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I'm a programmer and would like to help my son learn to program a 3D game in Python that can run slowly on the RasPi or quickly on a PC. I thought about using the RasPi edition of Minecraft, but it looks like that will only work on the RasPi. Are there any other simple options?

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  • This is related to my other question here
    – Jim L.
    Jul 19, 2013 at 16:52
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    Ditto the recommendation that you start with 2D. This is true for everybody: the right way to learn is to start with 2D and progress to 3D. The wrong way is to pretend doing things the right way does not matter because you want to write 3D games so that is what you are going to do no matter what! It is not just a matter of doing some extra trig, although that is an aspect, it ain't the biggest part. Also 2D is going to be much more viable on the pi -- note that openGL does have a 2D mode (and again, any and every course or book on learning GL starts in 2D).
    – goldilocks ♦
    Jul 20, 2013 at 13:12
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    See this question. The accepted answer links to instructions on getting the MinecraftPiEdition API working with normal Minecraft.
    – daviewales
    Dec 19, 2013 at 4:14

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I don't recommend starting him with 3D gaming. It's difficult and requires a lot of advanced math. A lot of 2d applications and programs are probably going to be more his speed, other than that...

Have you considered experimenting with blender? It's open source so if it doesn't have a RPi version you could compile it yourself and it has support for Python integration. It's not gameplay per say, but it could do that into mix of scripting and 3d visualization.

You can build a 3d model (some are actually pro quality work) and then animate it using python.

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  • Isn't Blender just a 3D modeling app? I was thinking I could deal with the rotations and all that complexity.
    – Jim L.
    Jul 19, 2013 at 17:02
  • I can be just a modeling app, but people make entire videos and movies off the program. It's not a game per-say, but I don't really know of any simple game platform that you could do a simple build for. It's a pretty advanced project. The thing that struck me about blender is that you can make model and script how they move. Those models could then be imported to a game later if so desired.
    – Jacobm001
    Jul 19, 2013 at 17:06

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