Overview

Carpenter Engine is a C++ Game Engine designed to take advantage of WebAssembly and web browser technology to offer a "build once, run anywhere" solution to C++ game development. Our studio will be using this engine for 2D and 2.5D games to ensure an easy and optimal framework that emphasizes our strengths in programming. However, we will ensure to offer an extensive 3D graphics engine that supports a wide range of platforms in a single build.

Carpenter Engine comes with both the framework to develop games, and a CLI to assist developing the game such as installing compilers and building the game for you. You will also receive a runtime environment to test your game while you develop it.

Getting Started

Building with the game engine requires the following tools before proceeding

• Node.js (Required)
• Python (may be needed if the emsdk installer can not use its own python)

Setting up a Game

To use the the engine in your own project:

npm install --save-dev @mesaguilde/carpenter-engine
npx carp setup # install emscripten for the toolkit, and generates necessary folders

This will install/update emscripten for the user in a recognized directory and create any required folders for developing with the game engine.

you should then create a src folder and add a main.cpp file for your main. Here is an example script to try:

#include <Game.hpp>
#include <UI/UILabel.hpp>
#include <Graphics/Shapes.hpp>

using namespace Engine;

class ExampleScene : public Scene {
  private:
  Graphics::Cube mesh;
  Graphics::Texture texture;
  float time = 0;
  UI::UILabel label;

  public:
  ExampleScene() : Scene("ExampleScene"), texture("Assets/placeholder.png"),
  label("Label", "Hello World") {
    AddChild(&label);
  }

  void Draw() override {
    Scene::Draw();

    Game::getInstance().GetRenderer().UseTexture(texture, GL_TEXTURE0);
    Game::getInstance().GetRenderer().DrawMesh(&mesh, {0, 0, 10}, {1, 1, 1},
      {-35, time, 0});
  }

  void Update(float dt) override {
    time += 2 * dt;
  }
};

Game game{Game::getInstance(new ExampleScene())};

This is examples/HelloWorld.cpp.

If you wish to try more examples, see the examples folder.

Running the Game

When you are ready to test the game, you can build the game and run it with npx carp build -cl. This will compile and link the game engine into a .wasm and .js file.

To test the game from here, you can run npx carp dev to start the testing environment. This will open a web server on http://localhost:3000/runtime

When you are ready to package the whole static web app, you can run npx carp build -p which packages the static page on top of the compiled .wasm file into build/.

Contributing

Although we will try our hardest to catch and work on issues on our own, we will gladly look into any feedback you guys offer, and resolve bugs that you may have discovered on your own. If you wish to contribute to the issues, ensure that you are creating your own fork and we will manage any pull requests you offer If we approve the implementation of the feature. Any request or bug report you offer should be in the Issues section of the repo, and we will take care of it as soon as we can.

Requests

Although we will implement primarily what we need, we are always open to requests and suggestions. we will only ask for the request, and how the game engine will benefit from this. If we agree that a feature is in our scope, we will put it in our schedule to implement it and it will be done as soon as we can.

Reporting a Bug

If you need to report a bug, ensure you have the following:

• Bug Description
• How to replicate
• Hardware and Browser Specs

The amount of hardware you include is not the biggest concern, we are most concerned about the browser you are using. We currently maintain primarily for Chrome/Chromium based browsers only, but we are also looking into supporting Firefox based browsers too.

Building the Engine yourself

to build the game engine on your computer for contributing (assuming you have not cloned the repo yet), we suggest you start with the following process.

git clone https://github.com/MesaGuildeTeam/Carpenter-Engine
cd Carpenter-Engine
npm install
npm start
npm run build

This will install emsdk similar to using a release of the project, and build the game engine into .o files.

If you want to read more about the technical details of the game engine, I recommend to start with docs/overview.md.

Credits

Music for Demonstration: Roberto Selles

Drop Sound Effect: Pixabay

Placeholder Texture: Jummit on OpenGameArt