LesserPanda

This project is deprecated in favor of Voltar, yet I keep the latest version as a private repo due to lots of in-house specific code for our studio.

A module based HTML5 game engine designed to be flexible and powerful.

Features

LesserPanda has a lot of features, and the list is still growing:

• Super fast Canvas and WebGL rendering powered by PIXI.js.
• Idle and fixed game loop with customizable FPS.
• Fast and powerful physics solution.
• Super fast AABB collision detection solution.
• ECS(Entity Component System) like systems for Timer, Gfx, Physics and Anime.
• High level Entity class.
• Automatically choose the best resolution based on configs.
• Tag is supported by systems.
• Mobile friendly.
• Rotate prompt for mobile devices with just a few configs.
• ES6 based scripting environment.
• CSS style can be imported by using standard ES6 module system.
• Live-reload browsers after any changes are saved.

Samples

Samples are moved to its own repo here. Currently the samples are located inside src/game/samples folder, and each is just a simple Game focusing on one or more particular feature.

Note: Samples have not been converted to latest v1.x yet.

Document

• Getting Start Guide at Wiki page.
• API document

Devlog posts what happened to LesserPanda, read them at wiki, it will be updated on each Wednesday.

Brief introduction of modules

• anime provides both common tween animation and Blender like action.
• audio provides sound playback functions, the basic usage is included in the game/main.
• gfx contains whole PIXI.js sources. Filters and mesh is disabled by default, you can enable them by uncomment related lines in engine/pixi/index.js.
• polyfill contains some ES6 polyfills (Object.assign, rAF and Math.sign).
• loader brings resource loading functionality which is used by PIXI.js and you probably don't need to use it directly.
• storage provides session and persistent data storage. session and persistent from this module is quite useful but you can also use low level storage.
• analytics provides some helper functions to work with Google Analytics.
• Camera 2D camera that can follow targets, zoom, rotate and shake.
• core is the core of lesser-panda, which provides the base functionalities such as "loop" and "resize".
• device tells what device the game is currently running.
• EventEmitter is a fast EventEmitter implementation.
• input provides keyboard events and key-maps.
• loader provides assets loading functon addAsset(path, key, settings)
• physics provides AABB/SAT based collision detection and response.
• resize provides some resize helper functions.
• rnd is a random number generator.
• Game is the main hub for your game.
• timer provides timers with callbacks. Use game.timer.later or game.timer.interval to create instances.
• utils provides utility functions and constants for array, color, math, object.
• Vector is the 2D vector class, with tons of useful methods
• Behavior interface for behaviors of Entity
• System interface for all the sub-systems of Game

Progress

There's a Trello board, from which you will see what's coming next. Github issue and milestone maybe better for progress tracking~

ChangeLog

1.4

• New SATSolver
• New Polygon collision shape
• Add onRotationChange signal to Entity and let components subscribe to rotation changes on attach

1.3.2

• Remove System prefix from all the system classes
• Rename Timer to Clock and SystemTimer to Timer
• Remove engine/gfx/core/math module
• Switch to ES6 module
• Fix AABBSolver separating issue
• Fix angles of collision response directions

1.3.1

• Fix Collider.prototype.last updating and solves a poolable related issue at the same time.
• AnimatedSprite now accept more texture list formats.
• Fixed poolable utility.
• Rename CutoutAnimatedSprite to COASprite.
• New CutoutAnimatedSprite that support scon formatted animation from Spriter.
• Deprecated core.speed in favor of Game.prototype.timeScale.

1.3

• Breaking change: components need to be added by addComponent, this.gfx = Node() will no longer work.
• Do not share scale between components of Entity since gfx scales a lot but colliders won't
• Behaviors attached to Entity will now be save as a property. (Health will become bhvHealth)
• Entity.prototype.behaviors is now a list of behaviors

1.2.1

• Fix Component.rotation not work issue.

1.2

• Remove OVERLAP collision state, now boxes will never overlap if they intend to push against others
• Complete circle vs box solution
• Better collide API (now pass in a direction(Object) parameter)
• Better entity component design, you can now use addComponent instead while the old way still works

1.1

• Update behaviors for new Entity API
• Cache arrays for physics updating
• Add "canHitMap" to Collider to toggle map collision
• More JSDoc comments and better API document

1.0.2

This version contains some breaking change, but I won't bump it to v1.1 since all the changes are applied to the built-in gfx module. It does not affect any public APIs.

• Merge DisplayObject and Container into one and rename it as Node.
• Remove fromImage and fromFrame functions from Gfx elements, loader should be used instead.
• Add support to set Sprite textures using keys. (sprite.texture = 'my_image.png')

1.0.1

• New input system support key-maps bindings, on top of keyboard.
• Basic CollisionMap implementation supports AABB vs rect tile collision.
• Tons of small issue fixes.
• More and better source code comments.
• Local node modules supported (you can provide a package.json file and install whatever packages)

1.0.0

• Completely re-design.
• Scene -> Game.
• Actor -> Entity.
• Huge refactor gfx and physics modules.

0.4.2

• Give BackgroundMap ability to repeat.
• Add width, height, widthInTile and heightInTile properties to BackgroundMap.
• Add getTile and setTile method to BackgroundMap.
• Optimize BackgroundMap rendering, by drawing the visible part only.
• Force code running in strict mode.
• [CLI] Use webpack-dev-server instead of browser-sync for live-reloading, performs a little bit slower but will display error in browser console.
• Add isStatic field to physics.Body to identify bodies don't move and response to the collisions, which also improves the performance of CollisionMap.
• Improve the design of behavior system.
• Remove listeners when stop a Tween to prevent issues caused by object pooling.

0.4.1-1

• Fix container issue while loading a Tiled map.

0.4.1

• Optimize Tiled map converter by caching results.
• Improve Tiled map converter, which is now called tiledToMap and convert to latest level format.
• Add level module that can load a level from data.
• Add Scene.getActorByName method.
• Tilemap huge rework, now has a way much cleaner API design.
• Fix tilemap retina display.
• Add second parameter to core.setScene to be able to create new instance for the next scene.
• Improve scale mode support for mobile devices, especially for iOS.
• Add support of spawning actors using registered type name.
• Add Actor.register function to register custom(subclass) Actor classes with a key.
• Moved actor sub-system code into actor module, so scenes won't be able to spawn actors until you import the actor module.
• Improved Body setup.
• Deprecated Body.anchor since it's not supported by SAT solver.
• Completely support tile collider shapes defined from Tiled editor, tilemap based workflow is hugely improved.
• Fixes collision map so that maps with holes are not properly supported.
• Add Scene.createLayer method to simplify layer creating.
• Position, layer and settings parameters of Scene.spawnActor are not optional.
• Add vertical and horizontal settings to WrapAroundScreen behavior.
• Device patch is removed since resizing now works without hack.
• Canvas resizing is fixed and improved, and useless never resize mode is deprecated.
• Fixed Camera to be able to work without any targets.
• Add poolable module to utils.
• Improve the FireBullet behavior, now it has ammo support built-in.
• Behavior no longer inherits from EventEmitter.
• Actor spawn/remove behavior changed, now it's possible to maunally create Actor instance and add to any scene instead of calling spawnActor. Object pool support is included.
• Change Actor.prepare to Actor.ready.
• Fix some Actor component create methods.
• Add rotate-around-point behavior
• Add steering behavior
• Add face-the-mouse behavior
• Actor component factory methods now accept settings of all built-in properties.
• Add getTexture function to engine.loader to be able to get texture from string.
• Add more component factory methods to Actor.
• Fix inline documents.
• Add start function to core module as a easy replacement of startWithScene.
• canvasquery module is removed.
• Re-design Actor system and make it more powerful yet easier to work with.
• Re-design Behavior system.

0.4.0

• Add a prepare method to Actor which will be called at the end of addTo.
• Finish rectangle shaped tile collision support.
• Add simple Tilemap support for both built-in format or Tiled JSON map(some custom properties are required)
• Add Timer.now to represent time passed since game started.
• Add top and bottom properties to Camera object.
• Add width and height properties to physics.Body, which map to shape.width and shape.height.
• Add high level Actor, SpriteActor, AnimatedActor and PrimitiveActor classes.
• Add Behavior base class and some simple behaviors.
• Emit pause and resume events from core.
• Add resolution config, and renderer will pick the most suited resolution base on your configs.
• Add Blender/Flash like keyframe based animation.
• Add SAT based collision solver.
• Add SpatialHash based broad phase solution for collision heavy games.
• Change canvas style during resizing for some resize modes.
• Use bitwise shift to optimise SpatialHash based collision detection, change Body.collisionAgainst to a 32bit integer number while broadPhase is SpatialHash.
• Add a new device-patch module to solve device specific issues.
• Add rotate prompt for mobile devices.
• Save renderer resolution as engine.resolution.
• [Changes] PIXI.extras.Animation is now renamed as PIXI.extras.AnimatedSprite.
• [Changes] Huge improve of Animation system(formerly called Timeline), now the tweening of nested properties is supported.
• [Changes] Deprecate dom resize mode.
• [Changes] Deprecate Texture.fromAsset method, use loader.resources instead.
• [Changes] Pass delta time to update methods in both milliseconds and seconds.
• [Changes] Upgrade PIXI to master/3.0.11
• [Changes] Default asset key does not contain baseURL any more.

0.3.4

• Upgrade PIXI to master/3.0.10
• [Changes] Accept an object as third parameter of loader.addAsset function

0.3.3

• Add animation support to boolean and object (instantly changes value at the end of duration, ignore its easing setting).
• Add animation support to string text (from empty to full content).

0.3.2

• Add tag support to Object, Timeline and Timer sub-systems, now it is possible to pause/resume any tagged components. For example you can easily pause the timelines tagged object and keep the ui when game is paused.
• Emit boot and booted events when engine is started.
• Upgrade Kefir and add a emitter function to create self emittable streams for convenience.
• Create session and persistent data manager for easier data saving without touching low-level storage and localStorage.
• Add "skipFrame" setting to constantly skip render frames, which may be used to increase performance but may also sacrifice the accuracy of input.

0.3.1

• Upgrade PIXI to (dev/9d7a393)
• Upgrade resource-loader
• Rename base container of Scene to stage instead of container
• Fixed update support. FPS now can be lock to a constant value
• Improved PIXI.extras.Animation updating logic
• Improved Array element removing process
• Create utils module with useful functions and constants
• Better pre-defined sub-system updating order, now collision works pretty well with Timelined bodies
• New component system. The "Object", "Physics", "Timeline" and "Renderer" are just predefined sub-systems.
• Timer is also updated at fixed steps now, but act as a engine-level system instead of Scene
• Fix camera update error when it's not added to any containers

0.3.0-rc1

• Completely module based structure

0.2.1

• Add camera shake support.
• Let Scene emit input events just like what PIXI does.

0.2.0

• Add support for module imports/exports, so you do not need to expose everything to global namespaces (like game).
• Remove Class system due to performance and capabilities.

0.1.0

• Update renderer to PIXI.js latest stable version (v3.0.7).

License

LesserPanda is released under the MIT License, the same as Panda.js engine.

Special Thanks

@ekelokorpi for creating the awesome panda.js-engine @Pixel-boy for the lovely bat(bat.png in media folder)