patoncrispy

patoncrispy

Hands-on Rust: Adequate docs for bracket_lib

I’m new to Rust and am using this book to learn more as well as to feed my interest in game dev. I’ve just finished the flappy dragon example and wanted to go on and learn how to make modifications, but haven’t had much luck finding adequate documentation to get started.

I know the docs.rs link bracket_lib - Rust (docs.rs), but that doesn’t show me how to use the libraries features. There is also the Roguelike Tutorial ( Introduction - Roguelike Tutorial - In Rust (bracketproductions.com)), but that doesn’t show me how to use sprites, for example.

The best I could find is some of the existing examples, and the repo associated with the book, but by that stage it’s all figured out for me which kinda spoils things a bit.

Just wondering if anybody knows any documentation or simple examples of using bracket-lib without any ‘spoilers’ for the book? A ‘Getting Started’ guide with simple examples would be great!

Marked As Solved

herbert

herbert

Author of Hands-on Rust

Hi!

There’s a short tutorial showing how to go from Flappy Dragon to the bonus version on the book’s website: From Flappy Dragon to Flappy Bonus · Hands-On Rust

I agree that some extra documentation would be a good idea. For now, if you clone the Github repo (GitHub - amethyst/bracket-lib: The Roguelike Toolkit (RLTK), implemented for Rust.) and cd into bracket-terminal, you can type cargo run --example and get a list of the examples (run by adding the example name, e.g. cargo run --example dwarfmap). The source code for all of these is in the examples directory. I’ve tried to annotate the examples to explain what’s going on.

I’ll try and get a better set of documentation posted at some point soon (it’s hard to give an exact timeframe). Some parts of the library are very mature/stable (the simple/sparse consoles, and probably the “fancy” console). Documenting those should be pretty straightforward. The sprite system is pretty new, so documentation for it will have to wait it to stabilize.

If you want to go far beyond the examples in Hands-on Rust, I recommend taking a look at the Amethyst and Bevy engines. Bracket-lib is designed as a teaching tool—so it sacrifices performance in the name of teach-ability in a few cases. Both Bevy and Amethyst use the same ECS approach as the book, and (especially Bevy) are developing a great body of examples and tutorials. I also know of at least one reader who implemented all of the book’s examples using Macroquad instead of bracket-lib, retaining the Legion and ECS elements. I’ve not used Macroquad enough to recommend or not-recommend it.

Also Liked

patoncrispy

patoncrispy

Wow that was quick! Thanks for the pointers! That first article is a help already and I’ll go through the examples you mentioned - thanks!

For the Chapter 3 Wrap Up section, I feel like I wasn’t armed with enough information to be able to get started on that stuff. Animation, for example, feels worlds away from just moving an icon around. I think a greater explanation of tilesets and how they work would be really useful! I’ve spent the past hour going through the code for the book and it all makes much more sense now. I only wish I didn’t have to go to the answers to be able to get here.

I’m really enjoying to book though and cracking on through it. Thanks again for the quick and thorough response!

herbert

herbert

Author of Hands-on Rust

Just a quick note, I’ve started pulling some documentation together. It’ll be a while before it’s complete (quite a large amount of ground to cover). The initial documentation covers the examples I pointed you towards. The in-progress documentation is gradually appearing at What is Bracket-lib - Bracket-Lib Usage Guide

Where Next?

Popular Pragmatic Bookshelf topics Top

brianokken
Many tasks_proj/tests directories exist in chapters 2, 3, 5 that have tests that use the custom markers smoke and get, which are not decl...
New
rmurray10127
Title: Intuitive Python: docker run… denied error (page 2) Attempted to run the docker command in both CLI and Powershell PS C:\Users\r...
New
jeremyhuiskamp
Title: Web Development with Clojure, Third Edition, vB17.0 (p9) The create table guestbook syntax suggested doesn’t seem to be accepted ...
New
leba0495
Hello! Thanks for the great book. I was attempting the Trie (chap 17) exercises and for number 4 the solution provided for the autocorre...
New
patoncrispy
I’m new to Rust and am using this book to learn more as well as to feed my interest in game dev. I’ve just finished the flappy dragon exa...
New
brunogirin
When running tox for the first time, I got the following error: ERROR: InterpreterNotFound: python3.10 I realised that I was running ...
New
adamwoolhether
Is there any place where we can discuss the solutions to some of the exercises? I can figure most of them out, but am having trouble with...
New
jonmac
The allprojects block listed on page 245 produces the following error when syncing gradle: “org.gradle.api.GradleScriptException: A prob...
New
Keton
When running the program in chapter 8, “Implementing Combat”, the printout Health before attack was never printed so I assumed something ...
New
New

Other popular topics Top

Devtalk
Hello Devtalk World! Please let us know a little about who you are and where you’re from :nerd_face:
New
Devtalk
Reading something? Working on something? Planning something? Changing jobs even!? If you’re up for sharing, please let us know what you’...
1050 20964 393
New
wolf4earth
@AstonJ prompted me to open this topic after I mentioned in the lockdown thread how I started to do a lot more for my fitness. https://f...
New
siddhant3030
I’m thinking of buying a monitor that I can rotate to use as a vertical monitor? Also, I want to know if someone is using it for program...
New
Exadra37
I am asking for any distro that only has the bare-bones to be able to get a shell in the server and then just install the packages as we ...
New
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Jamis Buck @jamis This month, we have the pleasure of spotlighting author Jamis Buck, who has written Mazes for Prog...
New
AstonJ
This is a very quick guide, you just need to: Download LM Studio: https://lmstudio.ai/ Click on search Type DeepSeek, then select the o...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
A concise guide to MySQL 9 database administration, covering fundamental concepts, techniques, and best practices. Neil Smyth MySQL...
New
mindriot
Ok, well here are some thoughts and opinions on some of the ergonomic keyboards I have, I guess like mini review of each that I use enoug...
New

Sub Categories: