Get Setup

This is a post in the go_games series.
Other posts in this series:

Intro

This tutorial we will setup your Raylib-go dev environment and create a project which will produce a blank window. Then we continue in this series building on this project until we complete our first Raylib go game.

You can scroll down on awesome-go to the contents and find and click on game development or click this link

You can follow along on this tutorial and at the bottom of this post there are a few useful links including [A Video series to build a Animal Crossing style game] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWp-mCIQgMU&list=PLVotA8ycjnCsy30WQCwVU5RrZkt4lLgY5&index=1)

Install Go & Git

  1. Go to GO.DEV downloads follow the instructions to download and install for your system.
  2. get Git from Git-scm.com downloads
  3. install VSCode with the Go extension - you need to search for the extension from within the vscode application

then create the go/src/ folder from the terminal (windows users can type cmd from search) note the go folder may exist under your user home folder after installing go

mkdir go 
cd go 
mkdir src
cd src
mkdir mygame
cd mygame
echo "" > main.go

NOTE: Linux and macOS users would use cat not echo - and they would use thier terminal app not cmd

using a text editor like notepad or IDE like VSCode

  • edit main.go and add the following (remove “”)
package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
	fmt.Println("Hello, world")
}

We can run this short app using this terminal command

go run hello.go

great it should display “Hello, world” below our command we typed if all is well

you can now run the following to make a module and Build our code

go mod init example.com/mygame
go mod tidy
go build .

running the new exe will produce the same output

and initialize our git repository and make an initial commit

git init
git add .
git commit -m "initial commit"

Install Raylib

head over to raylib-go and follow their instructions.

Windows no cgo instructions:

We will use cgo another time, for now download raylib

  1. go to https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/releases

  2. click on the release title (i.e. RayLib 5.5 takes you to https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/releases/tag/5.5)

  3. scroll down to the bottom of the page and select the zip file for your system

  1. Download the file
  2. open it (windows can look in zip files)
  3. go ito the various folders until you find the raylib.dll file

extract it and copy it to top level (root folder) of your project

Now type the following

go get github.com/gen2brain/raylib-go/raylib

This will add a pkg folder with the required files in their respective folders

now replace the contents of main.go with the following

package main

import rl "github.com/gen2brain/raylib-go/raylib"

func main() {
	rl.InitWindow(800, 450, "raylib [core] example - basic window")
	defer rl.CloseWindow()

	rl.SetTargetFPS(60)

	for !rl.WindowShouldClose() {
		rl.BeginDrawing()

		rl.ClearBackground(rl.RayWhite)
		rl.DrawText("Congrats! You created your first window!", 190, 200, 20, rl.LightGray)

		rl.EndDrawing()
	}
}

We need to fix the mod file and rebuild

go mod tidy
go build .

If you get the same results - congrats

if not check the instructions and requirements on the raylib-go site again. Still stuck try the 1st and 2nd videos from the series below

A Video series to build a Animal Crossing style game

Mostly I start with these 4 sites

  1. go.dev
  2. github for awesome-go or awesome-go.com follow the game-development link
  3. raylib-go
  4. Raylib itself choose your platform