Rust is an exciting programming language combining the power of C with memory safety, fearless concurrency, and productivity boosters. With Rust, you have a shiny new playground where your game ideas can flourish.
Each chapter in this book presents hands-on, practical projects that take you on a journey from “Hello, World” to building a full dungeon crawler game. Start by setting up Rust and getting comfortable with your development environment. Learn the language basics with practical examples as you make your own version of Flappy Bird. Discover what it takes to randomly generate dungeons and populate them with monsters as you build a complete dungeon crawl game. Run game systems concurrently for high-performance and fast game-play, while retaining the ability to debug your program. Unleash your creativity with magical items, tougher monsters, and intricate dungeon design. Add layered graphics and polish your game with style.
What You Need
- A computer running Windows 10, Linux, or Mac OS X.
- A text editor, such as Visual Studio Code.
- A video card and drivers capable of running OpenGL 3.2.
About Herbert Wolverson
Herbert Wolverson has worked as a programmer and an indie game developer since the late 1990s. He’s taught programming and IT skills at a variety of levels, contributes to multiple Open Source projects, and is active in the game development scene.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does this relate to your Roguelike Tutorial?
The Roguelike Tutorial Series has some overlap with Hands-On Rust, but the book is all-new content - with a very different focus. The tutorial is all about making a Roguelike game, and while it teaches a little Rust along the way the emphasis is very clear: make a fun game. Hands-On Rust is all about learning the Rust language, starting with only a little experience in other languages. The book has a behind-the-scenes curriculum, ensuring that you touch the topics you need to learn basic and intermediate Rust. It then makes learning fun, by applying that curriculum to the task of building games - Flappy Dragon and a dungeon crawler.
You’ll learn more about roguelikes from the tutorial series. You’ll learn more about Rust from the book. The two can be complementary.
How much experience do I need?
You don’t need any Rust experience to benefit from Hands-On Rust. It’s a good idea to be familiar with programming. If “variables”, “for loops” and “printing” are new concepts - you probably want to start with a more introductory book. If you have those ideas down, then you are ready to enjoy learning Rust with my book.