Lori M Olson TALK — Talk of the Tech
A newcomer — goodluckNito — offers some positive comments on how the DragonRuby Game Toolkit (DRGTK) compares to their recent experience with Godot and GameMaker: “overall I really like it. Despite being locked to 60fps it’s fast and very lightweight in comparison. I love hotloading, the built-in console, but especially …” and you can read the rest on the Discord. All that said, they offer some suggestions for improvement. Also, they have moved a slot machine project over from those other platforms and the results look pretty good.
Over on the Slack channel there was some follow up discussion regarding rake notarize including the addition of the very handy wait option. Brett Walker says “it will send the app to be notarized and then wait for it to complete”. Like we said … handy!
SPOT — Spotlight On …
There’s something we likely don’t mention enough and that’s the importance of getting out and about a little. While that could mean actually getting out of the house and away from the keyboard, that’s not what we mean in this context. Rather we think you should get your work a little more out in the wild beyond the friendly and comfortable confines of the DRGTK Discord. For example, Justin Collins just submitted his entry to the 20 Second Game Jam 2023. One other thing: when you do, don’t forget to tag @WNDXLori so your effort can potentially be featured in a future issue of DRD.
GAME — All Things Gaming
So, DRGTK is pretty much the only platform which is worth its salt, right? As easy as it would be for us all to agree on that, the truth is there are actually lots of good ways to develop games, at least some of which we can look to for ideas as to how to do things better here at the home office. Such is the case for this title ↖️ by Tammy Caron. Apple Game Frameworks and Technologies is well worth a look and the folks at PragProg have lots of delivery options which make obtaining a copy easy and cost-effective.
APP — All Things App
As a general rule, choosing open-source development tools represents a pretty great value proposition. It’s not free — you do click that Buy Me a Coffee button, right? — but it’s pretty close to it. That said, if you ask yourself “isn’t that just a bit too good to be true?” your caution may well be justified. To wit, check out this tale from a GitPod alumnus in his post entitled Visual Studio Code is Designed to Fracture. It’s from a while back but the thoughts it contains are still worth heeding. It’s not a good news story. Thanks to Hubert Figuière for the tip about this.
TWIL — This Week [We] Learned …
Just when we thought there is absolutely nothing that anybody can show us about HTML we haven’t already seen about a thousand times, something comes along which makes us think “huh, didn’t know that’. For example Three Attributes for Better Web Forms from the Adactio Journal. Did you know about these?
HAHA — And They All Laughed
The World’s Best DragonRuby Newsletter can be delivered to you directly — at least it will be if you subscribe! Follow the WNDX School on Facebook and don’t forget to follow WNDXLori on Twitter and Instagram.
If you enjoyed this issue of the DragonRuby Dispatch, please forward to a friend and ask them to subscribe, too … we really appreciate it!
“It’s a truism in the game industry that a well-designed game should be playable immediately, with no instruction whatsoever.” — Jane McGonigal, author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World