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:

• node.js v10 or higher
• git

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

Windows platform is supported thanks to WSL. Please follow the official WSL installation guide if you do not have it installed yet, and then our Linux install instructions.

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.

1. Run devkit init mygame to create the mygame folder and install the dependencies.
2. Run devkit serve to start the simulator
3. 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!
4. 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 [email protected]: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 one
• devkit apps -s: logs a short list of all registered apps with just their titles, paths, and ids
• devkit apps --json: logs a long list of apps and all details about them in JSON format
• devkit 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 system
• devkit modules devkit-core --save-current: same as above, but only for the devkit-core module