gameboard

HTML5 Canvas Gameboard

Seriously simple. Just plain ol' tiles n' units. You'll have to use other modules or build your own parts to run around this. See example.

Get it

Installation

npm install gameboard

Building the example

Running the following will browserify example and open a browser window for you.

npm install && npm run example

Usage

var assets = require('./some-image-loader');
var GameBoard = require('gameboard');
var canvas = document.getElementById('gameCanvas');
 
var gameBoard = new GameBoard({
    canvas: canvas,
    tileSize: 16, // px
    width: 10, // in tiles
    height: 10, // in tiles
    FPS: 45,
    assets: assets,
    grid: true // really slows down performance
});
 
gameBoard.start();

GameBoard([options])

Returns a new instance of GameBoard. You can init with tiles already and units in place already. Must supply canvas.

• canvas - required
• tileSize - optional (default: 16px)
• FPS - optional (default: 30)
• assets - optional (see Assets below)
• grid - (default false)

GameBoard.draw()

Draws the gameBoard without kicking off the render loop.

GameBoard.clear()

Clears the game board.

GameBoard.start()

Kicks off the render() which calls clear() and draw() at rate of GameBoard.FPS. It is limited by requestAnimationFrame.

GameBoard.tileUpdate(tiles)

Best way to update the gameBoard. Tiles get parsed through, units pulled out of the individual tiles, sorted and put into GameBoard.units. Tiles are then rendered in the render() loop. If not in the render() loop, you can call draw() after.e

var newUnit = {
    style: 'woman',
    size: [1,2],
    location: { x: 0, y: 0 }
};
 
var tiles = [
    {
        location: { x: 0, y: 0 },
        style: 'grass_a',
        visible: true,
        units: [newUnit]
    },
    {
        location: { x: 1, y: 0 },
        style: 'grass_a',
        visible: true,
        units: []
    }
];
 
gameBoard.tileUpdate(tiles);

GameBoard.addTile(tile)

Convenience method to directly draw a tile to canvas. If render() loop is active, tile will be added to GameBoard.tiles.

GameBoard.addUnit(unit)

Convenience method to directly draw a unit to canvas. If render() loop is active, unit will be added to GameBoard.units.

Tile

{
    location: [object],
    style: 'string',
    visible: 'boolean',
    units: 'array'
}
 

• location is an object with x and y.
• units is an array of Unit objects (see below)
• visible boolean value. Invisible tiles won't be drawn.
• units is an array of Unit objects.

Unit

{
    style: 'string',
    size: ['xSize', 'ySize'],
    location: [object]
}

• location is an object with x and y.
• size defines how many tiles it occupies. (i.e [1,2] would be a unit 1 tile wide, 2 tiles tall.)
• style is how the GameBoard accesses the sprite.

Assets

Assets can be kind of annoying. You have to load them up before you start trying to draw them.

var woman = new Image();
var grassland = new Image();
woman.src = '../assets/characters/woman.png';
grassland.src = '../assets/terrain/grassland_a.png';
 
var assets = {
    woman: woman,
    grass_a: grassland
};
 
var GameBoard = require('../index');
var canvas = document.getElementById('gameCanvas');
 
var gameBoard = new GameBoard({
    canvas: canvas,
    tiles: {},
    tileSize: 16,
    width: 10,
    height: 10,
    assets: assets // providing the actual Image(s) here.
});

The GameBoard will be accessing your assets by its style attribute.

For example, if unit.style is 'woman', the GameBoard will search through its assets hash for GameBoard.assets['woman'], which will reference your sprite!

Tests

You'll have to run them locally, as testlingci is having issues. No matter!

just run:

npm test

Which will spit out a URL for you to visit in your favourite browser!

http://localhost:51927/__testling?show=true