Crate piston

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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)

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:

In addition, we collaborate across organizations with other projects, mainly:

  • Gfx-rs - everything 3D graphics related
  • RustAudio - everything audio related

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

pub use event_loop;
pub use input;
pub use window;

Modules

Back-end agnostic controller events.
Event identifiers.
Trait for generic events
Back-end agnostic keyboard keys.
Back-end agnostic mouse buttons.

Structs

After render arguments.
Stores graphics API version.
Button arguments.
Close arguments.
Components of a controller axis move event. Not guaranteed consistent across backends.
Components of a controller button event. Not guaranteed consistent across backends.
Components of a controller hat move event (d-Pad).
Stores event loop settings.
An event loop iterator
Idle arguments, such as expected idle time in seconds.
A window without user interface, often used in server event loops.
Structure to store the window position.
Render arguments.
Resize arguments.
Structure to store the window size.
Touch arguments
An error for when a graphics API is unsupported.
Update arguments, such as delta time in seconds.
Settings structure for window behavior.

Enums

Models different kinds of buttons.
Stores button state.
Models all events.
Models dragging and dropping files.
Stores controller hat state.
Models input events.
Represent a keyboard key. Keycodes follows SDL http://wiki.libsdl.org/SDLKeycodeLookup
Models loop events.
Models different kinds of motion.
Represent a mouse button.
Stores the touch state.

Constants

The default maximum frames per second.
The default updates per second.
The default delayed updates reset.

Traits

Trait representing a window with the most features that are still generic.
After rendering and buffers are swapped.
Constructs a window from a WindowSettings object.
Changed button state.
Window is closing.
The position of a controller axis changed.
When window gets or loses cursor.
Methods implemented for changing event loop settings.
When window gets or loses focus.
Implemented by all events.
When background tasks should be performed.
The position of the mouse cursor.
The relative movement of mouse cursor.
The scroll of the mouse wheel.
Trait for OpenGL specific operations on a window.
The press of a button.
The release of a button.
When the next frame should be rendered.
When the window is resized.
When receiving text from user, such as typing a character.
When a touch is started, moved, ended or cancelled.
When the application state should be updated.
Trait representing the minimum requirements for defining a window.

Type Definitions

The type of an OpenGL function address.
The type of time stamp.