News

• January 19th 2010
• Release bugfixes on MinuetoSamples.
• January 13th 2009
• Retired MinuetoTools.
• February 19th 2008
• Released update to Minueto Core library. Find it in the downloads section. See the changelog here.
• Update contains:
• Refined MinuetoPanel
• Updated Interfaces
• getPixel() and setPixel() methods
• save() to MinuetoWindow
• Swing launch and MinuetoPanel samples
• January 15th 2007
• Released update to Minueto Tools library. Find it in the downloads section. See the changelog here.
• June 15th 2006
• Project has been quiet for a couple of months, no major updates. Well, that is about to change. In September, I'll be starting my PhD in Computer Science. That means years of improvement for Minueto. And let's start with this update.
• Minueto has been split into two components, Minueto Core and Minueto Tools. Minueto Core contains all the basic classes of Minueto (MinuetoWindow, MinuetoImage, etc). Minueto Tools contains the more complicated features and the stuff under development (MinuetoGL, MinuetoSound, Xith 3d support, etc).
• First official release. It's about time I have the 1.0.0 release. But don't let that number fool you, its not a stable release. Too many things were changed from the last release. I also broke compatibility in a couple of place, so you should check out the changelog.

MinuetoAbout

Minueto is a multi-platform 2D Graphic API which is easy to learn and use. Minueto also addresses other game programming concerns such as Input from Keyboard/Mouse and Sound playback.

So why build another Game SDK? Because most Game SDK require game-programming knowledge (such as double-buffering or image blitting) to be used effectively. However, Minueto sacrifices some flexibility and extensibility to achieve a simple interface that requires very little GP knowledge.

But Minueto is built in Java. Isn't Java to slow for games? Java has received some bad press when it comes to performance. However, Java has many features (such as direct video memory access) that make it a surprisingly efficient game development platform. Several games has been successfully ported to Java (such as Quake 2) and some games built entirely in Java are hitting the store shelves (such as Law and Order, Dead on the Money ).

So what can I do with Minueto? Minueto allows you to develop 2D games (such as strategy games, platformers, cards games). With Minueto, you can focus on the game logic and not struggle with your blitting engine. Minueto does not solve all programming concerns, but it will make that first game programming project a lot easier.

Download

The current version of Minueto is 1.1.

• Minueto_1.1b.zip : The Minueto software development kit (examples, source, doc) with the compiled runtime for JDK 1.4.2 and JDK 5.0.

If you want to learn about recent changes in Minueto, check out the changelog.

You can find previous versions of Minueto here.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

Documentation

Users new to Minueto might want to check out the howto page, which contains all the information you will need to get started with Minueto. Experienced users will want to skip immediately to the API pages. Confused users might want to check out the FAQ page, since it contains answers to the most commonly asked questions.

• Howto
• API
• FAQ

Contact

Minueto is a project of the McGill Software Engineering Lab. Questions related to Minueto should be directed to Minueto Development Team.