Quick point release here to fix a missing header file for Windows (thanks @UalaceCafe). We also updated our CI (switching to GitHub Actions) to test a release build and install on macOS, Linux, and Windows, which will help us catch issues like this in the future.

🎨This release introduces the Canvas class. Similar to a bitmap, you can paint on it with shapes and images. Each time you draw, the pixels of the underlying canvas texture are changed directly — there are no Ruby objects being created like with other Ruby 2D drawing classes. This will be especially useful if you need to draw many things, but don't really care about holding on to their references (although you can certainly create them if you like). We don't have formal documentation written up just yet, but check out the examples in test/canvas*.rb and try them out. This feature was largely implemented by @nogginly — thanks and great work!

There are also a few other updates with this release:

• 🎵 Adds ability to loop sounds and stop sounds playing (#260) — Thanks @mariovisic!
• ⚙️ Running rake will build the gem and link to user-installed dependency libraries. Use rake release to bundle dependencies with the gem for release. (#247)
• 📦 Updates all dependencies to their latest versions (SDL in particular had some big changes)

Enjoy! 💎

💎 Adds support for MinGW UCRT. RubyInstaller 3.1 introduced a new C-runtime called UCRT, which replaces MSVCRT to bring better compatibility to C standards and libraries compiled with Microsoft Visual Studio. This Ruby 2D version is now compatible with both MSYS2 environments, MINGW64 (RubyInstaller 3.0.3 and earlier) and UCRT (RubyInstaller 3.1.0 and later).

• 🔤 Limits the amount of fonts that are cached (#225) — by @mariovisic
• 💨 Improves tileset rendering performance by another ~50% (#231) — by @mariovisic
• 🪆 Adds support for nested sprite blocks to sequence animations (#233) — by @nogginly
• ⚙️ Restores native build pipeline, prep work for WebAssembly (#121)

🐛 Small fix for Apple Silicon / M1 Macs (arm64). Resolves the Symbol not found '_ModPlug_GetSettings' error.

• ⚡️ Improves texture rendering by 75% 😲 (#213) — Nice work @mariovisic!
• 🔊 Volume control added to Sound (#170) — Thanks @tlrasor!
• 🔤 Adds font styles, like bold and italics (#214) — Impressive @mariovisic!
• 🎨 Moves .r/.g/.b/.a shortcuts to .color (#206) — Thanks @collindonnell!
• 🌀 Adds flipping and rotation to tilesets (#211) — Thanks @mariovisic!
• 💻 Improvements for BSD — Thanks @wmoxam and @compufox!
• 🛠 Lots of refactoring and fixes, thanks (again) to @mariovisic!

See all changes.

• 🔷 Adds support for tilesets (#201 by @mariovisic) — see usage
• ✍️ Add ability to draw directly to the window without having to create objects (#142) — see usage
• 🧑‍💻 Introduces new syntax patterns (#197) — see examples in the PR
• 👾 Adds entities (#199) — see usage
• 🎵 Check the .length of audio files (#198 by @mariovisic)
• 🍎 Updates dependencies to support Macs with Apple silicon

See all changes.

• 🔡 Adds support for UTF-8 text rendering
• ⚙️ Incorporates Simple 2D into the native extension, so it's no longer a dependency

See all changes.

• ⚡️ Huge performance improvements using OpenGL 3.3+, by way of batch rendering
• 🖼 Fixes an issue with SDL 2.0.10 and macOS 10.15 (Catalina) where the viewport doesn't fill the entire window (for real this time)

See all changes.

Fixes macOS Catalina issue where OpenGL viewport does not fill the window.