README

melonJS 2

A fresh, modern & lightweight HTML5 game engine

melonJS

melonJS 2 is a modern version of the melonJS game engine. It has been rebuilt almost entirely using ES6 class, inheritance and semantic, and is bundled using Rollup to provide modern features such as transpiling and tree-shaking.

Note: migrating an existing project to melonJS 2 (version 10.0 and higher) will definitely break your game (ES6 semantic, no more Jay inheritance, nodeJS event emitter, and no backward compatibility with deprecated legacy APIs), and you might want to read first this small step by step guide on upgrading to melonJS 2. If you are looking at the legacy version (9.x and lower) of melonJS, you can find it here under the legacy branch.

melonJS is open-source, licensed under the MIT License, and actively developed and maintained with the help of a small team of enthusiasts at AltByte in Singapore.

About melonJS

melonJS is a fully featured game engine :

Compatibility

Standalone library (does not rely on anything else, except a HTML5 capable browser)
Compatible with all major browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Edge) and mobile devices

Graphics

2D sprite-based graphic engine
Fast WebGL 1 & 2 renderer for desktop and mobile devices with fallback to Canvas rendering
High DPI resolution & Canvas advanced auto scaling
Sprite with 9-slice scaling option, and animation management
built-in effects such as tinting and masking
Standard spritesheet, single and multiple Packed Textures support
System & Bitmap Text

Sound

Web Audio support with spatial audio or stereo panning based on Howler
fallback to Multi-channel HTML5 audio for legacy browsers

Physic

Polygon (SAT) based collision algorithm for accurate detection and response
Fast Broad-phase collision detection using spatial partitioning
Collision filtering for optimized automatic collision detection

Input

Mouse and Touch device support (with mouse emulation)
Device motion & accelerometer support

Level Editor

Tiled map format version +1.0 integration for easy level design
- Uncompressed Plain, Base64, CSV and JSON encoded XML tilemap loading
- Orthogonal, Isometric and Hexagonal maps (both normal and staggered)
- Multiple layers (multiple background/foreground, collision and Image layers)
- Animated and multiple Tileset support
- Tileset transparency settings
- Layers alpha and tinting settings
- Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon and Polyline objects support
- Tiled Objects
- Flipped & rotated Tiles
- Dynamic Layer and Object/Group ordering
- Dynamic Entity loading
- Shape based Tile collision support

Assets

Asynchronous asset loading
A fully customizable preloader

And Also

A state manager (to easily manage loading, menu, options, in-game state)
Tween Effects, Transition effects
Pooling support for object recycling
Basic Particle System
nodeJS EventEmitter based event system

Tools integration

Tools integration and usage with melonJS is documented in our Wiki.

Using melonJS

Basic Hello World Example

import * as me from "https://esm.run/melonjs";

me.device.onReady(function () {
    // initialize the display canvas once the device/browser is ready
    if (!me.video.init(1218, 562, {parent : "screen", scale : "auto"})) {
        alert("Your browser does not support HTML5 canvas.");
        return;
    }

    // add a gray background to the default Stage
    me.game.world.addChild(new me.ColorLayer("background", "#202020"));

    // add a font text display object
    me.game.world.addChild(new me.Text(609, 281, {
        font: "Arial",
        size: 160,
        fillStyle: "#FFFFFF",
        textBaseline : "middle",
        textAlign : "center",
        text : "Hello World !"
    }));
});

Simple hello world using melonJS 9.x or higher

Documentation :

Online API (offline version under the docs directory)

For your first time using melonJS, follow these tutorials :

Platformer Step by Step Tutorial.
Space Invaders Step by Step Tutorial.

You may find it useful to skim the overview found at the wiki Details & Usage

When starting your own projects, checkout our es6 boilerplate

Demos

A few demos of melonJS capabilities :

More examples are available here

Download melonJS

The latest builds with corresponding release note are available for direct download here.

Since version 10.0.0 melonJS provides different build options :

build	description
`melonjs.module.js`	the ES6 Module (ESM) Bundle
`melonjs.module.d.ts`	typescript declaration file for the ES6 Module (ESM) Bundle
`melonjs.js`	a ES5 UMD Bundle (directly transpiled from the ES6 version)
`melonjs.min.js`	a minified version of the ES5 UMD bundle

Alternatively, the latest version of melonJS can be installed through NPM :

$ npm install melonjs

If you need to import the ES6 module of melonjs (e.g. for Webpack):

$ import * as me from 'melonjs/dist/melonjs.module.js';

Or can simply be added to your html, using jsDeliver content delivery network (CDN) :

<!-- load the ES6 module bundle of melonJS v10.0 -->
<script src="https://esm.run/melonjs@10.0"></script>
<!-- omit the version completely to get the latest one -->
<!-- you should NOT use this in production -->
<script src="https://esm.run/melonjs"></script>

Note: starting from the 10.0.0 version, the debug plugin is no longer provided as part of the melonJS library release, and has been moved to the official boilerplate

Building melonJS

For most users, all you probably want is to use melonJS, and all you need then is just to download the latest built release to get started. The only time you should need to build melonJS is if you want to contribute to the project and start developing on it.

To build your own version of melonJS you will need to install :

The Node.js JavaScript runtime and the NPM package manager

Once Node.js and NPM have been installed, you need to install build dependencies, by executing the following in the folder where you cloned the repository :

$ [sudo] npm install

Then build the melonJS source by running:

$ npm run build

The generated library will be available under the build directory :

melonjs.js : plain ES5 UMD bundle
melonjs.min.js : minified ES5 UMD bundle
melonjs.module.js : plain ES6 module

To run the melonJS test suite simply use the following:

$ npm run test

This will run the jasmine spec tests with the output displayed on the shell. Do note that the latest Chrome version is required, as the test unit will run the Browser in a headless mode (in case of failed tests, upgrade your browser).

Building the documentation

Similarly, you can build your own copy of the docs locally by running :

$ npm run doc

The generated documentation will be available in the docs directory

WIP Builds

melonJS uses Travis-CI for automated testing and build uploads. The latest build artifacts can be downloaded from the melonjs-builds bucket.

Questions, need help ?

If you need technical support, you can contact us through the following channels :

For any other non technical related questions, feel free to also send us an email

melonjs

Usage no npm install needed!