DragonRuby
Languages and libraries
game engine
SHOW HN2021
234points
141comments
#174of 2,533 in 2021
Top 7%of 2021 by points
How HN took it
DebatedReal support and real criticism
21 positive, 16 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 17 critical, out of 55 comments about the project. Thread score +0.10.
Idea: 7 for, 7 againstPerformance: 2 for, 7 againstDesign: 4 for, 0 againstDocs: 2 for, 0 againstPricing: 1 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Fast iteration with hot reloading and a helpful Discord community
From 2 comments
I don't see this mentioned on the website, but, if I remember correctly, they also have materials for teaching kids how to code. I was thinking about running something at my…
phaedryx on HNPutting the purely technical aspects aside for a moment. From my experience so far one big point in favor of DragonRuby is that its philosophy focuses on developer productivity,…
kfischer_okarin on HN
Objections
Performance claims against Unity are disputed
From 4 comments
Press F to doubt. On some tiny synthetic benchmark maybe. Come back when your engine can handle something even 1% as complex, as say, Dyson Sphere Program.
TylerE on HNHuh, number of sprites per frame has little to do with the speed of C# in Unity. If anything it shows that Unity's default sprite renderer is inefficient.
Impossible on HNUnity does also support C extensions... But due to cross platform mess it is not so popular (i guess). > double the amount of sprites It sounds a bit low? My experience is that…
dosshell on HNSo this YT video of 3:47 is going to prove that Ruby is faster and better than Unity? This is like comparing BASIC and C, but making sure BASIC is on a quad-core, and C on a 386…
tomlin on HN
Subscription pricing and niche Ruby focus versus free engines like Godot
From 3 comments
Why would I choose this over a FOSS 2D game engine like Godot that offers almost everything this engine offers without the price tag? Not trying to shit on the project, I just…
stolen_biscuit on HNI was in search of a bare bones engine like Love that could deploy to many platforms. I didn't need a full-blown game dev environment, and I was leaning towards a coding heavy…
eggy on HNGodot, unity, and unreal do all that too. I’m not seeing the advantage other than it’s ruby. Seems like a niche product.
jbluepolarbear on HN
Reliance on one maintainer for the custom Ruby runtime
From 1 comment
> This is not the same Ruby you'd use for building web apps with Rails (far from it). > DragonRuby is powered by highly optimized C code written by Ryan C. Gordon. This feels…
Pfhreak on HN
Requests
3D game support
From 2 comments
Will it ever support making 3D games?
ptato on HNThis looks really good. Are there any plans for 3D if things stay successful?
mysterydip on HN
Multiplayer functionality
From 1 comment
Does it provide some local or online multiplayer functionalities?
bondant on HN
Demo games or videos to showcase the engine
From 1 comment
Looks interesting and the developer demo was succinct. Feedback is to include some links or video to some demo or even rough playable games. Would be neat to have something to…
bredren on HN
Questions
Is it AOT or JIT compiled and how does it perform with scripts and shaders
From 2 comments
It doesn’t use the standard Ruby interpreter (MRI), but a custom implementation that includes a compiler. I don’t know if it’s AOT compilation or JIT.
pansa2 on HNHm... I'm more concerned about running user-land scripts and shaders than sprites. If I wanted raw pixel-blits per second I could just use SDL. Do you have any concrete numbers…
wokwokwok on HN
Long-term viability and insolvency risk
From 2 comments
In general I don't think I'd be comfortable using any type of engine or framework which is solely developed by one person. Let's say he goes crazy tomorrow and decides to camp on…
offtop5 on HNIn the event that Godot becomes insolvent, the engine loses the ability to export to console. You must have a business entity to get access to those parts of the SDK. Losing the…
amirrajan on HN
Alternatives named
Unity
From 2 comments
Lets say I am not a Ruby dev, what would compel me to learn this over Unity, Unreal, React Native game engine, or one of the other (thousand) game engines out there? Are there…
monkmartinez on HNUnity is just fine. 1000s of shipping successful games. The latest hit game made in Unity is Valheim. I don't choose games based on their engine I choose them based on if they…
gfxgirl on HN
Godot
From 2 comments
Why would I choose this over a FOSS 2D game engine like Godot that offers almost everything this engine offers without the price tag? Not trying to shit on the project, I just…
stolen_biscuit on HNGodot, unity, and unreal do all that too. I’m not seeing the advantage other than it’s ruby. Seems like a niche product.
jbluepolarbear on HN
Defold
From 1 comment
I was in search of a bare bones engine like Love that could deploy to many platforms. I didn't need a full-blown game dev environment, and I was leaning towards a coding heavy…
eggy on HN
Unreal
From 1 comment
> Are there enough Ruby devs to sustain this? So far so good. We’ve been in business for nearly a decade now (with the game engine going onto year 3). > Unity, Unreal, React…
amirrajan on HN