Hey Will,
In the sample programs zip for panda, there’s a Task tutorial called Tut-Asteroids, that has a nice example of doing some simple thruster style controls in 2d.
As for a skybox, if you can manage to make one yourself (in blender or maya), and get it into egg format. There’s some discussion on this here
discourse.panda3d.org/viewtopic.php?t=562
Anywho, if you have a model, say SkyBox.egg, with normals pointing inwards, you could do the following:
import direct.directbase.DirectStart
skyBox=loader.loadModel("SkyBox.egg")
skyBox.reparentTo(render)
run()
The only problem with this is that you can move close to the skybox.
So, you would probably want to put a task on it to keep it away from the camera.
import direct.directbase.DirectStart
from direct.task import Task
skyBox=loader.loadModel("SkyBox.egg")
skyBox.reparentTo(render)
largeEnoughToLookGood=<up to you>
skyBox.setScale(largeEnoughToLookGood)
def keepAwayTask(task):
camPos=camera.getPos(render)
#make sure the skybox doesn't move if we jump
camPos.setZ(0)
skyBox.setPos(camPos)
return Task.cont
taskMgr.add(keepAwayTask,"keep the sky away from you")
run()