Getting Started

Create Project

Now that we have a C/C++ compiler installed and Raylib ready to be used, we can finally start our project by creating a folder where the game will live.

Go to the directory where you would like to have your project in the terminal and create a new folder:

mkdir asteroids
cd asteroids

We will first need an entry point to run our game. Generally, we would create a main.c file with a main function that will be called when running the compiled program. But we can call this file whatever we want as long as it contains the main function.

One additional step, that I like to do is place all the code in a sub folder called src to have a bit of structure and not have everything in the root. I will also create a sub folder called bin where the compiled code will be stored.

mkdir src bin

Let us create the entry point. I will create a file called main.c

#include "stdio.h"

int main() {
    printf("Hello World");
    return 0;
}

We can now compile this program and run it by running the following in the terminal Check that you have a compiler available in your machine:

gcc ./src/main.c -o ./bin/Asteroids

If everything went well, you should have an executable file created inside the bin called Asteroids.

Lets run it now.

./bin/Asteroids

This should have printed into the terminal "Hello World"

Printing "Hello World" is fine but we want to see more action and jump already to code the game so let us create our game window using raylib.

#include "raylib.h"

int main() {
    const int screen_width = 800;
    const int screen_height = 450;

    InitWindow(screen_width, screen_height, "raylib [core] example - basic window");

    SetTargetFPS(60);

    while (!WindowShouldClose()) {
        BeginDrawing();
        ClearBackground(RAYWHITE);

        DrawText("Congrats! You created your first window", 190, 200, 20, LIGHTGRAY);
        EndDrawing();
    }

    CloseWindow();

    return 0;
}

There are a couple of things happening here, but I, basically, just copy pasted the most simple example from the Raylib’s examples page. But no worries, I will explain step by step what is happening here:

  1. First we included the raylib.h which contains all the constans and function signatures of raylib. It is not the actual code that runs, but it is a contract informing what are the functions, constants available and how should we use them.
  2. Then we initialized the window passing a width and height. This prepares the window that will be created and also the OpenGL context that will be used to paint the pixels.
  3. We set then the target FPS (Frames Per Second) to 60.
  4. We create the game loop by using a while loop that will only stop executing until the signal WindowShouldClose is triggered. This could happen by just closing the window or maybe the Operating System decides to close the program for some reason.
  5. While running, we start drawing. First we clear the background with a RAYWHITE color, and then we draw some text in the middle of the screen.
  6. Lastly, before returning from the main function, the window has to be closed properly, so any reasources that where allocated can be properly released.

Seems like a lot to diggest but don’t worry, this is all we need to start coding the game finally. Raylib makes it super simple, that way we don’t even have to go deeper to try to understand how the actual pixels are being painted.

Now is time to run our code. But first we need to compile it.

Let us try the same command that we used previously:

gcc ./src/main.c -o ./bin/Asteroids

Something is not working correctly. The compiler is not able to find raylib.h. You should get the following message in your terminal:

main.c:2:10: fatal error: 'raylib.h' file not found
#include "raylib.h"
         ^~~~~~~~~~
1 error generated.

This is easy to fix. We just need a copy of the raylib header file in our project. Create a new file called raylib.h. And copy the contents from the source file.

Let us try again to compile:

gcc ./src/main.c -o ./bin/Asteroids

Oops that didn’t work. Apparently the compiler found the raylib.h file but now is not able to link to the library referenced inside the header file.

We need to tell the compiler where can the raylib library be found. We do this by adding different arguments and flags to the command that we are running.

If you installed raylib correctly, you should be able to run the following command:

On Mac

If you used Homebrew to install raylib, you should be able to run the following:

gcc ./src/main.c $(pkg-config --libs --cflags raylib) -o ./bin/Asteroids

If you have compiled raylib by your own, make sure to copy the libraylib.a (This is the output of the compilation process of raylib) to the root of our project and then run the following:

gcc -framework CoreVideo -framework IOKit -framework Cocoa -framework GLUT -framework OpenGL libraylib.a ./src/main.c -o ./bin/Asteroids

These new arguments tell the compiler what are the dependencies that our program needs to run. Internally the compiler will link to those libraries if it founds them installed in your system.

You should see no output in the terminal. This means that everything went well. Now you are ready to run the executable of the game.

./bin/Asteroids

Now you should see a window popup like this one:

Image of asimple raylib window

There we go. We have now a window where we can paint objects and start building our game.

Finally we are ready to start building our game. We will first create a player ship and move around the screen.

Install Raylib Player Ship
Squared Wave SVG