Game Time Starter Kit (FE - Module 2)

Basic Game Time starter kit.

Initial Setup

One person from your project will sets up the repository. That one person should follow these steps:

Clone this starter kit repository and rename the repository to game-time in one command

git clone git@github.com:turingschool-examples/game-time-starter-kit-FEm1.git game-time

Change into the game-time directory
Remove the default remote (origin)

git remote rm origin

Create a new repository on GitHub named game-time
Add your new repository remote to the game time starter kit - your remote URL and user name will be different in the command below

git remote add origin git@github.com:robbiejaeger/game-time.git

Install the dependencies of the starter kit

npm install

Add, commit, and push up to your repository

git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit using starter kit"
git push origin master

Now add your team member(s) as collaborators to the repository. They can now clone down your game-time repository as normal.
Once each partner clones down the repo, they need to run npm install to install the dependencies on their machine.

Run the Server

To see your code in action, you need to fire up a development server. Use the command:

npm start

Once the server is running, visit in your browser:

http://localhost:8080/webpack-dev-server/ to run your application.
http://localhost:8080/webpack-dev-server/test.html to run your test suite in the browser.

To build the static files:

npm run build

Run Tests in the Terminal

To run all of your tests:

npm test

File Organization

Webpack is a little opinionated about how files are organized. Here is a brief guide on how to organize development and test files.

Development Files

Node and webpack work together to help us organize our files and keep responsibilities separated.

For example, if we have the lib/index.js file and a lib/Block.js file:

lib/index.js

var Block = require('./Block');

var canvas = document.getElementById('game');
var context = canvas.getContext('2d');

var blocks = [];

blocks.push(new Block(50, 50, 10, 10, context));
blocks.push(new Block(100, 50, 10, 10, context));

requestAnimationFrame(function gameLoop() {
  context.clearRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);

  this.blocks.forEach(function(block){
    block.draw()
    block.move()
  })

  requestAnimationFrame(gameLoop);
});

lib/Block.js

function Block(x, y, width, height, context) {
  this.x = x;
  this.y = y;
  this.width = width;
  this.height = height;
  this.context = context;
}

Block.prototype.draw = function () {
  this.context.fillRect(this.x, this.y, this.width, this.height);
};

Block.prototype.move = function () {
  this.y++;
};

module.exports = Block;

All of the Block.js code could live in the index.js file, but that would go against our philosophy of separating responsibility between files.

There are two main things to pay attention to here:

At the top of the index.js file, we require the Block.js file using the line of code var Block = require('./Block'); (we leave out the .js). This brings in the code from the Block.js file so we can use that file's code in the index.js file.
In the Block.js file, the bottom line says module.exports = Block; which says what we want this file to export when we say require in other files, like in index.js.

So now we have two files that can share code between each other, but we have to pay attention to what we export and what we require. If we didn't do this, then when we try to make a new Block in the index.js file, it won't know what Block we're talking about!

Test Files

Near the end of game time, you will have multiple objects for your game that are tested separately with individual test files. The test/index.js file serves as an "entry point" for mocha to load all of the tests you write.

Test file organization is a bit different from development files. If we want to test the Block.js file from above, then this is how we would do it. For each object file (in this case block.js), we want to have a corresponding test file. So in the test directory, we would create a new file called test/Block-test.js. Here is what that file would look like:

test/Block-test.js

var chai = require('chai');
var assert = chai.assert;

var Block = require('../lib/Block');

describe('Block', function() {
  context('with default attributes', function() {
    // Your tests here...  
  });  
});

test/index.js

require('./Block-test')

Two main points to pay attention to:

In the Block-test.js file, we require the Block.js file so that we can construct blocks in our tests.
In the test/index.js file, we require the Block-test.js file so that we can view the test results in the browser (at http://localhost:8080/webpack-dev-server/test.html).