Show HN: DragonRuby Game Toolkit

#1

Post by amirrajan » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 12:31 AM UTC

Show HN: DragonRuby Game Toolkit
dragonruby.org

Re: Show HN: DragonRuby Game Toolkit

#2

Post by monkmartinez » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 1:29 AM UTC

Lets say I am not a Ruby dev, what would compel me to learn this over Unity, Unreal, React Native game engine, or one of the other (thousand) game engines out there? Are there enough Ruby devs to sustain this?

I remember Ruby Motion was a thing, then it wasn't... then it was again? I started learning web dev with RoR and quickly moved to Python as the ecosystem was so much bigger. I could transfer my Python knowledge into so many different domains. I remember at the time, I really wanted a "Ruby Motion" for Python... still do actually.

I have come full circle and now think JS is eating the world and I am playing in that garden... we'll see where that ends up I suppose. In any case, GOOD LUCK... I hope for the best!

Re: Show HN: DragonRuby Game Toolkit

#3

Post by phaedryx » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 1:31 AM UTC

I don't see this mentioned on the website, but, if I remember correctly, they also have materials for teaching kids how to code. I was thinking about running something at my son's school last year before Covid shut everything down.

The "hotloading" is really nice and the community on Discord is excellent.

Re: Show HN: DragonRuby Game Toolkit

#4

Post by mwcampbell » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

At the risk of hijacking the thread, are you still doing any work on RubyMotion? I always thought RubyMotion was interesting because of how it provided seamless access to the host platform APIs and was even built atop the host platforms' object models. I might have even used it for a product about 5 years ago, if it had supported Windows as a target platform (though I'm not sure how that would have worked).

Re: Show HN: DragonRuby Game Toolkit

#5

Post by Pfhreak » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

> This is not the same Ruby you'd use for building web apps with Rails (far from it).

> DragonRuby is powered by highly optimized C code written by Ryan C. Gordon.

This feels like a liability for the long term. The community is now depending on Ryan to maintain this custom Ruby implementation, if I'm reading correctly.

Re: Show HN: DragonRuby Game Toolkit

#6

Post by phaedryx » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 1:44 AM UTC

mwcampbell wrote: post #4

At the risk of hijacking the thread, are you still doing any work on RubyMotion? I always thought RubyMotion was interesting because of how it provided seamless access to the host platform APIs and was even built atop the host platforms' object models. I might have even used it for a product about 5 years ago, if it had supported Windows as a target platform (though I'm not sure how that would have worked).

As I understand it, work on DragonRuby is foundational for converting RubyMotion into a better, cross-platform mobile toolkit.

http://www.rubymotion.com/news/2019/04/19/plans-for-rubymoti...

Re: Show HN: DragonRuby Game Toolkit

#7

Post by adamnemecek » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 1:54 AM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #5

> This is not the same Ruby you'd use for building web apps with Rails (far from it). > DragonRuby is powered by highly optimized C code written by Ryan C. Gordon. This feels like a liability for the long term. The community is now depending on Ryan to maintain this custom Ruby implementation, if I'm reading correctly.

I’m guessing it’s native extensions rather than a custom ruby implementation.

Re: Show HN: DragonRuby Game Toolkit

#8

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 1:58 AM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #5

> This is not the same Ruby you'd use for building web apps with Rails (far from it). > DragonRuby is powered by highly optimized C code written by Ryan C. Gordon. This feels like a liability for the long term. The community is now depending on Ryan to maintain this custom Ruby implementation, if I'm reading correctly.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: DragonRuby Game Toolkit

#9

Post by amirrajan » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 1:58 AM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #5

> This is not the same Ruby you'd use for building web apps with Rails (far from it). > DragonRuby is powered by highly optimized C code written by Ryan C. Gordon. This feels like a liability for the long term. The community is now depending on Ryan to maintain this custom Ruby implementation, if I'm reading correctly.

Details about the runtime are here if you’re interested: http://docs.dragonruby.org/#----what-is-dragonruby?

Re: Show HN: DragonRuby Game Toolkit

#10

Post by offtop5 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 1:58 AM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #5

> This is not the same Ruby you'd use for building web apps with Rails (far from it). > DragonRuby is powered by highly optimized C code written by Ryan C. Gordon. This feels like a liability for the long term. The community is now depending on Ryan to maintain this custom Ruby implementation, if I'm reading correctly.

In general I don't think I'd be comfortable using any type of engine or framework which is solely developed by one person.

Let's say he goes crazy tomorrow and decides to camp on the beaches of Jamaica. No matter what you do, particularly with a closed source engine, you're stuck.

With unity if one programmer decides to quit, we still have a game engine that gets updated.

With Godot if both of the paid maintainers quit and the project collapses, you can just fork it and keep going.