Expand description
A modular game engine written in Rust.
This is the core library of the Piston Game engine.
The Piston
core library reexports the core modules.
If you are looking for a convenient window wrapper,
see piston_window
.
For examples, see piston-examples.
For more information and an overview, see Piston’s README in the core repository.
Design
The Piston core is a thin and modular abstraction for user input, window and event loop. This functionality is separated into 3 core modules.
The core modules are intended to be used directly by generic libraries. By depending directly on core modules, it is easier to maintain the ecosystem.
This library is intended to be used in application code. When you write application code, it is common to separate reusable code, which depends on various abstractions, from platform specific code. The reusable code that you write for applications might use the Piston core.
The default programming pattern in Piston is Model-View-Controller:
- A controller handles events and manipulates a model
- A view renders a model on the screen
For more information about this pattern, see Model-View-Controller (Wikipedia).
The most important traits in Piston are the following:
GenericEvent
(allows handling of events for controllers)- Window (allows polling of events)
Link to documentation for core modules
- pistoncore-input (User input and event handling)
- pistoncore-window (Window abstraction)
- pistoncore-event_loop (Event loop)
Points vs Pixels
Since some computer screens have higher resolution than others, it is convenient to use two kinds of coordinate systems:
- A pixel is a single square on the screen
- A point is a unit used by window events and 2D graphics
For example, the mouse cursor position events are measured in points.
It is common to use points for 2D graphics to match window coordinates.
Unintentional blurring, e.g. of rendered text, might be a side effect incorrect sampling.
About Piston as a Game Engine
Piston is a modular game engine with a minimal core abstraction. The core connects input events, window and event loop.
Piston is designed for optimal modularity, making it optional to even use the core modules in many cases. The goal is to have as little abstraction as possible, while making larger libraries as independent as possible. The motivation is to encourage diversity and experimentation with various abstractions, without getting tied up to a fixed set of platforms, abstractions or vendors. You can combine Piston with any other library in Rust’s ecosystem. This design has worked very well so far.
For example (a few libraries, there are many more):
- Image library is standalone from both the core and the 2D graphics library, only connected through the 2D graphics backends.
- Piston’s 2D graphics is optional and can be used without a window backend. The window backend can be used without a 2D graphics backend, and so on.
- For image processing, see Imageproc.
- Dyon is a Rusty dynamically typed scripting language, using a lifetime checker without garbage collection.
For more information and an overview, see Piston’s README in the core repository.
When writing a library, please depend directly on the core module needed. This makes it less likely that the library will break.
When writing an application, it is acceptable to use the Piston
core.
To use it you usually need a window backend:
There are a few other window backends as well.
Plus a 2D graphics backend (optional):
There are a few other graphics backends as well.
You will find examples of how to get started in each 2D graphics backend repository.
About Piston as a Project
The Piston project is a huge collaboration across many projects, mainly focused on maintenance of libraries and research. Since this has been going on since 2014, there is too much out there to summarize here, but roughly the project is organized into two open source organizations:
PistonDevelopers
- everything game engine relatedAdvancedResearch
- everything advanced math related
In addition, we collaborate across organizations with other projects, mainly:
In addition, there are many other projects and organizations.
For more information and an overview, see Piston’s README in the core repository.
Re-exports
Modules
Structs
Enums
Constants
Traits
WindowSettings
object.