Python Hunting: A beginner's guide to programming and game building in Python for teens, tweens and newbies.

326 pages of spinning, shooting, catching, raining, eating, scoring, dying fun. Works on Windows, Mac or Linux. Will even work on a Raspberry Pi. Python Hunting throws beginners straight into the cool, creative side of things, building fun games that anyone can enjoy playing.

The steps are clear, concise and humorous. You'll learn the lingo and some cool shortcuts. You'll learn some maths but won't be confused by it. You might even learn a good joke or two. By the end, you’ll be teaching your parents and siblings how to program. More importantly, you'll learn genuine programming skills that are the foundations for working in the computer industry, regardless of whether you want to be a game builder or head off to some other area. The basics are the same and this is a great place to start.

The book’s know-how and focus on teaching in a way that kids and teens can relate to comes from Marley Adair, a teenager himself. He has loved programming since the age of five, has written all sorts of games in various languages. He has also built and programmed robots, music players and various other devices. This is the book he wishes he could have bought when he began learning Python.

Brian Carling has a knack for explaining the hard stuff in a way anyone can understand. And should you get stuck the pair of them are an email away from helping you along.

We updated the installation instructions in June 2017 now that the installation of Pygame has been made much easier using a system called pip. All is explained.

• To get the basics you'll build a Falling Rain program and a character who puts up his umbrella to keep dry.


• This runs smoothly into a Space Invaders game with randomly moving invaders and arcade style scoring. After all, space invaders aren't so different from falling rain.


• Then build the classic Pong game but with some extras like a bat that hits the ball to accelerate it and balls that bounce in a slightly random fashion.


• Next a Fly Catching Frog with an extending tongue. If you don't catch enough flies you'll starve but the flies appear randomly on the screen and only for a limited amount of time.


• And finally a two player Tank Battle with tanks you can move around the screen, moving obstacles, ammo dumps and bouncing shells.


• All through this you learn how to add start and game over screens, sound effects, graphics, game statistics such as lives and scores, and more, with each game introducing new skills and ideas.


• Python Hunting covers all the basics, such as classes, functions, loops and logic, but relates them all to the more fun aspects of programming.


• We teach graphics using the Pygame graphics library. It's easy to use and we show you how. If you want to learn graphics for games and animations we strongly recommend you use Pygame because you can simply do more with it than other GUI libraries.

Working versions or screenshots of the games are on the website at www.python-hunting.com as well as contact details where you can ask questions or get help from the authors. We'd love to hear how you are getting on.

Still in his teens, Marley has been programming since the age of seven and is a skilled programmer in several languages, as well as having written a couple of his own. He says the old guys can teach you a lot but learning from your peers is important and useful because they understand what it is you're trying to learn and the problems you're facing. Brian has taught beginners programming for several years. He has a knack for explaining things in simple English.