something like Figure 1-2. (But different operating systems will look slightly
different.)
Figure 1-2: The IDLE program's interactive shell on Windows.
IDLE stands for
I
nteractive
D
eve
L
opment
E
nvironment. The development environment
is software that makes it easy to write Python programs. We will be using IDLE to type in
our programs and run them.
The window that appears when you first run IDLE is called the interactive shell. A shell
is a program that lets you type instructions into the computer. The Python shell lets you
type Python instructions, and the shell sends these instructions to software called the
Python interpreter to perform. We can type Python instructions into the shell and, because
the shell is interactive, the computer will read our instructions and respond in some way.
(Ideally in a way that we expect but that will depend on whether we write the correct
instructions.)
How to Use This Topic
There are a few things you should understand about this topic before you get started.
"Invent with Python" is different from other programming topics because it focuses on the
complete source code for different games. Instead of teaching you programming concepts
and leaving it up to you to figure out how to make fun games with those concepts, this topic
shows you fun games and then explains how they are put together.
