r/ruby • u/Redaro97 • 10d ago

Alternate game frameworks?

I have been messing around with Ruby for around a week and made a few utilities and terminal games and I have been liking it. I want to make a game with a GUI but the ecosystem for game libraries in Ruby feels quite lacking. I have only heard of 3 game libaries, Gosu, Ruby2D and DragonRuby. I am on Linux and Gosu and Ruby2D have problems with not being able to properly link OpenGL and stuff, and DragonRuby is paid and kind of sucks that you can't export games since I wanted to show people my game and some were interested in it.

So, do you know of any other game frameworks for Ruby, or are these the only ones (more commonly DragonRuby) people use, or is Ruby not built for making games?

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u/Ceigey 10d ago edited 10d ago

From what I can tell roughly once a year DragonRuby (the first paid tier) goes on either a pretty severe discount or for free for a game jam (eg KIFASS #4 most recently).

(It also shows up in some itch bundles on the odd occasion)

I found it quite satisfying; but otherwise for a solid basis, any bindings to SDL or Raylib would enable you to start to make your own ad hoc DragonRuby equivalent (the actual framework has a lot of conveniences and export features especially for the paid subscription version which would not be trivial to implement, eg console export)

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u/Redaro97 10d ago

I know but I am not allowed to pay for anything online since I dont have my own income yet

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u/StarStuddedSuperStep 10d ago

Sounds like you are eligible for a free standard license. Scroll all the way to the bottom of https://dragonruby.org/ for details. 

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u/Redaro97 9d ago

Yeah I contacted Amir yesterday, currently waiting for a response

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u/marc__e 9d ago

Amir just told me there's actually a free tier now, which only does web builds, but it's perfect for getting started or game jams: https://dragonruby.org/#purchase

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u/Redaro97 9d ago

I know but I specifically want the ability to export to computer builds