Ruby and SDL again.. now I am finally getting time to write my game

So, I have had an on going dream project.. writing a game in Ruby... I first started this years ago, and it was an ambitious project, a multiplayer online virtual world.. pretty much what everybody starts out trying to do.

Then I got a new job in London, and it all went to pieces. Now finally I am picking it up again, with a careful plan.. start with something simple, and finish it, creating a game engine and getting a feel for things in the process, then move on to something more complicated, finally finishing with my multiplayer online game.

Of course the whole operation is great fun, as I am working with ruby, and SDL seems to do a pretty decent job in terms of coping with all the different OS platforms out there. Yes, you would be right in thinking that in-game art is going to be the toughest part of this! I have no graphical talent.

Progress is good, I am calling the project Spacewars for now, and it is based on a game I played when I was about eight years old on an Amstrad CPC. For more information checkout www.rossputin.org/projects/.

So finally, after trying 'Ruby on Rails' on for size...

I have officially ditched it....

Ruby is arguably the best programming language on the planet right now, superbly crafted, but it can do a great deal better than Rails for a web platform. I gave it a decent try, but too many aspects just do not fit, particularly the templating language. All in all these nuances just seem to be geared to get you up and running as fast as possible, great for beginners, but the minute you look under the hood, you are faced with an increasingly unpleasant picture.

So I am pushing my website Rossputin.org across to Cocoon on my new dedicated server.

Talking to the guys in the Cocoon community, this seems to be the general trend. A brief 'fall in love' with Ruby on Rails, followed by finding a lack in power and in some cases sanity, followed by ultimately returning home to those 'other' frameworks out there.

One to watch out there in my opinion is certainly Wicket.

OK, its time to be professional, some Ruby and SDL on Mac thoughts

At this point, I have been blogging for a few years now, and I have to admit most of it is gibberish, so its time to get some sensible thoughts down, on my favourite fields, software, and technology.

I will start with my very favourite, Ruby, and the announcement that I finally got the Ruby integration of SDL sorted this weekend, and can now pick up where I left off with my game project... which has not been touched for about 2 years :-(.

So I have SDL images, fonts, sounds all operational on my Powerbook.. not the easiest thing to do...

the first resource for assisting with this is.. http://inquirylabs.com/blog2005/?p=21, and the second, slightly better one in my opinion is... http://www.ralphdouglass.com/static_content/rubysdl_on_osx

excellent, game creation on my favourite platform with the best programming language in the world!!!!!