An intuitive 2D game engine. Fast, cross-platform, tiny, hot loaded. · By
Wasn't sure about this one, but finally took the plunge.
I gotta say, having a fast lightweight game engine that runs as you code is pretty motivating. With Dragonruby on the left and SciTE on the right it's like having a framework that runs on instant coffee. I love Godot, especially for larger projects, but for smaller projects this engine packs dual wielded pistols and a katana.
What I want most right now are more tutorials for the engine. I can hardly find anything for DragonRuby that's comprehensive (like all the fundamentals to create a completed game, or a full game code-along that isn't pong or breakout). Things like figuring out top down 8 way movement (without diagonal speed increase) and setting up long quests with dialogue and branching conditionals is very hard and requires brute force manual learning (like RayLib). I was happily reading a tutorial book for the engine made by a user and part way through the writer mentioned 8 way normalized movement and then cheekily left it up to the reader to figure out how to do it, which I was kind of a little really totally angry about. But yeah, more YouTube content would be great if there are users willing to contribute, plus it would help more people to know about the engine. I for one only found out DragonRuby exists because I was scraping through the Tools section of Itch out of sheer curiosity.
like all the fundamentals to create a completed game, or a full game code-along that isn’t pong or breakout
Take a look at the sample apps prefixed with ./samples/99_genre_*. There are definitely sample apps that are non-trivial.
Things like figuring out top down 8 way movement.
The third directory of sample apps does exactly this. Located at ./samples/03_rendering_sprites/03_animation_states_advanced. There’s also a topdown RPG 99_genre_* directory that has more advanced implementations. The specific method is args.inputs.directional_vector that returns a normalized value depending on what the D-Pad/left analog reports back.
setting up long quests with dialogue and branching conditionals
There are a couple of sample apps under the ./samples/99_genre_rpg directory that cover branching narratives (one of them is called Return of Serenity which has fairly complex branches).
happily reading a tutorial book for the engine made
If it’s the book Building Games with DragonRuby, we have a channel on our Discord Server where you can report bugs and give feedback. The Discord Server in general is a fantastic place to get help (and probably the best place to get help as of right now, we’re still a relatively young engine and working on getting more content out there).
