From: Tom Copeland <tom@...>
Date: 2004-07-15T22:51:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Writing games in Ruby?

On Thu, 2004-07-15 at 04:47, Innocence wrote:
> Hey
> 
> I'd been messing around with Python for a few weeks when I came upon
> Ruby. Personally I much prefer the Ruby syntax (especially the OO
> consistency and not not using indents to define blocks). Unfortunately
> however, it seems that the Ruby community lacks a stable, easy-to-use
> game-module like PyGame - at least I haven't been able to find one (ok
> so I found RUDL, but it hasn't been updated for years and it seems to
> be buggy).
> 
> I mean, is there any language specific reason why Ruby couldn't be
> used for writing games the way Python is (ie. we're not talking 3D
> action games, but smaller strategy and arcade games)? Is the Ruby
> garbage collector bad/slow, is the interpreter much slower or is
> something else wrong? Or is it simply a question of time until someone
> writes a multimedia plugin to handle sprites, buffered screens, audio
> and the like?

I've wondered about that too.  It'd be nifty to have a little collection
of old-school arcade games in Ruby - Tetris, Breakout, Space Invaders,
etc.  I just haven't done enough GUI programming in Ruby to know how
hard it would be, though...

Yours,

Tom