Best way to get started?

[Tom Dellaringa]

Hi there,

I posted about my game idea which has Flash as the front end and Ruby
(on Rails) on the back. Getting Flash implemented is going to be a large
chore, and I'm wanting to get started on my project (I'm just learning
Ruby so I have a learning curve to get over).

What is the best way to start coding and interacting with it without
worrying about the graphical front end for now? Would it be best to
simply get an instance of RoR running and then build my objects and have
forms or web pages mimic what would happen in the game? Or does that not
make sense? Is there another way to go?

Thanks for the input.

Tom

 

[Jon Egil Strand]

What is the best way to start coding and interacting with it without=20

worrying about the graphical front end for now? Would it be best to=20
simply get an instance of RoR running and then build my objects and hav= e=20
forms or web pages mimic what would happen in the game? Or does that no= t=20
make sense? Is there another way to go?

It made sense to me.=20

Not meaning to belittle you, but you wrote Ruby would be a learning curve=
=20
To help you overcome some of these, check out some of these resources on=20
www.ruby-doc.org:

Chris Pines "Learn to program" (easy, under Getting Started)
Brian Schr=F6ders "Ruby Course" (medium, under Why Ruby)

Good luck.

All the best
JES

 

[Tom Dellaringa]

Not meaning to belittle you, but you wrote Ruby would be a learning
curve.
To help you overcome some of these, check out some of these resources on
www.ruby-doc.org:

Chris Pines "Learn to program" (easy, under Getting Started)
Brian Schr�ders "Ruby Course" (medium, under Why Ruby)

Good luck.

All the best
JES

I should have mentioned I have the pickaxe book, and have been reading
through it (I also have the RoR book too.) I'm kind of ready to jump in
and get coding and see what happens, just wondering what a good way to
go about it was.

I should also mention I do have 10 years experience as a web developer,
although I am not an engineer I'm more of a front end guy (JavaScript,
etc). I know my share of Java and server side stuff to a point, OOP
stuff to a point - I've just never really put something together like
this. Looking forward to it though - I'm finding Ruby to be really cool
so far.

Tom

 

[Scott Weeks]

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Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
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Hi Tom,

I do a lot of work in the standalone kiosk market and because of that I=20=

end up writing backends for Flash quite often. Ruby is excellent for=20
the task because of its easy integration with C (thus hooking into=20
hardware is a snap) and... well..., it's Ruby

Depending on how you are managing your backend the whole rails stack=20
might not be necessary. I'd certainly use ActiveRecord for persistence=20=

but all you really need is a TCP socket server that Flash can talk to.=20=

The Flash itself can be served via static HTML pages (or within a Rails=20=

based website).

Check out the Pickaxe documentation for the TCP libraries and do a=20
little googling, that should get you started.

Unfortunately I can't post the stuff that I work on in that area=20
because it's commercial and I'd be killed by ravening management types.

Cheers
Scott

I should have mentioned I have the pickaxe book, and have been reading
through it (I also have the RoR book too.) I'm kind of ready to jump = in
and get coding and see what happens, just wondering what a good way to
go about it was.

I should also mention I do have 10 years experience as a web = developer,
although I am not an engineer I'm more of a front end guy (JavaScript,
etc). I know my share of Java and server side stuff to a point, OOP
stuff to a point - I've just never really put something together like
this. Looking forward to it though - I'm finding Ruby to be really = cool
so far.

Tom

--=20
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

--Apple-Mail-1-659987107--

 

[Tom Dellaringa]

Wow, I've been looking for folks who have done Flash/Ruby integration
for a month with very little success and here you are! However, I don't
know C nor do I want to get involved with yet another language - but
this would delivered strictly over the web.

I've been pointed to various new things, osFlash and some other stuff (a
library that allows you to do everything in JavaScript) - but it sounds
like you are saying as long as I have a TCP connection between the two I
am good to go? I am working on a game where the UI is going to be in
Flash but the backend in Ruby. It's been real difficult getting info (I
guess I'm not googling the right stuff! LOL)

I will look into the TCP stuff in the pickaxe book. Totally understand
about your code, but if you could offer any other suggestions on getting
me started on the Flash/Ruby integration, I would be really
appreciative.

Thanks!

Tom

 

[Luke Duncalfe]

hey tom,

when you've collected all the information together, and have figured out how
to do this, be sure to put the info on the ruby on rails wiki and/or the
wiki at ruby garden somewhere. i'd be interested in reading how to do this
too, and it would make it easier for the next person to find this
information when they search for it : )

luke

 

[Scott Weeks]

Flash can communicate over http and connect to tcp sockets, it's rather
limited in what it can do beyond that but often that's all that's
necessary. I'd suggest looking at projects where Flash communicates
with a socket server and decide on a protocol (since Flash has really
fast native parsing of XML that's probably a good place to start). Once
you've got your protocol worked out you can write something to deliver
it in Ruby (or any other language for that matter).

I am lucky enough to have a forum with a really active community of
flash developers at twelvestone.com, that's a good place to look for
flash stuff in the more application oriented arena and might be a good
resource. I personally don't do much Flash and primarily live in the
land of backend code, nuzzled up to strange hardware drivers and
horrifying back-of-house systems so there's a limited amount of advice
that I can offer for the front end side of things.

Cheers

 

[Tom Dellaringa]

Thanks for the advice Scott, I will check out that web site!

Tom

 

[Bill Guindon]

Wow, I've been looking for folks who have done Flash/Ruby integration
for a month with very little success and here you are! However, I don't
know C nor do I want to get involved with yet another language - but
this would delivered strictly over the web.

I've been pointed to various new things, osFlash and some other stuff (a
library that allows you to do everything in JavaScript) - but it sounds
like you are saying as long as I have a TCP connection between the two I
am good to go? I am working on a game where the UI is going to be in
Flash but the backend in Ruby. It's been real difficult getting info (I
guess I'm not googling the right stuff! LOL)

This was posted on the Rails-spinoffs list earlier today, you might
find it useful. I have no idea how much it runs, but it does look
interesting, and you can try it out for free.

 

[todd.makinster]

Hi Tom,
We do some flash ruby integration. I currently use XML fed from
various actions of a single controller that has access to our full
domain model. I am currenlty investigating replacing this XML data with
JSON-RPC and an ActionScript JSON lib to build out objects for use by
the Flash in trying to with OOP ideas.