feathers 0.0.4

A lightweight game engine, that keeps your game simple by only using feathers!

Feathers

A lightweight game engine, that only uses feathers.

Why Feathers?

The idea of feathers is to give you full control over your app. By allowing you to create the components you want, for the feathers you design. All you need to know, is a feather!

Quick Start

lib/main.dart

import 'package:feathers/feathers.dart';
import 'dart:ui'

void main() async {
  FeatherEngine engine = new FeatherEngine();
  engine.initialize(new MyGame());
}

class MyGame extends Feather {
  @override
  void init() {
    this.addFeather('usersprite', new User());
    super.init();
  }
}

class User extends Feather {
  @override
  void init() {
    this.setQuill<SpriteQuill>(new SpriteQuill())
      ..setSize(50.0, 150.0)
      ..setPosition(25.0, 50.0)
      ..initWithColor(0xFFFF0000);
    super.init();
  }
}

The Feather Loop

Each feather, and all associated components follow a main way of looping. Primarily through the input, update, and render methods.

init: Initializes the feather/component.

destroy: Disposes of the feather/component, and all internal properties.

load: Loads any data neccessary for the feather/component.

unload: Unloads any data, to make room for loading new data.

input: Handles input events as neccessary for the feather/component.

update: Updates our feather/component.

render: Draws our feather/component to the screen.

Custom Components & Quills

Creating custom components is simple. Create a new file to hold your components, perhaps storing them in a custom_components directory. Add your class extending the Component class, then implement the methods appropriatly (found above in the Feather Loops section. It is up to you to determine how you want your component to handle everything! See example below:

class CustomComponent extends Component {
  @override
  void init() {
  }

  @override
  void destroy() {
  }

  @override
  void load() {
  }

  @override
  void input(Event event) {
  }

  @override
  void update(Time time) {
  }

  @override
  void render(Context context) {
  }
}

Quills

Create quills is similar to creating components, except you do not need to implement the core loop functionality, since this is already handled for you. The main focus of your custom quill is to add whichever components you wish to have combined into one component set. See example below:

class ColoredSquareQuill extends Quill {
  void initWithColor(Color color) {
    addComponent<PositionComponent>(new PositionComponent())
      ..setPosition(25.0, 50.0);

    addComponent<SizeComponent>(new SizeComponent())
      ..setSize(75.0, 75.0);

    addComponent<ColorComponent>(new ColorComponent())
      ..setColor(color);
  }
}

NOTE: Quill overrides require calling the super method at the end

Creating Consistent Components and Quills

• Components should not contain constructors, to keep things simple. This will help keep your code maintainable. Future versions plan to remove adding access to constructors.
• Quills should init with a unique method, such as initWithColor, rather than using the init override. Again, this helps keep code more maintainable.

Contributing

I hope that one day there will be a community of components and quills to help new users streamline their app development.

More Coming soon...