Engines

An engine is simply a tool, and this chapter focuses on tools and engines available that help you program games. These tools are all Python-based and open-source, and, for the most part, are geared towards the beginning programmer and so have easy-to-use interfaces.

The Cyclon Online Gaming Engine

The Cyclon Online Gaming Engine (COG for short) is an open-source computer game-authoring system. The system comes with a development application to facilitate game creation, a "fill-in-the-blanks" GUI that brings up windows in which you set up the game information, player information, rooms, directions, items, events, and even define action verbs that can be taken in by the text parser. The development application is shown in Figure 5.1.