Games/Lessons - Writing Games in Ruby with Gosu
What's with the name "games_lessons"? Well the idea was to have fun with Games and learn some programming Lessons. I can't put the "/" into my Ruby names so it turns into just games_lessons. The goal here is to write some really fun games and be exposed to programming concepts without the need for the stress and anxiety of a typical school.
So, this package contains several simple demonstration programs for creating simple games and graphics in Ruby through the Gosu gem. These will illustrate the aforementioned programming concepts. Taking it to the next level, they can be the starting point for you to modify and try out your own ideas and express your creativity. Eventually, you may wish to write your own programs from scratch, but it's nice to have working code as a starting point especially when you are just starting out.
Please note: You'll now need Ruby 2.3 or later as Gosu has dropped its support for versions older than that. That is as far as I know. I am not 100% certain on this point.
Installation
(Coming soon --- Oct 16, 2018)
$ gem install gosu
A good test that all is well would be to run one of the sample programs. See the section "Running the Sample Programs" for more on that.
Usage
The games_lessons gem consists of two distinct functions:
- A program launcher for the various sample programs that come with the tutorial.
- A series of classes and modules designed to take some of the boiler-plate and mathematics out of the programming process.
WIP
Running the Sample Programs
This tutorial contains a number of demonstration and utility programs. There are two ways that these programs can be executed.
From the games_lessons folder, in a command line session with access to Ruby (please see Chapter 00 more on that) enter the following:
ruby 01\hello0.rb
Naturally substituting the path and name of the program you wish to run.
Enter the following from any command line session with access to Ruby:
games_lessons hello0
Naturally substituting the name of the program you wish to run. (Coming soon --- Oct 16, 2018)
Contents
This tutorial is set up in chapters with each chapter in its own sub-folder. Each chapter has its own README.md file that serves as a guide to the contents of that chapter. This is designed to make it easy to navigate the course using a combination of GitHub to view the text and running the programs locally. The following are included.
The Course Material:
- Chapter 00 - Getting setup with Ruby and Gosu.
- Chapter 01 - The traditional "Hello World" with a few fun variations.
- Chapter 02 - Getting the ball rolling.
Some Helpful Extras:
- Appendix A - Some small utility programs that may be of help.
- Appendix B - Some Words of (Hopefully) Wisdom.
Soap Box and Rants:
- Appendix Y - Dimensions of Gosu (or what's "up" Doc?)
- Appendix Z - Some extra credits about why GUI programming was so awful.
More contents are under development at this time. Really!
More Resources
There are a lot of resources available for Gosu:
And here are some videos/blogs that sure inspired me!
- RubyConf 2016: Attention Rubyists: You can write video games, by Cory Chamblin
- 2015: An introduction to Ruby/Gosu, by Iván González
- LA Ruby Conf 2014 - Writing Games with Ruby by Mike Moore
- Ruby on Ales 2014 - Writing Games with Ruby by Mike Moore
- Tutorial Series 2013: Conway’s Game of Life with Ruby/Gosu in vim, by Ofcan
- Ruby Conf 2012: Game Development and Ruby, by Andrew Nordman
Want more? Many more interesting videos may be found on YouTube by searching for: gosu ruby
Still More Resources
While all people are creative, we're not all Vincent van Gogh. I mean, who wants to lose an ear for art? Try this web site as a short cut to getting the little bits of graphic art needed to create your next game masterpiece: opengameart.org
And what's a video game without cool, 80s sounds? What's that you say? You're not Mozart either? Here for free, a whole gamut of sounds from simple effects to full musical scores and everything in between: freesound (Free but registration required).
A all round great place to find stuff is: Art Assets for Game Developers
Also it may come to pass that the free art you find is close to your needs but not quite right. If so you may need some tools to tweak or edit things to the way you need. Here are two free tools that I use to get this done:
Time Sensitive Information
Modern computer programming environments change at an alarming pace. I recall attending a meetup where they made a demonstration of running a two year old web site. Everyone was astonished that it actually worked! They could not conceive that code as ancient as two years old could still run at all!
Or in other (Latin) words: "Sic transit gloria mundi."
To this end, when I make a remark that may easily be swept away by the sands of time, I tag on "---" and the date I made the observation --- Aug 17, 2018
Contributing
- Fork it
- Create your feature branch (
git checkout -b my-new-feature) - Commit your changes (
git commit -am 'Add some feature') - Push to the branch (
git push origin my-new-feature) - Create new Pull Request
OR...
- Make a suggestion by raising an issue . All ideas and comments are welcome.
License
The project is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.
Code of Conduct
Everyone interacting in the Games Lessons project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.