Spaceship / Thruster Tutorial

Scripting Issues
2

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()