The Python That Played Battleship

Python and Game Development

Python is a language with extraordinary data types and algorithmic capabilities that, combined with the excellent Pygame library, make it an outstanding tool for game development.

Python enables rapid development, but is also an excellent prototyping solution, with development times that can be divided by ten compared to the reference that C++ remains.

We will use Python 2.x, as the Pygame port is not yet complete. This article aims to present a vision of some common challenges in game development.

The Article in the Magazine

This article is to be found in the Special Edition of GNU/LINUX Pratique no. 23 (February/March 2012).

This article provides a concrete example to illustrate the points made. It is a mini sample application for playing Battleship. It contains all the code used to manage player interactions, graphics display, and gameplay. However, no effort has been put into the graphics.

As you will have gathered, this is a game made for reading the source code, not for playing. But who knows, over time, perhaps this example will be fleshed out!

All explanations can be found in the magazine, available on the Diamond publisher website.