I'm lately more and more into Ruby on Rails and i have actually started coding a browser RPG. Do you think it's a good idea to code such a game using a framework like Rails ?
I've tried to do this in PHP in the past, but the workload was amazingly big. On the other hand, doing it with Rails is a hell lot faster.
The question is, though, is performance going to be ok ? What are your thoughts on this ? Would you do something like that in RoR ? Would it scale well ? It's important for me to know if it can be done in a good manner.
Use rails to manage users and data and build the game in flash. When HTML5 and javascript catches up I think it might, and that is a maybe for sure, be possible but it's seriously a headache. I think the future will be with node.js and frameworks like rails for managing games but right now its still flash pulling the graphics along.
You want to use the Midnight Coders plugin to connect flash and rails.
Related
For a new web project like kijiji, if I want a faster development(the faster the better), which one should I go with? I know some ruby and javascript, but not an elite and never did a project on either of them. Coding is my hobby, not my job. Any suggestion? Thanks in advance.
Express is more along the lines of Sinatra, not Rails. It's much smaller, simpler and to the point than Rails. I don't think it's a fair comparison.
But what the heck, here are my thoughts while I'm here:
The Node community is fast growing, but it's still nowhere near the size or momentum of the Rails community. Overall you'll probably find more help and more kindred spirits with Rails. Node and Express will require more figuring out things on your own.
In my experience, the Rails/Ruby community have much better tools for testing than Node/Express. Hell, they have the best tools for this out of any community I've seen :)
Express is not well documented at all. The guide on their page is a decent start but it's just that. You will find yourself digging through code, obscure blogs and github repos looking for info.
Data access? It's built right into Rails and a core part of it. Express isn't concerned about your data layer at all (again it's more like Sinatra). You will need to decide on what kind of data access/layer you want to go with and see what kind of support Node has for it.
I really like both Rails and Express. But if the project was of any decent size, I'd probably pick Rails myself.
They are both vastly different so it depends on your goals. I suggest Rails as it's more mature and you'll get better community support if you have any issues. Rails's Active Support Core Extensions will also give you a ton of useful helpers which could save you a lot of time developing a web app.
Otherwise just go for the one that interests you the most.
I have some (I think) really great ideas for an online strategy game similar to Travian. There's some content that I haven't yet figured out and some other challenges that I don't know of yet.
This is quite a big project and perhaps too heavy for one person that isn't a skilled web developer (yet). I'd still like to give it a shot, but I'm having trouble choosing a platform. The world "scales" has been thrown around a lot lately and I've seen Ruby on Rails being bashed because it doesn't scale well, so I've come here to get some answers.
I like Ruby on Rails, both Ruby and Rails. I'm certainly no expert at it but I love working with it. I have also worked with Python + Django before and also with PHP (which I am not fond of.)
Ideally the game would have, let's say, 7000 players per server, presumably a lot of data to be processed per second. Would RoR still be a viable platform?
I'm sorry if this question is vague, I guess I'm looking for a "RoR is fine, go at it!" kind of answer. Anything you might want to add is fine.
Thanks!
So if I were you, I would be looking into non-blocking servers like node.js, just because they are MUCH more suited to keeping many connections open for long periods of time, which is what games need to do, compared to traditional web servers.
That being said
There are 3 main things to worry about when you are scaling a web app; memory, execution speed, and io (hd and network) in that order.
For memory, things are much better then they used to be. Phusion Passenger uses copy on write to fork its workers, so the rails environment will get shared among all the workers on a given slice, which is pretty significant. There have also been huge improvements to the way ruby manages memory compared to "the dark times", if you are using 1.8.7 then you want to be using the patches that make up Ruby Enterprise Edition (the difference is like night and day). 1.9.x was pretty much a total rewrite of the runtime, so if you are using that the memory issues ruby had have already been addressed.
For execution speed, 1.8.7 is typically "fast enough" (at least after tuning garbage collection settings). 1.9.2 is actually around the same speed as python, which puts it on the faster side of interpreted languages. How important this point is completely depends on the nature of your application.
Last point is IO, which isn't really a concern of rails, but more your persistence strategy. Rubyists tend to love new things, so you will find first class support for things like redis and mongodb, with loads of people talking about using them and their wins/gotchas. I would look into mongo if I were you and see if the durability trade-offs are acceptable.
I was in java/.net before going to rails, and at the end of the day you are going to pay more for infrastructure, but the amount will be completely dwarfed by what you save in development time.
build it in Rails, host it on Heroku.com - job done. Almost infinite scaling that you don't have to worry about how it works (it just does) and it hosts a lot of highly trafficked Facebook apps so can more than handle it.
I think Ruby on Rails is a good choice for what you need. Actually, we recently created a platform for an online gaming tournament, where players and their gaming bots were playing a logic game.
We used Ruby on Rails and Sidekiq on the backend, ReactJS and WebSocket on the frontend. And it worked well for a quite massive number of players. Here is the tutorial based on what we learnt while building it: How to Write a Game Engine Using Ruby on Rails
As you said yourself, you already have the answer and you are only looking for encouraging words:). I am not RoR expert myself, but I don't think scalability is still such a great issue on this platform. I would advice you to do an architecture spike (XP terminology). Write a test with 7000 clients and method which would perform similar operations to what you intend to create. For example you might load files, render views or even just wait... The point is to test only the thing you are worried about. Good luck!
This is a bit of an impossible question to answer because in order to know whether rails is suitable for what you want to do we would need to a lot more about what you are trying to do. The best advice I can give in the absence of information is for you to check out the railslab scaling videos in order to work it out for yourself.
I'm about to start building a tumblr clone that handles multiple users (so premade clones like Gelato won't cut it) and I'm not sure which framework I'd like to build this is.
Right now, I'm only intending to build a prototype. Something I can get a dozen friends on to test the concept and grow to maybe a couple hundred users to prove the market, so I'm not worried about long term scale. My biggest concern right now is quick deployment. I'd like to get from zero to signups in as short a time as possible, with as little customization to the framework of choice as possible.
I have experience with PHP, but not Ruby. However, I don't think the learning curve would be too steep so I'm not ruling out rails. I just want the framework that is most appropriate for a system like a multi-user tumblr clone so that I can build it with as little hassle, and as quickly, as possible.
If anyone has experience with a similar project, or with these frameworks and can offer an insightful perspective, I'd be very appreciative.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
Cheers,
~Jordan Feldstein
Definitely Rails. It'd much faster to develop project like this in Rails.
As far as I saw, PHP is lightyears behind from Rails in ORMs. And Rails routing is much better than any PHP framework's as well.
I have been developing in PHP since 2000, and still have a bunch of PHP systems in production (using both CodeIgniter and CakePHP).
I have found Rails to be incredibly more efficient to develop in ... easily 50% more productivity, depending on the use-case. Faster, higher quality. Easy choice for me.
+1 for Rails.
I can't speak about Codeigniter. My general understanding echoes the above statements. Lightweight and no fully object oriented.
I have developed in CakePHP since Jan 2006, after trying to get Rails deployed on my own server and failing badly. Rails was not easy to deploy back then...at least not for me. At the time Cake was the best alternative, and still is in many ways.
Cake is a very competent framework. However, I agree with the statements that it is in many ways far "behind" Rails. Some features are not as well designed, less integrated or simplified in comparison.
A few months ago I spent a couple of day porting one of my Cake apps to Rails2. Just as an exercise. The learning curve was very shallow for someone like me (with a decent grasp of the concepts that Cake and Rails are built on). We recently started porting one of our apps at work to Rails (also from Cake) because we found that support for a lot of things that are important to us are available in Rails or Ruby but not available or as complete in Cake and PHP.
If you are unsure about switching to Ruby you might want to look at Lithium (previously CakePHP v3). It is PHP 5.3 only and still a good way from 1.0 but the community is active and generally it looks like what Cake might have been if it had been started today and not 2005.
CodeIgniter is very lightweight, which is probably to the detriment of this project if you want to code as little as possible.
CakePHP is pretty much an attempt to port Rails to PHP, so choosing between those two frameworks will depend on other factors.
One factor would be whether you want to learn Ruby or not. I have dabbled in it, and feel it is superior to PHP, but more practical concerns keep me from experimenting with it more (have to use PHP at work).
Another concern would be hosting. I use Dreamhost, and the fee is the same for PHP and Rails. However, a friend of mine just got a GoDaddy hosting account, and he actually has to pay a higher monthly fee to have a Passenger-enabled host.
I'm working on a application that requires a feature-rich media view, including images, videos, and smooth sequencing based on capture time. The backend is currently written in Rails.
What's currently the best, most mature option for implementing RIAs with Rails on the backend? I've looked at Flex, Laszlo, and ExtJS. ExtJS is interesting to me because I'm really not a fan of pure Flash UIs, but it seems highly targeted towards business apps, not entertainment applications like this.
Any suggestions or insights from others doing similar efforts will be very much appreciated.
Thanks!
I second zdmytriv for that book Flexible Rails, it's awesome. It's fairly outdated now though but lays out how simple it is to create a solid Project Management application with Flex and Rails. Everything in there has now become "RestfulX".
Check out RestfulX, it's a must. The RestfulX Google Group is very active too and they've made a lot easy.
We built this website in Flex with RestfulX and it was very easy. That application uses the Rails Paperclip gem to do image processing in a Flex admin panel like ScrapBlog (Scrapblog was built in Flex), and we could use some cool layout effects built into Flex 4. RestfulX made that pretty easy, and the gems made it even easier :p. They have generators too like Rails so it's real easy to get up and running with a DataGrid/CMS-like interface in 5 minutes.
I don't know anything about the other things you've mentioned, but I do know that it's pretty fun and easy to integrate Flex with Rails now-a-days.
As a side note, you can do hardcore SEO with Flex and Rails too, thanks to SWFAddress. We're doing that with that site above.
Cheers
I can recommend Flex and also this book Flexible Rails, whole book dedicated Flex with Rail cooperation. List of sample applications from the book here
Flexible Rails http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QysfVDlVL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
If you're serious about considering Ext as an option, you should really search and maybe post in their forums about others using Rails, I know there are quite a few doing so successfully. I just ran across this example that seems like a pretty fully-baked app doing just that, so it's definitely possible.
Without knowing exactly what you're trying to do, I think that saying Ext is "targeted towards business apps" is a fair general statement, in terms of the widgets that come with it out of the box. It's highly geared toward window/form-based Ajax apps. That said, Ext Core is very similar to jQuery and other core frameworks, and everything in Ext is built to be highly extensible (hence, "ext"). In terms of being able to build what you need off of it, it is very powerful and flexible. You can certainly implement a flash viewer easily, and there are existing plugins that will do exactly that.
Sounds like Toby had a bad experience with Ext, but many other people enjoy it and find it very natural to code in. The syntax definitely has a Java/C# flavor to it in some ways (although it's really hard to directly compare any JS framework to a static language), and it has roots in YUI (which is even more verbose). For someone coming from C-ish backgrounds, it will likely feel very comfortable. If you're more used to Python or Ruby or something else, then it might not be as enjoyable, I don't know. Something you'd have to try for yourself.
Take a look at WebOrb from themidnightcoders.com. Among many features, it allows for AMF protocol for serialization of data. It is smoking fast.
IMO, if you want a true RIA experience, you'll need to focus on either Flex or Silverlight. There are pros and cons to each.
I did a GWT project a while back and am working with Ext right now. I have some C# / Swing GUI experience, none in Flash.
I like Ext a lot. It looks great, and I found the programming model close enough to the C#'s and Swings of the world as to be familiar and fairly pleasant. The documentation is not excellent, but definitely good enough. For Java at least, there is a solid remoting mechanism (third party, called DJN... most likely there are others, too). A couple of minor bugs here and there.
The major negative is support. They have a forum but there are a distressingly large number of questions and problems that go unresolved. They have paid support in theory, but were sufficiently unresponsive to basic 'how does your paid support work' type questions that I was not encouraged to buy any. There is only one book that I know of, it looks promising but it is not out yet.
I found GWT impressive and had no real problems, but at the end of of the day I am much happier with Ext.
Have you taken a look at Google Web Toolkit yet? In my opinion it's a great way to build rich and performant web applications. The toolkit is quite mature (Google Wave is build with it) and has a lot of good tools to make development easy.
Here's a previous Stakoverflow post.
I don't know about best, but I did a project using ExtJS and hated every minute of it. Frustratingly verbose code, overly complicated programming model, confusing documentation, and difficult to make it do anything it didn't want to.
That said, it looks very awesome, has incredibly powerful widgets and the client and users loved it.
I haven't helped at all, have I?
I think if you requirements include doing anything with video and audio, you are going to need a Flash solution.
Take a look at netzke -- client-server components with Sencha Ext JS and Ruby on Rails.
Netzke is a framework that allows for a beautiful blend of client- and
server-side code (JavaScript and Ruby, respectively) into ready-to-use
GUI components. It's most useful for creating complex data-rich
backend applications with Ruby on Rails on the back end, and Sencha
Ext JS in the browser.
I am experimenting with Ruby and Rails. I like Ruby, but not Rails. I have Java/PHP background, I have used some frameworks, but never totally liked any of them.
Anybody using Ruby to build web apps, but not any of the frameworks? (rails, merb etc). If yes, can you point me to some resources to learn it?
It might be wise to at least leverage Rack, and maybe Sinatra gets enough out of your way for you to feel comfortable. Sinatra isn't much more than a very small, simple wrapper around the rack handler afaik.
Doing Web apps in Ruby without using a framework is like cooking without heat. I question the sense of trying this.
That said, you could probably hook up Apache to call a Ruby program as a CGI. I suspect it would be dog slow, though.
Edit: Apparently you're not the only one crazy enough to attempt this, though: I found a tutorial on Simple Ruby CGI. The author claims as his rationale that "he has nothing better to do."
Your question looks quite similar to Ruby off the rails, so you probably should read the answers of that one.
I'm using ruby instead of bash and python on my ubuntu server for sysadmin tasks.
I've found Ruby a particularly clean and powerful replacement for the places I'd have previously used bash and python in sysadmin.
I personally found one thing for myself. When I prepare some interview or I am gonna build something from scratch, in most cases I need some basic features included in Rails. That usually happens when you build something not complex, but still non trivial. In 99% of cases I need ActiveRecord, ActiveSupport etc. It is easy to get those things in your Gemfile and play with them. One thing you will always repeat is basic application structure, easy console access with preloaded libs, rakes... I created minimal gem for myself to organise this process though.. :) If you read sources you'll see what I constantly do to start something new. It is not a big deal not to use any framework at all.
https://github.com/einzige/framework