From: Julian Raschke Date: 2007-10-24T18:13:02+09:00 Subject: Re: Need advice on Ruby and game dev On Oct 24, 7:02 am, Haroon Fatboyjaaba wrote: > [...] the problem is that I also like game consoles and > they always run C games if you get it modded. I wouldn't spend too much time thinking about this. Once you can write a platformer in Ruby, porting the game logic to C and exchanging the rendering calls should be grunt work; getting the platformer to work in the first place is something that needs experience and creativity, though, no matter in which language you do it. (I.e. go with the pleasant one!) And if you use a very high-level, railsy library, make sure you understand that it's doing for you. > But another question is how much > ruby do I have to learn before I can start gui/game stuff, like making > things move an all that? Do I have to learn all of ruby or what? Thanks No. I got into both C++ and Ruby by writing small, one-file games without knowing much about the languages. As long as you have ifs, loops, arrays, classes, timers and an output method (flexible console I/O will suffice), you can quickly put a minimalist Super Mario together in any language. Beyond these features that make a language Mario-complete, every single thing you learn about Ruby can be used for making your life a bit easier, but you will end up (re)writing many games anyway and have plenty of time to try everything out. I would recommend picking any gamedev library, understanding one or two of the example games and then extending them. Do this for a handful of libraries and you will not only learn how games 'work', but also see that there is a lot of room for different designs. Andrea Wright's talk has been mentioned in this thread, and gives a good overview over the current libraries and their design. With some creativity you can write the same game in all of them, and with some more the same applies to different languages (even C), and eventually, different platforms (consoles). Julian