Issue 21

24 April 2019

by Lori M Olson

#OPED

There’s such a huge difference between someone who says “we should do this” and “here’s how I will do this.” The first one has ideas. The second is a leader.

I read this quote earlier this week and thought – how timely & appropriate. There are, I am sad to say, a subset of people who are disappointed in the “big reveal” of DragonRuby over the weekend. And those same people are some of the ones who speak the loudest about how RubyMotion should be open source.

People, you have ideas. Amir and Ryan and Aaron are the leaders working hard and producing actual working products like DragonRuby - Game Toolkit and soon, DragonRuby - Mobile Toolkit. The process of extracting and detangling the compiler from the tooling that helps create iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS and Android applications is not a small effort, nor will it happen in a couple of months.

I will confess (and Amir will totally back me up) that I am not much of a gamer. But Amir introduced me to a pre-release version of DragonRuby GTK, so I could create the tutorial, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. I am looking forward to continuing to play with and expand on my little arcade game clone. And I am REALLY looking forward to introduce DRGTK to an entire new generation of coders, as a great stepping stone to becoming software and app creators. — wndxlori

#FITS: Featured in the School

By the time you read this, the world will have been set on fire by Amir Rajan’s presentation at RubyKaigi 2019. We anxiously await the video which Amir has promised to publish as soon as it is available. Spoiler alert: the title was “Building a Game for the Nintendo Switch Using Ruby” which kinda gives away the ending, doesn’t it? In any event, we hear it was a big hit due in no small part to Amir and Ryan C. Gordon’s contemporaneous release of the DragonRuby Game Toolkit.

Here at the School we’re not above being bandwagon jumpers so we’re pleased to announce that we, too, have released a FREE tutorial introduction to the DragonRuby Game Toolkit. It provides all you need to get started on your first 2D game and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux development.

And for those who might wonder if there is a living in 2D games, keep in mind Amir’s A Dark Room for iOS was #1 in the App Store and placed in the top #10 paid apps across 70 countries. It has been downloaded over 2.5 million times and received over 25,000 five star reviews. Yeah, us too.

So now do you want to sign up for our tutorial?

#MSH: Motioneers Slack Highlights

Easter may have come and gone but we have one more Easter Egg for you which was revealed by Amir at the aforementioned RubyKaigi 2019 as well as this past RubyMotion Meetup. If you know where to look (and like all good Easter Eggs how to look for it) A Dark Room for Nintendo Switch contains a really interesting little nugget.

On a completely different subject, way back in #18 we provided a skookum tip from David Chartier over at Finer Things in Tech. In it he told us about unsubscribing from a Slack thread. That was all well and good, but we provided the wrong link. Doh! Here’s the right one offered with our humble apologies to David and to all of our readers.

#GOTW: Gem of the Week

From Connor Shea we have a little tasks.json file (available on itch.io or as a GitHub Gist) for use with VS Code. According to Connor, it makes running the DragonRuby samples quite a bit simpler. It does. It’s pretty slick and thank you for making this available, Connor.

#COMM: Community

A little while back Amir kicked off the rebranding effort for RubyMotion in The Sleeping Dragon Has Awoken, And Is Filled With A Terrible Resolve. It explained at a high level where things were going. And we still love that title.

Moving right along, we’re beginning to see some flesh on those bones in Aaron Lasseigne’s newsy if not tersely named Plans for RubyMotion. While there still seems like there’s more to come, this is really good start at explaining the DragonRuby roadmap for the near future. Thanks for the information and please keep it coming, Aaron!

#AHOTW: App Highlight of the Week

Our own wndxlori is really excited about the DragonRuby Game Toolkit, so in keeping the general theme in this week’s #RMW she is providing the source for her clone of that 1980s arcade game classic Galaga. It is “a work in progress” but it’s still well worth a look to see how much can be accomplished with such a little bit of code. Along with the free tutorial introduction mention in #FITS, above, it will further help you quickly come up to speed on the exciting new DragonRuby game platform. Check out wndxlori’s code which is available as a GitHub Gist.

#TWIL: This Week I Learned

Another #TWIL twofer:
Well, sort of, as the first one is a handy tip of which we only needed reminding. It’s from Elijah Manor and he mentions that command-shift-period hide or shows hidden files in Finder. Elijah’s tweet comes complete with the demo video with the highest information-to-duration ratio we have seen a long time. Thanks for tweaking our memories on this one, Elijah.

The second #TWIL is about the Pac-Man Rule at Conferences provided by Eric Holscher. We won’t steal any of Eric’s thunder but it’s a great little hint at making the most of your next live meeting event. Or, if you’re a conference organizer, a tip you can pass along so your attendees get the most out of your hard work organizing the event in the first place. Frankly, we had never thought about this and it’s a really good idea.

That’s a Wrap

Another week come and gone. Can’t stand the thought of missing a future issue of #RMW? Then subscribing would be a good idea. Also, follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn for other Newsletter-worthy content between now and then.

Until then…may all your Ds be 2.

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