I would be happy to help with anything. I would recommend using GUI for the project, namely TK, as this has been given a whole chapter of its own and commended in one of the leading ruby books, Programming Ruby. What also helps is that the GUI works with Java, C# and Perl (amongst others) if we decide to get multi-language.
To answer Bumsfeld, a lot of the Ruby language is based upon Perl.
Yes, I love Ruby, because it's very easy to understand. The day I started learning it I felt that I could easily be programming fluently in it very soon, and I think that this is very rare in a language.
I know Ruby and I bought a book that helped A LOT. It's called "Programming Ruby" and it is published by The Pragmatic Programmers, a well known programming body, famous for their great books. It explains EVERYTHING you will need to know, as well as around 900 methods in the basic library, and a list of libraries you can add-on to your programs. I strongly recommend it. You can buy it at:
However, this book is based on Ruby 1.8, and if you have an earlier version you should probably buy the 1st edition of this book.
This book is often called "PickAxe" in the Ruby community, because of the picture on the front cover; so if you are doing research, you should probably keep this in a mind as a search term.
Thanks, these sites really helped a lot and answered my questions, but the last one also brought up one little one: in the second example the programmer used
Hey, I'm learning Ruby and I've just about got it sorted. I have just one (or maybe more) question(s): What is marshal.dump and does it allow you to save data to a file outside of the Ruby program? If not, how do I create saved data (ie. character attributes inside a text-based game)? Thanks for answers!
Hey, I use RPG Maker XP and its RGSS. It's basically the same as programming Ruby normally, but you will notice a bar of contents on the left. These contain the individual lines of code for each part of your game. If you want a method or variable that is just for a certain part, put it in here. If you want to add a variable to a certain place but want it to be affect the whole program then on, just start the variable name with a "$" (eg. $var3). This is useful for, say, putting a variable to be activated on the shop command and putting an "if" function after it; so that the first time the character enters a shop, it shows a tutorial on how to use the shop. The RGSS makes it so that there are any number of possible applications that you can create and use in RPG Maker XP.
