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Kivy Contest 2014

Just to announce here for anyone that hasn’t seen already…Kivy recently announced the Kivy org second programming contest! You can check out all the details at http://kivy.org/#contest!

To cover the key details here, entries are open now (you can sign up at the link above), and the contest starts in full on 15th April. There will be a broad theme, announced on that day, but many different kinds of app will be possible. You’ll have 4 weeks from the start date to complete your entry.

Entries will be judged on a range of criteria, so don’t be afraid to jump in!

Posted on

Kivy Contest 2014

Just to announce here for anyone that hasn’t seen already…Kivy recently announced the Kivy org second programming contest! You can check out all the details at http://kivy.org/#contest!

To cover the key details here, entries are open now (you can sign up at the link above), and the contest starts in full on 15th April. There will be a broad theme, announced on that day, but many different kinds of app will be possible. You’ll have 4 weeks from the start date to complete your entry.

Entries will be judged on a range of criteria, so don’t be afraid to jump in!

Posted on

Kivy Programming Contest 2014

Kivy is organizing its second application development contest!. This is a great chance for users both new and experienced to show off their skills and compete for prizes. Entries will be judged on a range of criteria accessible to both new and experienced programmers, so don’t be afraid to dive in!

poster_1

A big big thanks to the Python Software Foundation for being our first and lovely sponsor :)

Posted on

Kivy Programming Contest 2014

Kivy is organizing its second application development contest!. This is a great chance for users both new and experienced to show off their skills and compete for prizes. Entries will be judged on a range of criteria accessible to both new and experienced programmers, so don’t be afraid to dive in!

poster_1

A big big thanks to the Python Software Foundation for being our first and lovely sponsor 🙂

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2048, in Python / Kivy

If you don’t know the 2048 puzzle yet, you should. But be careful, it’s time consuming. I won’t go on the whole clone history of the game, but will just say that if you want to play it on the Web, play to the Gabriel Cirulli 2048. The author said it wont make an official iOS/Android app, so… let’s give Kivy a try :)

device-2014-03-15-114048

Only 2 hours of coding where needed for the first published version of the game. Then i learned on the Google Play Game services APIs for integrating a leaderboard and achievements. And after a couple of hours during the night, what i can say is: Be patient! Even if you follow the documentation carefully, you need to wait few hours before your app_id works on their server, even in test mode. There never warn us about it.

When the setup is done and it start working, it is easy to login:

PythonActivity = autoclass('org.renpy.android.PythonActivity')
    GameHelper = autoclass('com.google.example.games.basegameutils.GameHelper')

    gh_instance = GameHelper(PythonActivity.mActivity, GameHelper.CLIENT_ALL)
    gh_instance_listener = GameHelperListener()
    gh_instance.setup(gh_instance_listener)
    gh_instance.onStart(PythonActivity.mActivity)
    android.activity.unbind(on_activity_result=_on_activity_result)
    android.activity.bind(on_activity_result=_on_activity_result)

That’s how you can unlock achievement:

# uid is the Google UID for the achievement you want
if gh_instance.isSignedIn():
    Games.Achievements.unlock(gh_instance.getApiClient(), uid)

And put the user score on the leaderboard:

# uid is the Google UID for the leaderboard you've created.
# You can have multiple leaderboard.
if gh_instance.isSignedIn():
    Games.Leaderboards.submitScore(gh_instance.getApiClient(), uid, score)

There is a little more code around that, but globally, using the new Play Games services APIs is now easy. I hope this little piece of code will help peoples to integrate it into their app. Somebody need to start a Python library for managing Google Play API and Game Center for iOS.

Have a look at the source code for an example of the integration with the Play Games services APIs :)


Get it on Google Play

Posted on

2048, in Python / Kivy

If you don’t know the 2048 puzzle yet, you should. But be careful, it’s time consuming. I won’t go on the whole clone history of the game, but will just say that if you want to play it on the Web, play to the Gabriel Cirulli 2048. The author said it wont make an official iOS/Android app, so… let’s give Kivy a try 🙂

device-2014-03-15-114048

Only 2 hours of coding where needed for the first published version of the game. Then i learned on the Google Play Game services APIs for integrating a leaderboard and achievements. And after a couple of hours during the night, what i can say is: Be patient! Even if you follow the documentation carefully, you need to wait few hours before your app_id works on their server, even in test mode. There never warn us about it.

When the setup is done and it start working, it is easy to login:

    PythonActivity = autoclass('org.renpy.android.PythonActivity')
    GameHelper = autoclass('com.google.example.games.basegameutils.GameHelper')

    gh_instance = GameHelper(PythonActivity.mActivity, GameHelper.CLIENT_ALL)
    gh_instance_listener = GameHelperListener()
    gh_instance.setup(gh_instance_listener)
    gh_instance.onStart(PythonActivity.mActivity)
    android.activity.unbind(on_activity_result=_on_activity_result)
    android.activity.bind(on_activity_result=_on_activity_result)

That’s how you can unlock achievement:

# uid is the Google UID for the achievement you want
if gh_instance.isSignedIn():
    Games.Achievements.unlock(gh_instance.getApiClient(), uid)

And put the user score on the leaderboard:

# uid is the Google UID for the leaderboard you've created.
# You can have multiple leaderboard.
if gh_instance.isSignedIn():
    Games.Leaderboards.submitScore(gh_instance.getApiClient(), uid, score)

There is a little more code around that, but globally, using the new Play Games services APIs is now easy. I hope this little piece of code will help peoples to integrate it into their app. Somebody need to start a Python library for managing Google Play API and Game Center for iOS.

Have a look at the source code for an example of the integration with the Play Games services APIs 🙂


Get it on Google Play

Posted on

Kivy’s bind method

One of the most common problems for new Kivy users is misunderstanding how the bind method works, especially amongst newer Python users who haven’t fully formed their intuition about function calls. For instance, a user will write code like:

some_screenmanager.bind(current=a_function(arg1, arg2))

Here, the idea is that when the current property changes, it will call a_function with the arguments arg1 and arg2.

The problem is that Python itself doesn’t work like this; the bind method doesn’t know about the existence of a_function or its arguments, it only receives the result of this function call. This often leads to confusion when a user doesn’t understand why the binding is only called once, during the declaration of the binding.

Stepping back, our real goal is to call a_function with the given arguments, but bind needs to be passed a function if it is to work correctly. That means we can solve our problem by creating a new function with these arguments already passed (and discarding the extra arguments automatically passed by bind).

It’s usually convenient to do this with the partial function from the functools module:

from functools import partial
some_screenmanager.bind(current=partial(a_function,arg1, arg2))

partial returns a new function that will automatically be passed arg1 and arg2, exactly as we want. You can also pass kwargs this way.

This isn’t the only way to solve the problem, we could have created a lambda function (though the syntax is longer and can have scope problems) or an entire new function with def syntax, but both of these are more complicated than the simple use of partial. So if you need to do a binding in Python, look at this way first!

Posted on

Kivy’s bind method

One of the most common problems for new Kivy users is misunderstanding how the bind method works, especially amongst newer Python users who haven’t fully formed their intuition about function calls. For instance, a user will write code like:

some_screenmanager.bind(current=a_function(arg1, arg2))

Here, the idea is that when the current property changes, it will call a_function with the arguments arg1 and arg2.

The problem is that Python itself doesn’t work like this; the bind method doesn’t know about the existence of a_function or its arguments, it only receives the result of this function call. This often leads to confusion when a user doesn’t understand why the binding is only called once, during the declaration of the binding.

Stepping back, our real goal is to call a_function with the given arguments, but bind needs to be passed a function if it is to work correctly. That means we can solve our problem by creating a new function with these arguments already passed (and discarding the extra arguments automatically passed by bind).

It’s usually convenient to do this with the partial function from the functools module:

from functools import partial
some_screenmanager.bind(current=partial(a_function,arg1, arg2))

partial returns a new function that will automatically be passed arg1 and arg2, exactly as we want. You can also pass kwargs this way.

This isn’t the only way to solve the problem, we could have created a lambda function (though the syntax is longer and can have scope problems) or an entire new function with def syntax, but both of these are more complicated than the simple use of partial. So if you need to do a binding in Python, look at this way first!

Posted on

Kivy’s bind method

One of the most common problems for new Kivy users is misunderstanding how the bind method works, especially amongst newer Python users who haven’t fully formed their intuition about function calls. For instance, a user will write code like:

some_screenmanager.bind(current=a_function(arg1, arg2))

Here, the idea is that when the current property changes, it will call a_function with the arguments arg1 and arg2.

The problem is that Python itself doesn’t work like this; the bind method doesn’t know about the existence of a_function or its arguments, it only receives the result of this function call. This often leads to confusion when a user doesn’t understand why the binding is only called once, during the declaration of the binding.

Stepping back, our real goal is to call a_function with the given arguments, but bind needs to be passed a function if it is to work correctly. That means we can solve our problem by creating a new function with these arguments already passed (and discarding the extra arguments automatically passed by bind).

It’s usually convenient to do this with the partial function from the functools module:

from functools import partial
some_screenmanager.bind(current=partial(a_function,arg1, arg2))

partial returns a new function that will automatically be passed arg1 and arg2, exactly as we want. You can also pass kwargs this way.

This isn’t the only way to solve the problem, we could have created a lambda function (though the syntax is longer and can have scope problems) or an entire new function with def syntax, but both of these are more complicated than the simple use of partial. So if you need to do a binding in Python, look at this way first!