Description
The driving idea behind Gamebox is to provide the ability to have as many of the basic common pieces of a 2D game at the developers disposal from the beginning.
The reason I wrote Gamebox is twofold: first, to aid in 48 hour game writing competitions and second, to allow me to write simple educational games for my kids.
Gamebox alternatives and similar gems
Based on the "Game Development" category.
Alternatively, view Gamebox alternatives based on common mentions on social networks and blogs.
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews
* Code Quality Rankings and insights are calculated and provided by Lumnify.
They vary from L1 to L5 with "L5" being the highest.
Do you think we are missing an alternative of Gamebox or a related project?
Popular Comparisons
README
Gamebox
- A game template for building and distributing Gosu games.
- Quickly generate a game and have it up and running.
- Provide conventions and DSL for building your game.
- Facilitate quickly building distributable artifacts.
- http://gamebox.io/
- see gamebox on rubygems.org for the list of requirements
Getting started with Gamebox
Purpose
Why use Gamebox? Gamebox was designed to spring board game development. It allows the developer to define business rules about a game very quickly without having to worry about resource loading, sound/music management, creating windows, or messing with viewports. Gamebox allows you to define a game's business rules within minutes, using the metaphor of a 5th grade play.
The driving idea behind Gamebox is to provide the ability to have as many of the basic common pieces of a 2D game at the developers disposal from the beginning.
The reason I wrote Gamebox is twofold: first, to aid in 48 hour game writing competitions and second, to allow me to write simple educational games for my kids.
Installation
gem install gamebox
git clone git://github.com/shawn42/gamebox.git && cd gamebox && bundle && rake install
Game Creation
To create a new Gamebox project run:
$ gamebox new zapper
This will create the directory structure and needed files to get a basic actor up on the screen:
zapper
├── Gemfile
├── README.rdoc
├── Rakefile
├── config
│ ├── boot.rb
│ ├── environment.rb
│ └── game.yml
├── data
│ ├── fonts
│ ├── graphics
│ ├── music
│ └── sounds
├── spec
│ └── helper.rb
└── src
├── actors
│ └── player.rb
├── app.rb
└── demo_stage.rb
To run your game:
$ cd zapper
$ bundle
$ rake
Stages
A stage is where all the magic happens. Each new play type in your game will use a different stage. An example game may have a number of stages such as: main_menu
, play
, or credits
. A demo_stage.rb
is created for you by using the gamebox new
command.
define_stage :demo do
curtain_up do
...
end
end
Actors
Actors are the basic building blocks of games in Gamebox. Everything in the game is an actor: the player, an alien, the bullet, even the score on the screen. Internally, actors are just named collections of behaviors and observable attributes.
define_actor :player do
has_behaviors do
shooter recharge_time: 4_000, shot_power: 15, kickback: 0.7
shielded
bomber kickback: 5
die_by_sword
die_by_bullet
die_by_bomb
blasted_by_bomb
jumper
end
end
Behaviors
Behaviors are what bring life to actors. They interact with the actor's internal data, input, audio, etc.
define_behavior :projectile do
requires :director
requires_behaviors :positioned
setup do
actor.has_attributes vel_x: 0,
vel_y: 0
director.when :update do |delta_ms, delta_secs|
actor.x += (actor.vel_x * delta_secs)
actor.y += (actor.vel_y * delta_secs)
end
end
end
Views
Actor views are the mechanism for drawing an actor in Gamebox. When an actor is created, Gamebox will see if there is a matching actor view by name. It will register the view to be drawn by the renderer. The draw callback is called with the rendering target, the x and y offsets based on the viewport, and the z layer to be used for drawing this actor (see the section on parallax layers for more on z layers).
define_actor_view :label_view do
draw do |target, x_off, y_off, z|
target.print actor.text, actor.x, actor.y, z, actor.font_style
end
end
Getting actors on stage
To get an actor on the stage, use the create_actor
method on stage. This can be done directly from a stage or from a behavior that has required stage via requires :stage
.
curtain_up do
@player = create_actor :label, x: 20, y: 30, text: "Hello World!"
end
# or
stage.create_actor ..
Input
Input comes from the InputManager. The stage has direct access via the input_manager
method. Behaviors can request that they get the input_manager
via requires :input_manager
. The preferred way of getting input to your actors is via the actor's input
method. It returns an InputMapper that can be built with a hash of events. Behaviors then subscribe for those events from the actor's input, or ask for it during updates.
actor.input.map_input '+space' => :shoot,
'+w' => :jump,
'+a' => :walk_left
'+s' => :duck
'+d' => :walk_right
actor.input.when :shoot do
# shoot code
end
# or
if actor.input.walk_left?
# walk left
end
Updates
Updates all come from the Director. Again, the stage has direct access via director
and behaviors must requires :director
.
director.when :update do |t_ms, t_sec|
# update something
end
Sound and Music
SoundManager handles the autoloading of sounds from data/sounds
and data/music
. The stage has direct access via sound_manager
. To allow an actor to emit sounds or music, give them the audible
behavior. See Reactions below for usage from actors.
# music
sound_manager.play_music :overworld
# sounds
sound_manager.play_sound :death
Reactions
To ask to react to something we use the react_to
method. It sends your message to all of the actors behaviors, giving them a chance to (you guessed it), react.
actor.react_to :play_sound, :jump
If the actor has an audible behavior listening, he'll play the jump sound. But what if something else wants to know about playing sounds. Maybe the actor triggers an effect by making sound. If the actor had a noise_alert
behavior, it too would be notified of the :play_sound
event.
define_behavior :noise_alert do
setup do
reacts_with :play_sound
end
helpers do
def play_sound(*args)
# react here
end
end
end
The reacts_with
helper takes a list of events that your behavior is interested in, and maps them to helper methods.
TODO
Configuration
Gamebox.configuration
Resources
- load paths
- fonts
- graphics (caching)
- sounds
Stages
- configuring stages
- changing stages
Physics
Links
License
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright © 2012 Shawn Anderson
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
*Note that all licence references and agreements mentioned in the Gamebox README section above
are relevant to that project's source code only.