About

Idea of this project was to bring the power and simplicity of raylib to easy beginner friendly language like Lua in a very straight forward manner. It is loose binding to Raylib, some functions will not be included and some are added. The idea of pointing "main.lua" file and access functions "init", "process" and "draw" are borrowed from Löve game engine.

Need for boilerplate code is minimal and in true Lua fashion (in better and worse) you don't need to worry about strict type rules since all Raylib types are lua tables or object id's. Also what Lua cannot handle, the engine is simple enough to be fairly easily extended with new functionality or by using Lua C-libraries.

ReiLua is not planned to be a one-to-one binding to raylib. If you want more direct bindings, there are other projects like https://github.com/TSnake41/raylib-lua.

Reilua means fair in finnish.

Status

ReiLua is WIP and some planned raylib functionality is still missing but it already has over 400 functions and should include all functions to make most 2d and 3d games. Current Raylib version 4.0.0.

Included submodules.

• Raygui
• Raymath

List of some MISSING features that are planned to be included. For specific function, check API.

• Core
  • VR stereo config functions for VR simulator
• Audio
  • Wave
  • AudioStream management functions

Usage

Application needs 'main.lua' or 'main' file as entry point. ReiLua executable will first look it from same directory. Alternatively, path to the folder where "main.lua" is located can be given as argument. There are three global Lua functions that the engine will call, 'init', 'process' and 'draw'.

Example of basic "main.lua" file that will show basic windows with text.

local textColor = BLACK
local textPos = { 192, 200 }

function init()
	RL_SetWindowTitle( "First window" )
end

function process( delta )
	if RL_IsKeyPressed( KEY_ENTER ) then
		textColor = BLUE
		textPos = { 230, 230 }
	end

	if RL_IsKeyPressed( KEY_SPACE ) then
		textColor = BLACK
		textPos = { 192, 200 }
	end
end

function draw()
	RL_ClearBackground( RAYWHITE )
    RL_DrawText( 0, "Congrats! You created your first window!", textPos, 20, 2, textColor )
end

Application folder structure should be...

GameFolder
 \ReiLua.exe
 \main.lua

Application should now start successfully from executable. All functionality can be found in "API".

Building

I think the simplest way would be to statically link Raylib and Lua to the same executable. Specially on Linux this would simplify distribution of games since different distros tend to use different versions of librarys. Of course if you plan to only experiment with it, this isn't so important. Current Raylib version 4.0.0.

https://github.com/raysan5/raylib

https://github.com/lua/lua

Linux

Compile Raylib and lua by following their instructions. They will compile to libraylib.a and liblua.a by default.

You need build essential and cmake. If you compiled Raylib you should already have these.

sudo apt install build-essential
sudo apt install cmake

If compiling statically, move libraylib.a and liblua.a to "ReiLua/lib" folder. From "ReiLua" folder...

cd build
cmake ..
make

Run example.

./ReiLua ../examples/snake/

If you now see extremely low res snake racing off the window then you are successfull. Congratulations! You can reset the game by pressing enter.

Windows

• Download "w64devkit" from https://github.com/skeeto/w64devkit and "CMake" from https://cmake.org/download/. Install CMake with path environment variables set.
• Download Raylib source.
• Run "w64devkit.exe" and navigate( ls == dir ) to "raylib-master/src" folder and run...

mingw32-make

• You should now have "libraylib.a" file in that folder.
• Copy that to "ReiLua/lib" folder.
• I haven't got Lua to compile on Windows so we will download it's binarys from http://luabinaries.sourceforge.net/download.html. Take the one with "Windows x64 DLL and Includes (MingW-w64 6 Built)".
• Copy "liblua54.a" to "ReiLua/lib" folder.
• Change it's name to "liblua.a" or change the part in "CMakeLists.txt" where it links to "/lib/liblua.a" to "/lib/liblua54.a".
• Navigate to "ReiLua/build" folder on "w64devkit" and run...

cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" ..

# Cmake uses NMake Makefiles by default so we will set the Generator to MinGW with -G

mingw32-make.exe

• You should now have "ReiLua.exe".
• From Lua folder, copy "lua54.dll" to same folder with "ReiLua.exe". Don't change the name of it!

Run example.

./ReiLua.exe ../examples/snake/

If you now see extremely low res snake racing off the window then you are successfull. Congratulations! You can reset the game by pressing enter.

MacOS

Not tested, but I guess it should work similarly to Linux.

Raspberry Pi

Works best when Raylib is compiled using PLATFORM=DRM. See Raylib build instructions for Raspberry Pi. Compile ReiLua with.

cmake .. -DDRM=ON

Web

Compile Raylib for web by following it's instructions. https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/wiki/Working-for-Web-(HTML5)#1-install-emscripten-toolchain

Lua can be compiled by making few changes to it's makefile.

MYCFLAGS= $(LOCAL) -std=c99 -DLUA_USE_LINUX -DLUA_USE_READLINE
# to
MYCFLAGS= $(LOCAL) -std=c99

MYLIBS= -ldl -lreadline
# to
MYLIBS= -ldl

CC= gcc
# to
CC= emcc

AR= ar rc
# to
AR= emar

# And a little bit more down.
	$(AR) $@ $?
# to
	$(AR) rcs $@ $?

• If your enviromental variables for "emsdk" are correct, you should be able to compile with make.
• You should now have "libraylib.a" and "liblua.a" librarys.
• Put them into "ReiLua/lib/web/".
• Navigate into "ReiLua/build/".

Emscripten builds the resources like lua files and images to "ReiLua.data" file so we will create folder called "resources" that should include all that. "resources" should also be included in all resource paths. "main.lua" should be located in the root of that folder. So we should now have.

ReiLua
 \build
 |\resources
 ||\main.lua

We can now build the game. You can use the command it top of the "CMakeLists.txt" to use emsdk toolchain with cmake. Remember to replace <YOUR PATH HERE> with correct path.

cmake .. -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=<YOUR PATH HERE>/emsdk/upstream/emscripten/cmake/Modules/Platform/Emscripten.cmake -DPLATFORM=Web
make

You should now have "ReiLua.html", "ReiLua.js", "ReiLua.wasm" and "ReiLua.data". You can test the game by creating localhost with Python.

python -m http.server 8080

You should now be able to access the webpage from browser.

localhost:8080/ReiLua.html