djbailey / gameBase

Base structure for my games, using Heaps framework and Haxe language.

About

Base structure for my games, using Heaps framework (https://heaps.io) and Haxe language (https://haxe.org).

Usage

Fork

Just fork it, feel free to adapt to your own usage (see LICENSE)

Alternative way to "fork"

This method is mostly for my own usage, as GitHub doesn't allow me to fork my own projects.

• Make a new repo on GitHub (WARNING: do not add any license or don't commit anything in it for now)
• Clone it somewhere
• on a command line:
  • git remote add gameBase https://github.com/deepnight/gameBase.git
  • git pull gameBase master
  • git push origin master

Quick overview

The game uses the very simple "engine" described here: https://deepnight.net/tutorials/a-simple-platformer-engine-part-1-basics/ Even if it's simple, it's actually the exact same engine I used for making Dead Cells (https://dead-cells.com).

Everything starts in Boot.hx, in the method main(). From here, I instanciate a Main, which creates a Game.

The game has various elements:

• Entities: the base class for everything that moves in the game (player, enemies, bullets, items etc.). Everything except particles, see below.
• Level: your world, level, room or whatever is your environment. Some games might even have none of these.
• Camera: a basic camera which can optionaly track an Entity (say, the player)
• Fx: a simple particle system
• Lang: a neat way to automatically extract your texts directly from your code to generate PO files compatible with the popular GetText translation ecosystem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettext). To use it, just use calls like: Lang._("Some translatable sentence"); in your code somewhere. You can then run haxe langParser.hxml from the command line to update your POT file (this script will extract all Lang._("something") calls). The "classic" way to do things is to write "dev English" sentences in your code, then use this "dev English" to kind-of translate to "proper English" (which will be used in the release version of your game), or translated to "proper whatever-language" you might want.
• Const: contains a set of constant values I use to tweak my game, like the standard FPS, your starting health points or stuff like that.
• Assets: a single class to access assets like tilesets or sounds. All your assets (art, sound, other data files) that are meant to be loaded/used by the game should be put in the res/ folder. You can access them in your code using the hxd.Res.myAsset API.

A quick guide to installing Haxe

Getting all the necessary files

• Haxe compiler: https://haxe.org/download/list/ (latest stable or RC, unzip the files in a folder somewhere on your harddrive, like c:\haxeTools\haxe)
• NekoVM: https://nekovm.org/download/ (unzip all files in another folder, ie. c:\haxeTools\neko)
• HashLink: https://hashlink.haxe.org/#download (unzip the files in a separate folder, somewhere else, like c:\haxeTools\hl)
• Add Haxe folder (eg. c:\haxeTools\haxe) to the PATH environment variable
• Add Neko folder (eg. c:\haxeTools\neko) to the PATH environment variable
• Add HashLink folder (eg. c:\haxeTools\hl) to the PATH environment variable

Does it work?

Open a command line and type:

• haxe: you should see the Haxe command help
• neko: you should see the Neko help
• hl: you should see the Hashlink help

Installing important haxe libs

• Open a command line

• Run the following commands:

  • haxelib setup (when prompted, point to a /lib folder in your Haxe folder, ie. c:\haxeTools\haxe\lib)
  • haxelib install hldx
  • haxelib install hlsdl
  • haxelib install format
  • haxelib install castle
  • haxelib install heaps
  • haxelib install deepnightLibs
  • haxelib install redistHelper

• Optionaly, you may need the following:

  • For OGMO3 level editor: haxelib install heapsOgmo
  • For Tiled level editor: haxelib install heapsTiled

Does it work?

• Open a command line
• run haxelib list
• you should get a listing of all the libs previously installed.
• well done!