# README

Path: | README
Last Update: | Sat Dec 04 17:06:23 +0000 2010

# Rubygame README

## What is Rubygame?

Rubygame is a cross-platform game-development library for Ruby, inspired by Pygame. Rubygame strives to empower game developers by providing them with powerful and flexible mid-to-high level tools. Instead of worrying about low-level technical details, you can focus your energy on more interesting things (like making a fun game).

### Relevant Links

1. Rubygame: rubygame.org
2. Ruby: www.ruby-lang.org
3. Pygame: www.pygame.org

## Requirements

You will definitely need these software packages to use Rubygame:

- Ruby >= 1.8
- Ruby-SDL-FFI >= 0.1
- SDL >= 1.2.7 (1.2.14 on MacOS X 10.6)
- (MacOS X only): RSDL ( github.com/knu/rsdl )

It‘s highly recommended that you have these packages as well, or some cool features won‘t be available!

- SDL_gfx >= 2.0.13
- SDL_image >= 1.2.3
- SDL_mixer >= 1.2.7
- SDL_ttf >= 2.0.6

## Install

### Basic Install

The simplest way to install is with RubyGems:

     $ sudo gem install rubygame

Another way is to install directly from the source:

     $ sudo rake install

Or generate and install a gem from the source:

     $ rake gem
     $ sudo gem install pkg/rubygame-*.gem

### Generating documentation

You can generate documentation for Rubygame‘s API by running:

     $ rake rdoc

Documentation will be generated as HTML in the ‘html’ directory. Open ‘html/index.html’ in a web browser to get started.

## Usage

See the documentation (online at docs.rubygame.org, or generated locally with the ‘rake rdoc’ command).

We also recommend that you take a peek at the demo applications in the ‘samples’ directory, especially image_viewer.rb, demo_rubygame.rb, and chimp.rb.

## About the version number

The version number of Rubygame has a strict meaning, to help you decide whether the new version might break your application. The version number has 3 parts: the major number, the minor number, and the patch number. For the example of Rubygame 2.6.0:

        2   .   6   .   0
      MAJOR . MINOR . PATCH

When a new release of Rubygame is made, one of the version numbers will go up, and the numbers that come after it will be reset to 0. Which number will go up depends on how much the Rubygame API changed:

- MAJOR: API has changed, and old apps must be updated. An example of this is when a class has been significantly changed, or a method has renamed/moved to another module and the old name is removed.
- MINOR: API has changed, but old apps will still work. An example of this is when a new feature has been added, or a method has been renamed but the old name is still supported.
- PATCH: API has not changed at all. An example of this is when a bug has been fixed, or existing code has been improved beneath the surface.

## License

Rubygame is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser GPL. See LICENSE for more details.

Some of the sample files are distributed under licenses other than the GNU Lesser GPL. See ‘samples/README’ and ‘samples/GPL’ for more details.

John Croisant (jacius at gmail.com)

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