For the last year, I’ve been working hard on Hands-on Rust: Effective Learning through 2D Game Development and Play. The first beta release is now live.
Pragmatic Bookshelf releases books like software. Buying the beta gets you an e-book with the first few chapters, and lets you submit errata. You get every subsequent beta - and the finished ebook.
The first beta walks you through installing Rust and associated tools on your computer. Then you learn many of the language basics, before putting them to use to create Flappy Dragon - your first Rust game. Then it’s into roguelike/Dungeon Crawler mode, and you build a walkable map - with graphical tiles. Entity Component Systems (ECS) are introduced, and you install Legion. You then use Legion to add monsters to your map. Finally, you tame state management by creating a turn-based game flow.
Subsequent betas will add heads-up displays, health, items, inventory and more.
Once the beta process is complete - and we’re satisfied that the book is sufficiently awesome - it will be available in print. The publisher has decided to do full color print runs.