Hello Group,
I hate to put something into the open before it is completely finished, but time is running out for me.
I'll give a course on ruby for CS students next week. The program I want to have finished at the end of the course is a kind of a multiplayer game. It simulates a simple ants world, and the clients have to implement some kind of AI to steer the ants through their life.
Because I'm not a ruby guru, and I want to teach them "the real ruby way" I ask you to donate a bit of your time to look at the source and make improvement suggestions.
I aim on having a compact but readable implementation, that I will be able to explain.
One thing on which is not too clear to me is how secure my implementation is.
The source and more information can be found at:
http://ruby.brian-schroeder.de/ants/
Everybody who helps and makes it to Freiburg will be invited on a good german beer 
kind regards,
Brian
PS: Maybe we could elaborate the ants theme to a ruby-quiz?
···
--
Brian Schröder
http://ruby.brian-schroeder.de/
Because I'm not a ruby guru, and I want to teach them "the real ruby way" I ask you to donate a bit of your time to look at the source and make improvement suggestions.
[...]
http://ruby.brian-schroeder.de/ants/
I don't have either the time or expertise to fully investigate what you've done here, but I wanted to comment on how similar are your Observable module:
http://ruby.brian-schroeder.de/ants/source/observable-rb.html
and my EventTarget module:
http://phrogz.net/RubyLibs/EventTarget.rb
I changed mine to use symbols rather than strings after I saw yours, since it's more Ruby-ish. (I had already decided yesterday morning to use blocks by default and force &foo for existing method passing.)
I like how yours allows for 'forwarding along' arbitrary parameters, although I feel like I prefer more structure in my life. (Said structure being a discrete Event object with specified methods which is used to shuttle data between the signal and the receiver.) It feels like it provides a bit more de-coupling between the sender and the receiver.
Your names are cleaner; mine are sort of ugly and confusing for the sake of consistency with the DOM 2 Events model.
Oh, and BTW, you have two typos in your Usage example:
> observed.register(:foo) do | obeserved, *args |
I'm guessing that shouldn't be "obeserved"...should it be 'observed' (to match your usage in the string?) or something else (is there a name collision with the parameter passed to the initialize method)?
> puts "Observered object #{observed} signalled foo with arguments #{args.inspect}
I'm guessing 'Observered' should be 'Observer' or 'Observed'.
···
On Sep 28, 2004, at 6:32 PM, Brian Schröder wrote:
--
(-, /\ \/ / /\/
Hello Group,
I hate to put something into the open before it is completely finished, but time is running out for me.
This is a fun project. Was it inspired by this year's ICFP contest?
I've been browsing through your source and it looks very nice to me. Naturally, some docs would help a lot.
As far as the game goes, I would like to see more complicated boards. Even the ICFP simulator had obstacles (rocky terrain) and the programming environment there was far more restricted. You have a full programming language to play with, so problems like pathfinding are much more reasonable. Might as well take advantage of that, I say, opening up the possibility for some clever ant creations.
PS: Maybe we could elaborate the ants theme to a ruby-quiz?
As a died-hard gamer, I'll be very sad if you don't submit this idea, when it's ready. 
James Edward Gray II
···
On Sep 28, 2004, at 7:32 PM, Brian Schröder wrote:
Gavin Kistner wrote:
Because I'm not a ruby guru, and I want to teach them "the real ruby way" I ask you to donate a bit of your time to look at the source and make improvement suggestions.
[...]
http://ruby.brian-schroeder.de/ants/
I don't have either the time or expertise to fully investigate what you've done here, but I wanted to comment on how similar are your Observable module:
http://ruby.brian-schroeder.de/ants/source/observable-rb.html
and my EventTarget module:
http://phrogz.net/RubyLibs/EventTarget.rb
I changed mine to use symbols rather than strings after I saw yours, since it's more Ruby-ish. (I had already decided yesterday morning to use blocks by default and force &foo for existing method passing.)
I like how yours allows for 'forwarding along' arbitrary parameters, although I feel like I prefer more structure in my life. (Said structure being a discrete Event object with specified methods which is used to shuttle data between the signal and the receiver.) It feels like it provides a bit more de-coupling between the sender and the receiver.
Your names are cleaner; mine are sort of ugly and confusing for the sake of consistency with the DOM 2 Events model.
Oh, and BTW, you have two typos in your Usage example:
> observed.register(:foo) do | obeserved, *args |
I'm guessing that shouldn't be "obeserved"...should it be 'observed' (to match your usage in the string?) or something else (is there a name collision with the parameter passed to the initialize method)?
> puts "Observered object #{observed} signalled foo with arguments #{args.inspect}
I'm guessing 'Observered' should be 'Observer' or 'Observed'.
--
(-, /\ \/ / /\/
Thank you for looking into it. As written in the header, most of the observable stuff is taken from a source I don't recall at the moment. One problem with the implementation is, that it is quite difficult to deregister, if you don't save the original proc somewhere.
Thanks also for the corrections. Things like this are always slipping, and I'm not a native english speaker (obviously ;).
Regards,.
Brian
···
On Sep 28, 2004, at 6:32 PM, Brian Schröder wrote:
James Edward Gray II wrote:
Hello Group,
I hate to put something into the open before it is completely finished, but time is running out for me.
This is a fun project. Was it inspired by this year's ICFP contest?
I've been browsing through your source and it looks very nice to me. Naturally, some docs would help a lot.
As far as the game goes, I would like to see more complicated boards. Even the ICFP simulator had obstacles (rocky terrain) and the programming environment there was far more restricted. You have a full programming language to play with, so problems like pathfinding are much more reasonable. Might as well take advantage of that, I say, opening up the possibility for some clever ant creations.
PS: Maybe we could elaborate the ants theme to a ruby-quiz?
As a died-hard gamer, I'll be very sad if you don't submit this idea, when it's ready.
James Edward Gray II
Thanks for looking at the source.
Missing docs shure are a problem. I have to take some more time, the problem is that I'm graduating and I`'m in the middle of my finals. So it now seems like a stupid idea to give the course, because it is much more fun than learning my stuff 
I chose a really simple environment, because I did not want it to get too complicated. People who have been in contact with ruby only four days should understand it. But it is shure that I'd really like to dive deeper into this. Only that there is no time for that.
regards,
Brian
···
On Sep 28, 2004, at 7:32 PM, Brian Schröder wrote: