Introduction

raylib-rs is a safe, idiomatic Rust binding to raylib 6.0 — the simple and easy-to-use game programming library. It lets you write 2D/3D games, simulations, and visualizations in Rust with the same low-ceremony feel as the original C library, without requiring unsafe in user code.

Who this is for

This book is for Rust developers who want to build interactive graphical applications — games, simulations, visualizations, or tools — using raylib’s clean API. You should be comfortable with basic Rust (ownership, traits, closures), but you do not need prior game development experience. No C/C++ knowledge is required.

What’s in scope

raylib-rs 6.0 covers the full raylib 6.0 surface:

• Window management and drawing — 2D and 3D rendering, shapes, textures, render targets.
• Input — keyboard, mouse, gamepad, touch.
• Text and fonts — system fonts, custom fonts, SDF rendering.
• 3D models — meshes, materials, skeletal animation via ModelAnimations.
• Audio — sounds, music streams, AudioStream for custom mixing.
• raymath — vectors, matrices, quaternions, easing functions. Math methods come via a C shim so there is no extra dependency by default.
• raygui — immediate-mode GUI panels, buttons, sliders, text boxes.
• rlgl — low-level OpenGL abstraction for custom rendering.
• Software renderer — a headless PLATFORM=Memory backend for pixel-probe testing without a GPU or window.

What’s out of scope here

• The C raylib reference — see raylib.com for the upstream API docs.
• The rustdoc API reference — generated from doc comments; published to docs.rs with each crate release.
• The showcase examples — full ports of the raylib C example set, shipping as a GitHub Pages site in WS9.

How to read this book

Getting Started — set up the dependency and open your first window in under 30 lines. Then follow the install guide for your platform (Windows, macOS, Linux, or Web/Wasm).

Core Concepts — the conventions that show up everywhere: the RaylibHandle/RaylibThread ownership model; RAII resources and how they are cleaned up; strings and allocations; safety rules; feature flags and platform support.

Modules — per-area narrative chapters: window and drawing, input, shapes, textures, text, 3D, audio, raymath, collision, raygui, rlgl, the software renderer, callbacks, and error handling.

Ecosystem — opt-in integrations: glam and mint for interop with other math libraries, serde for serialization, and pointers to what comes next.