Author Topic: I just want to check RRPGE out - what to do?  (Read 3564 times)

Jubatian

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I just want to check RRPGE out - what to do?
« on: April 23, 2014, 01:44:13 PM »
This little tutorial is for those who just want to try RRPGE or some game or application developed for it.

Download an appropriate RRPGE binary

Navigate to the RRPGE main site (http://www.rrpge.org), and scroll down to Binary downloads. There you will see some "RRPGE binary package for ..." entries. If you use any version of Windows, you need the "RRPGE binary package for Windows, 32bit" (I won't link it here since the exact archive changes frequently as the project develops). It will run happily on a 64 bit Windows as well, so no problem. If you use some version of Linux, use the appropriate Linux binary package (it will likely work on most distributions). Download the package.

Install the package

Good news: no matter what kind of system you have (Windows or Linux), you don't need installation. Just unpack the downloaded package somewhere accessible. To run the emulator, you only need the binaries (rrpge.exe in Windows, rrpge in Linux), and in Windows, the SDL.dll file (if it is left next to rrpge.exe, it will work all right). The other binary in the package is the assembler which you will only need if you want to develop applications or games.

Try it out

The emulator won't start by itself: it needs an RRPGE application as parameter. In Windows in a different Explorer window navigate in the examples directory, pick for example the rotozoom.rpa file which is an RRPGE application, and drag & drop it onto rrpge.exe. The emulator will start it, you will see the RRPGE logo zooming in and out in it's window. You can exit from it by simply closing the window. In Linux, you may use the command line to do the same.

Advanced: Assign .rpa files to the emulator (Windows)

In Windows if you attempt to "start" (double-click) an .rpa file (such as the rotozoom.rpa mentioned above), Windows will offer you to assign it to some application. Just find the rrpge.exe file, and assign to that. Now the RRPGE applications will be opened by the emulator when double-clicked.

Advanced: Compile from source (Linux)

If you use Linux, you may use the GitHub pages to check-out the source code of the "RRPGE Minimal library & host" (this is the emulator) and optionally the source code of the assembler. They can be compiled simply by make (no Automake or anything) on either 32 or 64 bit systems.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2014, 01:47:17 PM by Jubatian »