The Game Closure DevKit
HTML5 JavaScript game development kit. Run in your browser; build to iOS and Android.
Installation
OS X
DevKit requires that you install few dependencies first:
Add this to your .bashrc or /.zshrc
// X.X = Version No. of your OS.
export CXXFLAGS="-mmacosx-version-min=X.X"
export LDFLAGS="-mmacosx-version-min=X.X"
We recommend using brew to install these if you do not have them already.
Optional Dependencies
Building games for iOS or Android requires installing the corresponding SDKs:
- Xcode - required for building games for iOS
- Android SDK - required for building games for Android
- Android NDK - required for building games for Android
- Ant - required for building games for Android
NOTE: please ensure the apache build tools and ant are available in your path so DevKit can find them when trying to build!
Getting Started
Now, install devkit. You may run into some weird errors if you don't own your
global node_modules
folder.
npm install -g devkit
Linux
Follow the instructions on the project wiki
Windows
Follow the instructions on the project wiki
Creating your first game
You need a shortname
for your game. The shortname
should start with a
letter and contain only letters and numbers. For this example, we'll use the
shortname
of mygame
.
- Run
devkit init mygame
to create the mygame folder and install the dependencies. - Run
devkit serve
to start the simulator - Navigate to
http://localhost:9200
and select your game. Press the simulate button on the top right. You should now see your game running in the web simulator! - Open
mygame/src/Application.js
and start coding!
Building on Device
First, ensure you have the proper pre-requisites installed and on your path for the target device. See above for more details.
DevKit can create builds by specifying a build type (debug or release) and a build target (default options: native-android, native-ios, browser-desktop, browser-mobile). Debug builds include all the logs, do not strictly verify everything, and allow debugging on device via the native inspector. Release builds strip logs and try to verify as much as possible.
All your builds will be available in your /build/ folder.
Android
Building for native-android will create an apk directly.
devkit debug native-android
devkit release native-android
Pro-Tip: You can add the --install flag to automatically install the apk on the connected device, or the --open flag to install and open it.
iOS
Building for native-ios will create an xcode project and open it with xcode. Attach your device and click build.
devkit debug native-ios
devkit release native-ios
Debugging on Device
As of DevKit2, the Native Inspector is no longer packaged with DevKit itself. To debug on device, you need to clone and run the NativeInspector(https://github.com/gameclosure/nativeinspector).
git clone git@github.com:gameclosure/nativeinspector
cd nativeinspector
node NativeInspector.js
Ensure your device is plugged in, then point your browser to localhost:9220 (or whatever the NativeInspector console suggests). Now, when you run a debug build on a connected device you will be able to use the in browser debugger just like when running the simulator.
Migrating a DevKit1 Game to DevKit2
Please check docs.gameclosure.com for the latest migration instructions from DevKit1 to DevKit2. If your existing DevKit1 game has no additional dependencies, you can install DevKit2 by navigating to the top of the game directory and running the following command:
devkit install
This will install the default dependencies and add your game to the DevKit2 simulator. If your app requires additional modules, please see the section about migrating addons and follow the online app migration instructions.
Updating the DevKit
DevKit consists of two parts: the command-line interface (the CLI, devkit
) and
the API running in your game.
To update the API in your game, run devkit upgrade
from inside your game's
directory.
Game Modules
All dependencies (modules) for your game live in the modules/
folder of your
game. Initially, DevKit games have only one dependency, devkit-core
. You can
install additional modules to enable functionality in your game such as
analytics or accelerator support.
To install a module:
- Open a terminal and navigate to your game's directory
- devkit install devkit module's git repository URL
NOTE: be sure you have an updated version of your module that supports DevKit2 (an easy check is that DevKit2 modules require a package.json file). Migrating DevKit1 modules to support DevKit2 is fairly simple - get the instructions at docs.gameclosure.com to contribute.
Inspecting your apps from the command line
The devkit command can be used to query information about your apps. The
commands apps
and modules
describe the apps and their modules, respectively,
that devkit knows about on your system. Both commands take an optional
flag --json
(or -j
) for logging the result to stdout in JSON
format.
Example commands:
devkit apps
: logs a list of all registered apps and basic information about each onedevkit apps -s
: logs a short list of all registered apps with just their titles, paths, and idsdevkit apps --json
: logs a long list of apps and all details about them in JSON formatdevkit modules
: shows the version of each module in the current app from the manifest as well as the current version of the module (if it differs)devkit modules --save-current
: updates an app's dependencies in the app manifest to reflect the current git version for each module on the file systemdevkit modules devkit-core --save-current
: same as above, but only for the devkit-core module