# Raconteur Development Template

A scaffold for [Raconteur] projects.

## Installation

You'll need [Node.js] installed. You can find an installation package for your OS at their [download page](https://nodejs.org/download/). On Linux, it's very likely that your distribution packages node.js.

You'll also need [Gulp]. Gulp is installed via npm, node's own package manager:

    npm install --global gulp

You don't have to install gulp globally, but on most OSes and setups this will put the executable `gulp` file somewhere in your system path so you can easily run it anywhere.

Once this is in place, you can download this repository as a zip or tar.gz file, unpack it wherever you like, and use it as a template to start building your game. To get started, `cd` to the directory you unpacked the scaffold in and do `npm install`. This will install Raconteur itself and all of its dependencies as separate libraries, locally inside your project directory.

## Pieces

Raconteur is designed to be used with a toolchain made of several powerful web development tools.

- [Node.js]
- [npm]
- [Gulp]
- [Browserify]
- [CoffeeScript]
- [Less]
- Numerous Gulp-related and Node packages; see the package.json file

## File Structure

Inside the scaffold, you will find:

```
.
|-- game
|   `-- main.coffee
|-- html
|   `-- index.html
|-- img
|-- less
|   |-- main.less
|   `-- mobile.less
|-- Gulpfile.js
`-- package.json
```

- `game/main.coffee`: The main entry point for your game. Contains a skeleton of a Raconteur story.
- `html/index.html`: The html page for your story.
- `img/`: This directory holds all of your game's image assets. Anything with the .png or .jpeg extensions, in this folder (including subfolders), will be copied over to `build/img/` or `dist/img/` when you build your game, so that the relative path for all of your images will be `img/image.png` and so on.
- `less/`: Holds your Less files. `less/main.less` is the entry point for Less; all other files have to be imported by this file. `less/mobile.less` has mobile-specific definitions, but you're free to reorganise these files as you like.
- `Gupfile.js`: The Gulpfile is the configuration file for the build system. Ideally, you won't have to edit this unless you want to change your folder organisation or build setup.
- `package.json`: This barebones package.json file only holds a list of dependencies to install, so that `npm install` will install dependencies automagically.

## Usage

This scaffold comes prepped for usage with Gulp as a build system, Less for CSS preprocessing, Browserify for bundling JavaScript, and CoffeeScript as a JS transpiler.

Running `gulp` will build your game in the `build/` directory. `gulp serve` will build and then start up a local server with live reload, so you can point your browser. `gulp dist` will make a distribution-ready copy of your game in `dist/`, with minified JavaScript and CSS. `gulp zip` will make a distribution-ready copy in `dist/` and then make a `dist.zip` file that is ready to be uploaded to [Itch.io] or sent by email.

[Raconteur]: http://github.com/sequitur/raconteur/
[Node.js]: http://nodejs.org/
[npm]: http://npmjs.com/
[Gulp]: http://gulpjs.com/
[Browserify]: http://browserify.org/
[CoffeeScript]: http://coffeescript.org/
[Less]: http://lesscss.org/
[Itch.io]: http://itch.io/