So you want to make a kick-ass game, right? You want said game to work on Windows, Mac, and Linux, right!? Well, dear reader, you have come to the right place!
The first step to game development is exciting: picking your tools, and learning them well. By choosing this tutorial, you have chosen Rust as your language, Piston as your game engine, and those are some mighty fine choices! Rust is easily installed in minutes with a one-liner on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and this tutorial will show you that Piston is quick and easy to set up. Let's get started.
Here are the things you'll need to follow this tutorial:
- A working internet connection
- A working installation of
git
Rust has a fabulous introductory book that you can read online, and you can find the section on installing Rust here.
Piston is going to require a few more steps to set up than Rust did, but it's hard to compete with one-liners. We'll need to:
- Install the SDL2 and FreeType development libraries
- Create a basic Piston project
Sounds easy, right? Great! It is.
Clone this repository. Put it wherever you want, and make sure it's easy to get back to.
git clone https://github.com/tedsta/getting-started-with-piston.git
That's all. From now on, $TUTORIAL_ROOT refers to cloned repository's location.
Unfortunately, Windows is the toughest platform to develop on. The Windows version of Rust comes bundled with a minimal MinGW inside. Because there are so many versions of MinGW (tdm vs sjlj, w32 vs w64), and because the compiler used to link the development libraries must match the compiler used to link your final application, producing the correct *.a and *.dll files is trickier. The stock versions of MinGW won't cut it, you'll have to go to the MinGW sourceforge page and find the correct version for your system.
Luckily for you crazy kids, C has a stable ABI, so you can simply plug in the binaries I have produced!
Copy the *.a files in the $TUTORIAL_ROOT/windows_clibs/$CPU_ARCH folder to $RUST_ROOT\bin\rustlib\$CPU_ARCH-pc-windows-gnu\lib, which is most likely one of the following:
C:\Rust\bin\rustlib\x86_64-pc-windows-gnu\lib
C:\Rust\bin\rustlib\i686-pc-windows-gnu\lib
Copy the *.dll files in $TUTORIAL_ROOT/windows_clibs/$CPU_ARCH to $TUTORIAL_ROOT/sample_project.
Install the SDL2 and FreeType libraries from your distro's package manager.
On Ubuntu, do this:
sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev libfreetype6-dev
If you can't get the libraries from your package manager, you can build them from source by following the guide below.
Follow the guide to install SDL2 and FreeType from source below.
If you are running Windows and/or already installed SDL2 and FreeType using one of the methods above, skip this section.
Download these somewhere you'll be comfortable working with them:
curl https://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL2-2.0.3.tar.gz > SDL2-2.0.3.tar.gz
curl http://gnu.mirrors.pair.com/savannah/savannah//freetype/freetype-2.5.5.tar.gz > freetype-2.5.5.tar.gz
Next, extract the files:
tar -xzvf SDL2-2.0.3.tar.gz; rm SDL2-2.0.3.tar.gz
tar -xzvf freetype-2.5.5.tar.gz; rm freetype-2.5.5.tar.gz
Build and install SDL2 and FreeType (you'll have to enter your password when it gets to the sudo make install step for each):
cd SDL2-2.0.3; ./configure; make; sudo make install; cd ..
cd freetype-2.5.5; ./configure; make; sudo make install; cd ..
Annnd you're done!
The hardest stuff is over, and we're finally going to build some code and watch it run.
cd to the $TUTORIAL_ROOT/sample_project directory in command prompt if you are running Windows or terminal if you are running Linux or Mac OSX.
Build the sample project using Cargo, Rust's package manager:
cargo build
Run the sample project:
cargo run
You should get a screen that looks like this:
Congratulations! You're all set up with Rust and Piston. Hopefully there will be more time to create more tutorials, but for now you'll have to continue your journey elsewhere:
- Check out the source code:
$TUTORIAL_ROOT/sample_project/src/main.rs - Read the Rust book
- Check out the Piston examples