giant freakin documentation and reorganization pass, it also uses cmake because all the building was getting too complicated for shell scripts

README.md

@@ -1,3 +1,30 @@
-# seagull-game
+# Seagull Game
 
-Seagull game built on AWS, designed to learn cloud stuff.
+A long time ago, the first versions of Seagull Game were a prototype, just enough of a workload
+to serve as an example while on my AWS Solutions Architect apprenticeship. But with the economic
+crash of 2025 came a loss of my job and a lot of excess free time, so I'm making this into a
+real deal game that you can play, in an attempt to preserve my rapidly dwindling sanity.
+
+## Build
+### Prerequisites
+* Python (>= 3.11 oughta do it)
+* TCL/Tk (for `tkinter` Python module, used by PyInstaller splash screen)
+* A working Rust toolchain, incl. `cargo`, to build [Rant]
+* rsync (or rclone in Windows)
+* On Linux, `tar` and `zstd` are used to cache intermediate build steps into archives. `zip` is also used to generate `.pak` files.
+
+### Linux
+Simply run `./build-desktop.sh`, followed by `./build-pak.sh` to build seagull.pak.
+
+### Windows
+A script is in progess to automate this, but is not yet fully ready. Here's the broad strokes routine:
+
+* Install [Python from python.org][cpython-win]. Non standard variants such as ActivePython are not supported.
+* Install [rclone] and [Rust][rust-downloads]. For Rust, scroll down to the bottom of the first table: you probably want `x86_64-pc-windows-msvc`, as an MSI file.
+* Create a folder called "build" wherever you checked out this repository, and open a PowerShell terminal there.
+* `python -m venv pyvenv`, then `Scripts\activate.ps1`
+
+[Rant]: https://github.com/rant-lang/rant
+[cpython-win]: https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/
+[rclone]: https://rclone.org/downloads/
+[rust-downloads]: https://forge.rust-lang.org/infra/other-installation-methods.html