Recently I received an email from the Kyra mailing list announcing the newest update to the Kyra Sprite Engine. It is now at version 2.1.1, and the tutorials and installation notes seem to have an upgrade as well.
A big change is the license. It used to be dual licensed. You could either make use of the GPL or the LGPL. Now it is under the LGPL for any purpose and without the requirement to display a splash screen.
One of the new features is Isogen, a tool for quickly and easily generating seamless tiles and walls for isometric games. It looks pretty cool and makes me think about the possibility of developing isometric games.
It can compile with Gnu/Linux, BSD, and MinGW32. There is the ability to compile for Mac OS X, but apparently the run-time performance leaves much to be desired…but the source is freely available to those who would be able to submit patches!
Another thing I’ve been interested in is learning the Python programming language. People have been suggesting it to me recently, and I think after I finish Oracle’s Eye I will look into the language. The cool thing is that I won’t necessarily have to find a new graphics library since there is a Python binding called PyKyra. It isn’t new, but I just noticed it was a possibility.
I’ll need to check and see how much it breaks backwards compatibility with the old version, but I am really looking forward to giving Kyra 2.1.1 a spin.