Ramblings on Ruby on Rails
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In Part 2 of our tutorial, we’ll create some enemies for our player to fight. We’ll set up collision detection, use timers to make a pretty fading effect, and set up a custom manager to coordinate enemy movements and shooting.
Be sure to visit jemini.org for help on starting your own game!
You can view part 1 here.
Jemini is a Ruby-based framework for game development. In this screencast, we’ll create a shooter game from scratch.
Part 1 shows creating a project, setting up a game state, loading animations, music and sound effects, and setting up keyboard input and event handlers. (Not bad for 22 minutes, right?)
You can view part 2 here.
Just watched the Nature episode “Born Wild: The First Days of Life”, and got a dangerously large number of ideas for an artificial life simulation.
Here are (some of) the forces that seem to be in play:
You know, it wouldn’t be that hard to re-do the MythTV frontend system to be like XBox Live/Wii channels. Instead of shows, you’d flip through games available for download. When you found one you wanted, you could choose a menu entry to install it via the package manager.
Networking would be a little harder - you’d need a list of IP addresses for your friends/party members, which would then need to be fed to the command line for each game using that game’s options. I don’t think exiting back to the menu in the event of a connection failure could be made automatic in most cases, either, but that may not be a show-stopper.
I’m on this train of thought because I’m a little tired of dumping money into these locked-down ecosystems that I know will go away as soon as my console dies. I know I can’t attract people to play open-source games when the consoles are so much better integrated, so anything that ties a few titles together can surely help. There were some efforts in this regard a few years back, but I haven’t heard anything of them since…
Logan put together a pretty impressive container for Jemini (note the rename for Google-ability) demos. Just pick from a menu to load a state. Showing a description? One line. Offering running updates on a variable’s value? One line.
class AudibleState < Gemini::BaseState
def create_ui
text "Click in different places in the window to emit a sound at different pitches and volumes."
watch('Pitch') { @pitch }
watch('Volume') { @volume }
end
def load
set_manager :sound, create(:SoundManager)
audible = create :GameObject, :Audible, :ReceivesEvents
audible.load_sound :boom, "boom.wav"
load_keymap :MouseKeymap
audible.handle_event :mouse_pressed do |message|
@pitch = message.value.pointer.x / 100.0
@volume = message.value.pointer.y / 100.0
audible.emit_sound :boom, @volume, @pitch
end
end
end
These commands will install some quality games that can be played full-screen:
sudo apt-get install a7xpg sudo apt-get install gunroar sudo apt-get install kobodeluxe sudo apt-get install parsec47 sudo apt-get install rrootage sudo apt-get install sdl-ball sudo apt-get install titanion sudo apt-get install torus-trooper sudo apt-get install tumiki-fighters
This command will add a “Native” games entry under the Games menu. You’ll be prompted for your MythTV DB password, which is likely stored in “/etc/mythtv/mysql.txt”.
mysql --database=mythconverg -u mythtv -p -e "INSERT INTO gameplayers (playername, gametype, commandline, rompath, extensions) VALUES ('Native', 'Other', '', '$HOME/bin/games', '');"
Then fill $HOME/bin/games “ROM directory” with scripts that launch each respective game. (These are set up for a control pad and 1024×768 resolution, so they may need tweaking.)
~/bin/games/titanion #!/bin/sh titanion -fullscreen -res 1024 768 ~/bin/games/gunroar #!/bin/sh gunroar -fullscreen -res 1024 768 -enableaxis5 ~/bin/games/rrootage #!/bin/sh rrootage -fullscreen -lowres ~/bin/games/parsec47 #!/bin/sh parsec47 -fullscreen -lowres ~/bin/games/torus-trooper #!/bin/sh torus-trooper -fullscreen -res 1024 768 ~/bin/games/a7xpg #!/bin/sh a7xpg -fullscreen -lowres ~/bin/games/sdl-ball #!/bin/sh sdl-ball ~/bin/games/kobo-deluxe #!/bin/sh kobodl -fullscreen -width 1024 -height 768 -joystick -nomusic ~/bin/games/tumiki-fighters #!/bin/sh tumiki-fighters -fullscreen -res 1024 768
Be sure to make the scripts executable, or they won’t launch:
chmod ugo+x ~/bin/games/*
In mythfrontend, go into game setup and scan for new games. Each script you set up should then appear under the “Native” entry in the games menu - just pick one and fire away.
Questions/suggestions? Post ‘em in the comments!
On this page, Microsoft actually encourages linking to their cache of your avatar image. These actually update as you change your avatar, too.
So here’s a group shot of me and my friends, as we appear on Live currently, apparently with a strong wind blowing from the left…
