shazow / gameblocks.js

Game engine framework for JavaScript, used to make LineRage.

Game Blocks

This codebase is extracted from LineRage, a fast-paced Tron-like arcade-style JavaScript game.

It's not a complete working game out of the box, you'll need to implement a lot of your own logic between the glue. There are more complete frameworks out there but this one has some interesting optimizations that could be reused.

Getting Started

Read the docs/Getting-Started.md document for an annotated overview and explanation of the various game blocks.

Demos

In ascending order of complexity:

• Colorblinker - Silly colorblinking action. (~40 lines with comments, previously known as 'simple')
• Builder - Really basic RPG mechanics: A fixed canvas where you move around and make collideable walls based on a bitmap. (~120 lines with comments)
• Snake - Get longer as you eat noms, die when you try to eat yourself or a wall. (~210 lines with comments)

All the source code for these demos is available in the Examples directory. Some of the examples contain TODOs throughout, bonus points if you implement them.

Organization & Philosophy

Much of the code is written with performance optimization in mind to support a fast-paced game environment. This means there is some repetition and aesthetically unpleasing code.

Each major component is maintained within its own closure that binds to a global Game variable. Generally they're separated into their own JavaScript files.

The goal is to provide common elementary components for building various types of games in JavaScript.

Programming Interface

Classes

• Game.Camera Create a viewport canvas inside container of size widthxheight pixels.

• Game.Time Static object for maintaining a cached value of time.

• Game.Clock

• Game.ClockThrottled Clock that moves no faster than max_timestep ms.

• Game.Timer Timer relative to a given clock.

var clock = new Game.Clock(); var timer = new Game.Timer(clock); timer.start(); // Do stuff... var seconds_elapsed = timer.stop(); ```

• Game.Engine Much of the glue lives here.

• Game.Entity

• Game.Input Manage key bindings in one place, with the ability to globally turn event listening on or off and create one-time bindings.

• Game.Renderer Bind to a camera Camera object and create num_layers Canvas layers inside the camera container.

• Game.StateMachine Define and traverse the flow of the game experience from navigation menus to levels or whatever else.

TODO

Contributions for these are especially welcome. In approximate order of priority:

• Tests
• Sprite-handling code for Entities (or independent?)
• Finish porting collision code for Entities
• More examples
• More documentation and tutorials
• Abstract Renderer to support DOM rendering (does this make sense?)

Contributing

• Bug fixes and improvements: Please open an issue and make a pull request if if you have a fix.
• Examples: If you wrote a game using this project, message me or open an an issue and I'll toss a mention of it in the documentation.
• Tutorials: There's a severe lack of documentation because the codebase was extracted from another proprietary project. Any effort is very appreciated.
• Forking: Please do. :)

License

This project is released under the MIT license unless otherwise stated (such as with third-party libraries in externs).