Downloading and Installing of Moondust development kit

Welcome to the introductory guide on getting started with the Moondust Project! This section covers downloading and installing the Engine and Editor modules.

So what is Moondust? The Moondust Project is a cross-platform game engine and development toolset that allows game creators to create platformers and other types of games.

The Moondust Project is offered in two editions.
 * DevKit - Includes the Editor, Engine (runtime) and other tools.
 * Runtime - Includes only the Moondust Engine.

The three currently supported platforms are Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. However builds for Mac OS X are rare because at this time we lack an OS X machine for debugging and building future builds for that platform.

The Moondust Project is compatible with the SMBX engine and can be used to create levels, worlds and episodes that can be exported for and played entirely with the SMBX engine.

Setting Everything Up
To begin downloading the Moondust Project, click on the appropriate link on the Main Page. An online installer is available which will download and install all necessary components. Note that an alternative download option that consists of ZIP-files is available as well.

Installing Moondust with the Online Installer
Usage of Online Installer is simple and Easy: Note: When you will use Online Installer, special folders such as "worlds" to store playable levels and episodes, "screenshots" where you will find in-game screenshots made by you some time ago, "logs" with debug logs of editor/engine working process and *.ini files with settings of PGE will be stored into:
 * Download online installer
 * Double-click the online installer file
 * Follow the prompts
 * Done
 * "%UserProfile%\.PGE_Project" on Windows
 * "~/.PGE_Project" on Linux
 * "~/Library/Application Support/PGE Project" on Mac OS X folders.

If you have a portable variant of PGE, everything will be stored in the same folder where PGE applications are stored. To make PGE by portable you need to make an INI file (pge_editor.ini, pge_engine.ini or pge_calibrator.ini) with next contents: and put them into PGE application folder.

Manual instalation of PGE
If you have no able to use Online Installer, don't worry, you have to install everything yourself:

Note: some config packs such as "SMBX Integration" are has their configure tools which are will be automatically executed on first usage, and there are can be relaunched from "Configuration" -> "Run configure tool" menu.
 * Download ZIP-file with PGE package (it contains Editor, Engine, PNG2GIFs, PNG2GIFs and Player Calibrator)
 * Download one or multiple config packs from this page (if you already have SMBX engine, you can download tiny "SMBX Integration" configuration pack, but highly recommended to download one of full configuration packages)
 * Unpack PGE package into any folder and enter into it
 * Find the "configs" folder (if not exist - make it), and unpack contents of downloaded config packs into it.
 * Done.

Components of PGE
Applications:


 * Editor - is an IDE which provides making a levels, world maps, NPC.txt configs and configuring of the episodes. Editor also provides shells and tools to maintains graphics, audio-files to fix broken parts.
 * Engine - provides ability to play, test and debug levels and episodes.
 * GIFs2PNG - is a console tool which provides batch conversion of SMBX's masked GIF graphics into transparent true-color PNG images.
 * PNG2GIFs - is a hybrid GUI+Console tool which provides drag&drop or batch conversion of true-color transparency PNG graphics into SMBX specific *.GIF+*m.GIF format.
 * Playable Calibrator - is a special tool which provides ability to configure playable character: metrics of hitbox, GFX offsets and animations.
 * LazyFixTool - is a console tool which automatizing fixing of lazily-made masks in the old episodes (masks made by simple copy-pasting)
 * MusPlayer - a simple music player which provides ability to test any music file before using in the game. Can be used as default music player for most of unsupported file formats.
 * Maintainer - a helpful utility which provides a set of various conversion and repairing tools.

Important Paths

Those folders you will find in the PGE application folder if you have portable version or ~/.PGE_Project or %UserProfile%\.PGE_Project folder if you have been installed PGE via online installer:


 * worlds - folder where you can put level files to play them from "Play level" menu. and subfolders with episodes to play episode from "1 player Game" and "2 player game" menus.
 * screenshots - folder where you can find screenshots made via engine with F12 key.
 * logs - folder which contents a techical logs of PGE applications working which you can use in debug process.
 * configs - a folder where you can put a configuration package to be used with PGE. You can put config packs to any: Application or User directory, PGE supports both folders. Place config packs into User profile directory if you don't wanna use admin rights to write changes into application folder.

Those folders are always in application directory only
 * languages - are contains locales with translations of PGE Applications to world languages
 * themes - folder which contains custom GUI themes of the editor. You can customize view of editor (icons, cursors, images) with making a custom theme. To choice active theme, open in the editor "Tools -> Application properties" menu and find the "View" tab where you will found the Themes combo box with list of available themes.

Next lesson
Next: PGE Editor, Introducing