Python Bindings for Raylib 3.7

New CFFI API static bindings. Automatically generated to be as close as possible to original Raylib. Faster, fewer bugs and easier to maintain than ctypes.

Full documentation

License (updated)

The bindings are now under the Eclipse Public License, so you are free to statically link and use in non-free / proprietary / commercial projects!

Installation

We distribute a statically linked binary Raylib wheel:

pip3 install raylib

Some platforms that should be available: Windows 10 x64, MacOS 10.15 x64, Linux Ubuntu1804 x64.

If yours isn’t available then pip will attempt to build from source, so you will need to have Raylib development libs installed.

If it doesn’t work, build from source

How to use

There are three different ways of using this binding. You only need to pick one method, but you can combine two methods in one program if you want to.

If you are familiar with C coding and the Raylib C library and you want to use an exact copy of the C API

Use raylib.static.

If you prefer a slightly more Pythonistic API and don’t mind it might be slightly slower

Use raylib.pyray.

If you insist on dynamic bindings and don’t care that they are slower and less safe

Use raylib.dynamic.

RLZero

Work in progress:

A simplified API for Raylib for use in education and to enable beginners to create 3d games

Help wanted

converting more examples from C to python
testing and building on more platforms

Performance

For fastest permformance use Pypy rather than standard python.

Every call to C is costly, so it’s slightly faster if you use Python data structures and functions when calculating in your update loop and then only convert them to C data structures when you have to call the C functions for drawing.

Bunnymark

Library	Implementation	Bunnies (60 FPS)	Percentage
Raylib 3.7	C	168100	100%
Raylib Python CFFI 3.7	Pypy 3.7	33800	20%
Raylib Python CFFI 3.7	Python 3.9	7700	4.5%
Raylib Python CFFI 3.7	Python 3.9 Nuitka	8600	5.1%
Raylib Python CFFI 3.7 Dynamic	Python 3.9	6300	3.7%

Packaging your app

You can create a standalone binary using the Nuitka compiler. For example, here is how to package Bunnymark:

pip3 install nuitka
cd examples/textures
python3 -m nuitka --onefile --linux-onefile-icon resources/wabbit_alpha.png textures_bunnymark.py