From: Leon Torres <leon@...>
Date: 2002-01-19T20:38:59+09:00
Subject: Re: Client side tool - GUI - sockets

On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Rune Jarnes wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm a newbie when it comes to Ruby. I've been lurking a bit and am wondering
> if Ruby would be suitable for writing a GUI centered client that
> communicates with a server with tcp-ip ? I'm also curious whether anyone has
> done this and if you could comment a bit on your experience, regarding what
> worked well and what worked less well.

Yes. I've been writing a multiplayer board game in Ruby and
have been using the Distributed Ruby library (drb), RUDL and Gtk.
I began by trying to set up a chat server and gui client. It took less
an hour, believe it or not. Ever since then, I rarely had to bother with
the network layer.

Unfortunately, I still don't know what to do about the gui setup. I need
either SDL or OpenGL for animation and a widget library like Gtk or Fox
for the user interface. Right now, I have a RUDL DisplaySurface running
independently of the Gtk stuff. This setup isn't as painful as it sounds
and might actually be preferable to a one-window game, but gettting the
threads to work together properly is becoming more painful as I add
features. Another problem is that some of the graphics are being loaded
twice. I'm not sure if the situation will improve by using a library
that embeds SDL or OpenGL in Fox or Gtk. And I'd rather use pure-SDL or
pure-OpenGL because I want my game to be as portable as possible while
remaining easy to install (my friends want to play it on their windows
machines, I'm using linux).

Nevertheless, this game would not have gotten off the ground if it weren't
for the advantages offered by Ruby. I started writing it in C++ and
prototyping in Ruby, but then gave up the C++ part entirely. Since
then, most of my time has been spent doing useful things like creating
graphics and debugging game logic.

I'm about to release the game (BotFrenzy) on SourceForge in a day or two.
Feel free to inspect my implementation.

An obligatory screenshot (rather large):
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~leon/rr6.png
You can see the RUDL windows on the left and Gtk windows on the right.

- Leon