Gamelib

Gamelib is a pure-Python single-file library/framework for writing simple games. It is intended for educational purposes (e.g. to be used in basic programming courses).

Here is a "hello world" example:

import gamelib

def main():
    gamelib.resize(300, 300)

    gamelib.draw_begin()
    gamelib.draw_text('Hello world!', 150, 150)
    gamelib.draw_end()

    # wait until the user presses any key
    gamelib.wait(gamelib.EventType.KeyPress)

gamelib.init(main)

And this example shows a rectangle moving around the screen:

import gamelib

def main():
    gamelib.resize(300, 300)

    x, y = 150, 80
    dx, dy = 5, 5

    while gamelib.loop(fps=30):
        for event in gamelib.get_events():
            if event.type == gamelib.EventType.KeyPress and event.key == 'q':
                return

        gamelib.draw_begin()
        gamelib.draw_rectangle(x-10, y-10, x+10, y+10, fill='red')
        gamelib.draw_end()

        x += dx
        y += dy
        if x > 300 or x < 0:
            dx *= -1
        if y > 300 or y < 0:
            dy *= -1

gamelib.init(main)

Goals

• Easy to learn: Writing a simple game should be almost as easy as writing console programs. It should not require knowledge about inheritance, components, double-buffering, color channels, blitting or actors.
• Simple, basic API: Support drawing stuff and maybe playing sounds, nothing more.
• Portable Support Windows / Mac OS / Linux desktop.
• Easy to install: See relevant XKCD. gamelib.py should not depend on anything that's not available in a fresh Python installation. That rules out pip.

Installation

Just download gamelib.py and place it alongside your project :)

Documentation

First, look into the provided examples!

• Hello world
• Bouncing square
• Game of Life
• Pong

Gamelib library reference: https://dessaya.github.io/python-gamelib/

To generate the HTML documentation:

$ pip3 install pdoc3
$ bash docs/generate.sh

Run the examples

$ python3 example-01-hello-world.py

Limitations

• Very limited drawing API (based on Tkinter Canvas).
  • Don't expect to be able to draw thousands of elements at 60 FPS.
  • The only image formats that are supported accross all platforms are GIF and PPM/PGM/PBM.
• Very limited sound API (just a single function: play_sound(), based on playsound).
  • The only sound format supported accross all platforms is probably WAV.
• Very limited GUI API (just two functions: say() and input()).
• Supports only a single window.
• No joystick support.