@storylet-studio/play-helpers

The host-side helpers for a JavaScript game running @storylet-studio/runtime. The runtime deals cards; nothing in it touches a file, a socket or the DOM. Everything that does lives here, so the runtime stays the pure, corpus-pinned thing every port is transliterated from.

Each helper has a counterpart in the Unity, Godot and Unreal ports under the same name, so an integration reads the same in every engine (scripts/check-runtime-api-parity.mjs holds all four to it).

What is in it

• The save boundary - saveState / loadState over the parsed file, serializeState / deserializeState over text. Patterplay's pairing, so a project running both engines saves and loads the same way in each. The .storyletsave string form of a whole run: the shared state plus every flow. Your game decides where the bytes go; this decides what they are.
• The state logger - createStateLogger, snapshotState, diffState. A running account of what the story changed, as it changes, for a debug overlay or a console. createKernelStateLogger is the product-agnostic core if you are mounting your own bags.
• Live Link - createLiveLink, applyLiveBundle. Joins a running game to Storyletter over a loopback WebSocket, so the editor's Board shows the real run, and a save in the editor swaps the new bundle in underneath it without a restart. Attach the engine, not a flow: the link discovers your flows itself and announces them as they open and close. → Live Link
• The examiners - createPropertyInspector, createBundleInspector. A DOM panel showing live state, the run log and what a bundle offers. The web equivalent of the Runtime State window each engine port ships.
• createWorldContainer - a ready-made @world resolver for a game with no state store of its own to bind.

Using it

import { Engine } from "@storylet-studio/runtime";
import { createLiveLink, serializeState } from "@storylet-studio/play-helpers";

const engine = new Engine(bundle, { seed: 7, log: true });
const flow = engine.openFlow("main");

// Debug builds only: inert when no editor is listening, and it never throws
// into your game.
const link = createLiveLink({ build: bundle.content.hash, project: "My Game" });
link.attach(engine);

const saved = serializeState(engine);   // hand the string to your save system

The demo in demo/ wires all of it together against the Hamlet bundle and is the shortest complete example.

→ Full documentation: storylets.dev/play/javascript