BrighterScript Game Engine
An object oriented game engine for the Roku, written in BrighterScript, and (someday) available via ROPM.
This project is designed to be used with VScode.
This was originally forked from Roku-gameEngine by Austin Sojka, and converted into BrighterScript. This work owes a lot to this original project!
Introduction
The purpose of this project is to make it easy to develop games for the Roku in an object oriented fashion. Similar to how you would with an engine such as Phaser, HaxeFlixel, Gamemaker or Unity (minus any visual software that is).
Cloning and Running Examples
The BrighterScript Game Engine public repository is on Github
Clone the project:
git clone https://github.com/markwpearce/brighterscript-game-engine.git
+ On this pageBrighterScript Game Engine
An object-oriented game engine and 2D/3D drawing library for Roku, written in BrighterScript.
Build a full game with entities, rooms, collisions, input, and UI - or just pull in the renderer to draw sprites, shapes, billboards, and wireframe/solid 3D models on top of your own Roku app. Same engine, use as much or as little of it as you need.
Why BrighterScript Game Engine?
- Object-oriented, like the engines you already know.
GameEntity, Room, and lifecycle hooks (onCreate, onUpdate, onCollision, onDrawBegin/onDrawEnd, ...) give you the same shape as Phaser, HaxeFlixel, GameMaker, or Unity - minus the visual editor. - A real 2D/3D renderer, not just sprite blitting. Draw images, sprites, animations, shapes, text, and billboards, or render actual 3D models (loaded from
.stl) with wireframe, solid, and shaded draw modes - all built on Roku's roCompositor/Draw2D, so it runs on real hardware. - Built-in collisions, input, UI, and debug tooling. Circle/rectangle colliders, a retained-mode UI widget tree, and debug overlays (FPS, colliders, memory, GC stats) come standard, so you're not rebuilding the basics for every project.
- Use only what you need. The
Renderer/Canvas layer works standalone if you just want a capable drawing library for an existing Roku app, without adopting the full game loop. - Develop without a physical Roku. This engine supports running under the BrightScript Simulator, Marcelo Lv Cabral's desktop BrightScript simulator, so you can iterate on your game without deploying to hardware every time.
A quick taste
sub main()
+ game = new BGE.Game(1280, 720)
+ game.fitCanvasToScreen()
+ game.loadBitmap("player", "pkg:/sprites/player.png")
+
+ room = new MainRoom(game)
+ game.defineRoom(room)
+ game.changeRoom(room.name)
+
+ game.play()
+end sub
+
class MainRoom extends BGE.Room
+
+ sub new(game as BGE.Game)
+ super(game)
+ m.name = "MainRoom"
+ end sub
+
+ override sub onCreate(args as roAssociativeArray)
+ m.game.addEntity(new Player(m.game))
+ end sub
+
+end class
+
class Player extends BGE.GameEntity
+
+ sub new(game as BGE.Game)
+ super(game)
+ m.name = "Player"
+ end sub
+
+ override sub onCreate(args as roAssociativeArray)
+ m.position = m.game.canvas.renderer.getCanvasCenter()
+ bitmap = m.game.getBitmap("player")
+ region = CreateObject("roRegion", bitmap, 0, 0, bitmap.GetWidth(), bitmap.GetHeight())
+ m.addImage("sprite", region)
+ m.addCircleCollider("body", bitmap.GetWidth() / 2)
+ end sub
+
+ override sub onInput(input as BGE.GameInput)
+ m.velocity.x = input.x * 10
+ m.velocity.y = input.y * 10
+ end sub
+
+ override sub onCollision(myCollider as BGE.Collider, otherCollider as BGE.Collider, otherEntity as BGE.GameEntity)
+ m.game.postGameEvent("player_hit", {by: otherEntity})
+ end sub
+
+end class
+
This exact code lives in examples/quickstart as a runnable app. See the Documentation for the full API, and the examples below for complete, runnable projects.
Examples
The examples/ directory has full Roku channels you can build and run:
Example What it shows quickstartThe minimal MainRoom/Player example from above, as a runnable app asteroidsA complete 2D game - player movement, bullets, collisions, particle-style explosions, sound pongClassic 2D Pong, playable in both 2D and 3D camera modes snakeGrid-based movement and growing collision shapes, in 2D and 3D 3dLoading and rendering .stl 3D models with the pseudo-3D renderer pixelsA tour of drawables - polygons, rectangles, sprites, and more, one room per shape canvasUsing the engine's canvas/renderer as a standalone drawing surface hybridMixing this engine's Draw2D-based rendering with a SceneGraph app rendererTestA manual test harness used while developing the renderer itself
Scaffold a new example (manifest, icons/splash, package.json, a minimal MainRoom) with:
npm run create-example -- <name> ["Display Title"]
+
Cloning and Running Examples
The BrighterScript Game Engine public repository is on Github
Clone the project:
git clone https://github.com/markwpearce/brighterscript-game-engine.git
This project includes various example Roku apps in the examples directory. To run them, you will need a Roku and have it set up properly for doing development. See: https://developer.roku.com/en-ca/docs/developer-program/getting-started/developer-setup.md.
To run the examples:
Install dependencies:
cd brighterscript-game-engine
npm install
You will need to set up each project in the examples directories. You can do this by using this script:
npm run prepare-examples
@@ -10,4 +59,4 @@
ROKU_HOST=<local IP address of the target roku>
Then simply run one of the Debug configurations from the Debug tab.
Installation
NOTE - Not available yet from ropm!
Use ropm:
ropm install brighterscript-game-engine
Suggestion - use a shorter prefix (we use bge in the documentation):
ropm install bge@npm:brighterscript-game-engine
-
Documentation
Documentation can be found here
Documentation
Documentation can be found here
Acknowledgements
This project was originally forked from Roku-gameEngine by Austin Sojka, and converted into BrighterScript. This work owes a lot to this original project!
Thanks also to:
- RokuCommunity for BrighterScript, bslint, roku-deploy, and the rest of the tooling that makes this project possible.
- Marcelo Lv Cabral for his work on the Roku/BrightScript community and tooling, including the BrightScript Simulator this engine supports developing against.