Copyright 2008, 2009 © by Albert Sweigart "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License You are free: To Share - to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work To Remix - to make derivative works Under the following conditions: Attribution - You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) (Visibly include the title and author's name in any excerpts of this work.) Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes Share Alike - If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one This summary is located here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above There is a human-readable summary of the Legal Code (the full license), located here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/legalcode Book Version For Caro, with more love than I ever knew I had A Note to Parents and Fellow Programmers I have more thanks for your interest and more apologies for this book's deficiencies than I can enumerate My motivation for writing this book comes from a gap I saw in today's literature for kids interested in learning to program I started programming when I was years old in the BASIC language with a book similar to this one During the course of writing this, I've realized how a modern language like Python has made programming far easier and versatile Python has a gentle learning curve while still being a serious language that is used by programmers professionally The current crop of programming books for kids that I've seen fell into two categories First, books that did not teach programming so much as "game creation software" or in dumbed down languages to make programming "easy" Or second, they taught programming like a mathematics textbook: all principles and concepts with little application left to the reader This book takes a different approach: show the game source code right up front and explain programming principles from the examples I have also made this book available under the Creative Commons license, which allows you to make copies and distribute this book (or excerpts) with my full permission, as long as attribution to me is left intact and it is used for noncommercial purposes (See the copyright page.) I want to make this book a gift to a world that has given me so much Thank you again for reading this book, and feel free to email me any questions or comments Al Sweigart al@inventwithpython.com The full text of this book is available in HTML or PDF format at: http://inventwithpython.com Who is this book for? Programming isn't hard But it is hard to find learning materials that teach you to interesting things with programming Other computer books go over many topics that most newbie coders don't need This book will teach you how to program your own computer games You will learn a useful skill and have fun games to show for it! This book is for: Anyone who wants to teach themselves computer programming, even if they have no previous experience programming Kids and teenagers who want to learn computer programming by creating games Kids as young as or 10 years old should be able to follow along Adults and teachers who wish to teach others programming Anyone, young or old, who wants to learn how to program by learning a professional programming language Table of Contents Source Code Listing hello.py x guess.py x jokes.py x dragon.py x hangman.py x tictactoe.pay x bagels.py x sonar.py x cipher.py x reversi.py x aisim1.py x aisim2.py x aisim3.py x pygameHelloWorld.py x animation.py x collisionDetection.py x pygameInput.py x spritesAndSounds.py x dodger.py x Installing Python x x x x x x The Interactive Shell x x x x x x Strings x x x x x x Guess the Number x x x x x x Jokes x x x x x x Dragon Realm x x x x x x Flow Charts x x x x x x Hangman x x x x x x Tic Tac Toe x x x x x x 10 Bagels x x x x x x 11 Cartesian Coordinates x x x x x x 12 Sonar x x x x x x 13 Caesar Cipher x x x x x x 14 Reversi x x x x x x 15 AI Simulation x x x x x x 16 Graphics and Animation x x x x x x 17 Collision Detection and Input x x x x x x 18 Sound and Images x x x x x x 19 Dodger x x x x x x A Differences Between Python and x x x x x x Glossary x