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Terrace

Our vision: write Ruby code once; run your game on desktop, mobile, and in-browser. We do this by providing a "standard" Ruby interface, and generating equivalent code for various platforms through various back-ends (like webruby for web support).

Our current methodology is to use high-velocity stacks instead of a common code-base. This means we use CraftyJS (web) and Gosu (desktop), even though we could use mruby with SDL.

This project is no longer under active development. With the exception of Android (which was very hard to produce a stable back-end for), the code works as expected. If a solid, high-velocity back-end for Android emerges (such as a true Gosu port to Android), I may restart this project.

Getting Started

To start, edit main.rb and add code for your game, like so:

# Load the terrace library, and target-specific code. Do not remove these!
#= require ./lib/common/terrace_common.rb
#= require ./lib/TARGET/terrace.rb
g = Game.new(800, 600)
g.load_content({
  :images => ['content/images/fox.png', 'content/images/emblem.png']
}, lambda {
  e = Entity.new(TwoDComponent.new, KeyboardComponent.new)
  e.image('content/images/fox.png')
  e.move_with_keyboard
  e.touch(lambda { puts "The time is #{Time.new}" })
})

This sample creates a new 800x600 game with a fox sprite that moves with the arrow keys. Clicking it with the mouse displays the current time.

To run your game in-browser, run ruby build.rb web-craftyjs. This will generate the HTML5 version under bin/web-craftyjs. To play the game, open bin/web-craftyjs/index.html in your browser.

To run your game on your desktop, run ruby build.rb desktop-gosu. This will generate a main.rb file under bin/dekstop-gosu. Run it in Ruby to launch your game.

To run your game on android, run ruby builld.rb android-gosuandroid. Provided you have the Android SDK installed, this will generate an .apk file under bin/mobile-libgdx which you can deploy and test via adb.

Main Components

A summary of the main components and their methods:

  • TwoDComponent: Anything in 2D space. Has move(x, y), x, y
  • ImageComponent: An image! Has image(filename); you can get the width and height.
  • KeyboardComponent: Responds to keyboard input. Has move_with_keyboard().
  • TouchComponent: Receives touches. Has touch(callback)
  • AudioComponent: Can play a sound. Has play(filename, { :loop => true/false })
  • TextComponent: Displays text. Can move, and set text(display_text).

Important Points to Note

  • WebRuby uses console.log for error handling; please use Chrome to debug (you won't see the console messages in FireFox).
  • You can't use backticks in your code. Doing so will break the amalgamation of code (and even if it didn't, Javascript runs in the browser, so it wouldn't work.)

Supported Platforms and Targets

Currently, we are working on supporting the following platforms and targets:

  • Web: web-craftyjs (Javascript wrappers around CraftyJS)
  • Desktop: desktop-gosu (wrappers around Gosu)

Debug vs. Release Mode

To build your application in release mode, add release to the end of the command-line, eg. ruby build.rb web-craftyjs release. What this does changes by platform:

  • Web/CraftyJS: Debug uses webruby-debug.js, which is 5MB (!) but produces verbose error messages. Release builds use the webruby-release.js file instead.
  • Desktop/Gosu: Release mode builds compiled binaries. On Windows, you get a game.exe file to bin\desktop-gosu. You can ship this, along with the content directory together, as your final, self-executable game.

Development Environment Setup

If you plan to contribute to terrace, you need to set up Ruby (1.9.3 or newer)

For Windows binaries

To build binaries for the desktop target, you also need:

  • The gosu gem (0.9.2). Follow setup instructions from the gosu wiki.
  • The ocra gem (1.9.5).

Next Steps: Android Back-End

Android is very difficult target to get working. I had a hard time getting mruby to compile (even though the mruby-sdl2 and mruby-minigame gems looked promising). I am not a proficient C/C++ developer.

LibGDX showed promise, but integration with JRuby probably requires a lot of work, so I didn't pursue it.

Gosu-Android, despite being a dead project, provided the best approach. However, due to some bugs (like audio replaying strangely, touch-done events not firing, and screen coordinate wierdness), I decided to abandon it.

There are many paths forward -- libGDX, gosu-android, the port of gosu to Android, and even SDL with MRuby. I leave it to you to fork and do what you think is best.

To build against the mobile target for Android, you would need to:

  • Install the Android SDK installed with the API-16 platform (rubuto takes care of this)
  • Install the ruboto gem (1.3.0)
  • Run rubuto setup -y. Note that this installs the Android SDK, ant, etc.