Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Going with Top Down view will give us a chance to create our game world as open for
exploration as possible, while having simple graphics and movement mechanics. Sounds
like the best choice for us.
If you are as bad at drawing things as I am, you could still wonder how we are going to get
our graphics. Thankfully, there is this
opengameart.org
. It's like GitHub of game media, we
will surely find something there. It also contains audio samples and tracks.
Game Development Library
Implement it all yourself or harness the power of some game development library that
offers you boilerplates and convenient access to common functions? If you're like me, you
would definitely want to implement it all yourself, but that may be the reason why I failed
to make a decent game so many times.
If you will try to implement it all yourself, you will most likely end up reimplementing
some existing game library, poorly. It won't take long while you reach a point where you
need to interface with underlying operating system libraries to get graphics. And guess if
those bindings will work in a different operating system?
So, swallow your pride again, because we are going to use an existing game development
library. Good news is that you will be able to actually finish the game, and it will be
portable to Windows, Mac and Linux. We will still have to build our own game engine for
ourselves on top of it, so don't think it won't be fun.
There are
several game libraries
available for Ruby, but it's a simple choice, because
Gosu
is head and shoulders above others. It's very mature, has a large and active community,
and it is mainly written in C++ but has first class Ruby support, so it will be both fast and
convenient to use.
Many of other Ruby game libraries are built on top of Gosu, so it's a solid choice.
Theme And Mechanics
Choosing the right theme is undoubtedly important. It should be something that appeals to
you, something you will want to play, and it should not imply difficult game mechanics.
I love MMORPGs, and I always dreamed of making an open world game where you can
roam around, meet other players, fight monsters and level up. Guess how many times I
started building such a game? Even if I wouldn't have lost the count, I wouldn't be proud
to say the number.
