= 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: http://rubygame.org
 2. Ruby: http://www.ruby-lang.org
 3. Pygame: http://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  ( http://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 http://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)