Outro

Thank you so much for reading and going through Building Games with DragonRuby. I hope you continue to use DragonRuby Game Toolkit and make awesome games. Jump in the Discord, and share what you've made. The community would love to see it and will happily answer any questions you have.

Make Target Practice Your Own

We made Target Practice together, and now it's time for you to make it your own. How can you change or expand upon it? What would take it to the next level? What would make it more fun?

Here are some ideas for what you could do to put your personal stamp on it:

  • Make the targets move
  • Make the targets shoot fireballs that you have to dodge
  • Replace the sprites with your own
  • Make your own music track and drop it in
  • Build out waves of enemies that fly in and attack you
  • Make it so the dragon can fly around a level instead of staying in one screen
  • Add a narrative introduction

Say Thanks

Say thanks in the DragonRuby Discord or on Mastodon. It would mean so much to me to know that you've read the book. The website version of this book has no analytics tracking. My success metric isn't the number of views this book goods. I'll only be able to measure the success of this book through community and connecting. Share what you've made!

If you really want to show your appreciation, buy me a coffee by sending me a small tip. Financial support means the world and helps me continue to make free resources like Building Games with DragonRuby.

Want to know when I finish a new book, game, or creative project? Subscribe to my mailing list. I only send out occasional updates about my projects.

Want More?

Writing a book about making games is challenging to scope properly because games are so complex. We built a pretty simple game that covered a lot of the core concepts of making games, but there are so many directions a sequel could head in.

A second edition of the book could deep dive into making a shmup with enemy waves and bosses. Or we could build an entirely different game, like a platformer or a dungeon crawler. I'd also love to write about more advanced programming topics like encapsulating behavior with classes and sharing behavior with modules. It'd be great to go over adapting our game for iOS and Android too.

But I need to be sure people want a follow-up book where we build a more complex game using DragonRuby Game Toolkit. Let me know if you'd like to see a sequel in Discord.

In the meantime, read through my advanced tutorials online and check out the DragonRuby Zine.

Extra Credit

You'll find bonus chapters after this Outro. They're one-off deep dives into specific topics, from the mindset that's required to make games to how to back up your game's source code. Check them out and see what you can learn!

Gratitude

A big thank you to the DragonRuby community. This book would not have been possible without their support and guidance.

In particular, in alphabetical order, thank you to:

  • Akzidenz for feedback and support
  • Amir for encouraging me to write this book & for making DragonRuby
  • The rest of the DragonRuby core team for making such a great engine
  • Levi for nitpicking
  • Nick Culbertson for the dragon sprite included with DRGTK
  • Owen for corrections
  • Pineapple for feedback
  • Vlevo for thorough and thoughtful edits