You must have Java 8 or higher installed.

Download the latest version of Monkey Shines (1.2.0). It contains executables for both the game and the level editor. Simply double click what you want and have fun.

If the game doesn't seem to start when trying to open a world, make sure the game is launched with the 'data' folder intact and containing all the native libraries for your platform. Monkey Shines as of version 1.1.0 uses Slick2D and by extension lwjgl, which uses native libraries.

If you still have problems, jump down to 'Getting Started: The immediate way'

1. Ensure you have downloaded the release (https://github.com/ErikaRedmark/monkey-shines-java-port/releases) and navigate to the location where the .jar is stored, which for the latest releases should be in a data folder.

2. Open a terminal/command window and navigate to the directory that you downloaded the .jar file to.

3. For the game, run

java -cp "<name of monkey shines.jar>" org.erikaredmark.monkeyshines.MonkeyShines -Djava.library.path=.

replacing the <> contents with whatever the name of the .jar is (depends on release. Do not include the actual '<' '>' symbols).

4. For the level editor, run java -cp "<name of monkey shines.jar>" org.erikaredmark.monkeyshines.editor.LevelEditor. Setting the library path is not required here as the level editor does not use lwjgl.

You can compile the code and create the .jar yourself. You will need to download and set up Gradle to do so

1. Checkout the master branch
2. Navigate to the main folder containing the gradle build script. This should be the "Monkey Shines" folder at the repository root.
3. run gradle shadowJar.
4. This will create in the ms_release directory a data folder containing the natives needed for Monkey Shines, as well as Monkey Shines-all.jar.
5. Perform steps 2 - 5 from 'Getting Started: The immediate way' to run the program. Do not run the Monkey Shines.jar, run the Monkey Shines-all.jar. If you run only shadowJar it should not generate the one without bundled dependencies.

You can technically make release versions of Monkey Shines (.exe wrappers) by using Launch4j on the provided .xml configuration files in the ms_release directory.

1. Contact someone close to you and ask them to follow steps outlined in either "Getting Started: The immediate way" or "Getting Started: The fairly quick way"
2. Get an ice-cream or something and relax for a bit.

[See the relevant wiki page for more information on actual gameplay](Playing the Game)