Editor, Plugins and Scripts

Every Fyrox game is just a plugin for both the engine and the editor, such approach allows you to run your game from the editor and to be able to edit the game entities in it. Your game can define any number of scripts, which can be assigned to scene objects to run custom game logic on them. In this chapter you'll learn the basics: how to install the engine with its platform-specific dependencies, how to use the plugins and scripting system, how to run the editor.

Platform-specific Dependencies

Before you start using the engine, make sure you have all required platform-specific development dependencies installed, otherwise you'll get compilation errors. If you're on Windows or macOS, you don't need to install anything specific - all you need to have is the latest Rust installed with appropriate toolchain for your platform.

Linux

On Linux Fyrox needs the development files for the following libraries: libxcb-shape0, libxcb-xfixes0, libxcb1, libxkbcommon, libasound2.

For Debian based distros like Ubuntu, they can be installed like below:

sudo apt install libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libxcb1-dev libxkbcommon-dev libasound2-dev

Project Generator

Fyrox plugins are static, this means that you must re-compile your game or editor if the source code of your game changes, such architecture requires some boilerplate code for any game. Fyrox offers a special tiny tool - fyrox-template - that helps you generate all this boilerplate with a single command. Install it by running the following command:

cargo install fyrox-template

Note for Linux: This installs it in $user/.cargo/bin. If you get errors about the fyrox-template command not found then you need to add this folder to your $PATH still.

Navigate to the folder where you want the project to be created and run the following command:

fyrox-template init --name my_game --style 3d

Note that unlike cargo init, this will create a new folder with the given name.

The tool accepts two arguments - a project name (--name) and a style (--style), which defines the contents of the default scene. Once you initialize your project, go to game/src/lib.rs - this is where your game logic is located, as you can see, the fyrox-template generated quite a bit of code for you. There are comments explaining what each place is for. For more info about each method, please refer to the docs.

Once the project is generated, you should memorize the two commands that will help you to run your game in different modes:

cargo run --package editor --release - launches the editor with your game attached. The editor allows you to run your game from it and edit its game entities. It is intended to be used only for development.
cargo run --package executor --release - creates and runs the production binary of your game, which can be shipped (for example - to a store).

Navigate to your project's directory and run cargo run --package editor --release, after some time you should see the editor:

editor

In the editor you can start building your game scene. Important note: your scene must have at least one camera, otherwise you won't see a thing. Read the next chapter to learn how to use the editor.

Using the Latest Engine Version

Due to the nature of the software development, some bugs will inevitably sneak into the major releases, due to this, you may want to use the latest engine version from the repository on GitHub, since it is the most likely to have bugs fixed (you can also contribute by fixing any bugs you find or at least, by filing an issue).

⚠️ Latest fyrox-template from the engine's repo has special sub-command - upgrade to quickly upgrade to desired engine version. To upgrade to the latest version ("nightly") you should execute fyrox-template upgrade --version nightly command in your game's directory.

The first step you need to take is to install the latest fyrox-template, this can be done with a single cargo command:

cargo install fyrox-template --force --git https://github.com/FyroxEngine/Fyrox

This will ensure you're using the latest project/script template generator, which is important, since old versions of the template generator will most likely generate outdated code, no longer be compatible with the engine.

To switch existing projects to the latest version of the engine, you need to specify paths pointing to the remote repository for the fyrox and fyroxed_base dependencies. You need to do this in the game, executor, and editor projects. First, open game/Cargo.toml and change the fyrox dependency to the following:

[dependencies]
fyrox = { git = "https://github.com/FyroxEngine/Fyrox" }

Do the same for executor/Cargo.toml. The editor has two dependencies we need to change: fyrox and fyroxed_base. Open the editor/Cargo.toml and set both dependencies to the following:

[dependencies]
fyrox = { git = "https://github.com/FyroxEngine/Fyrox" }
fyroxed_base = { git = "https://github.com/FyroxEngine/Fyrox" }

Now your game will use the latest engine and editor, but beware - new commits could bring some API breaks. You can avoid these by specifying a particular commit, just add rev = "desired_commit_hash" to every dependency like so:

[dependencies]
fyrox = { git = "https://github.com/FyroxEngine/Fyrox", rev = "0195666b30562c1961a9808be38b5e5715da43af" }
fyroxed_base = { git = "https://github.com/FyroxEngine/Fyrox", rev = "0195666b30562c1961a9808be38b5e5715da43af" }

To bring a local git repository of the engine to being up-to-date, just call cargo update at the root of the project's workspace. This will pull the latest changes from the remote, unless there is no rev specified.

Learn more about dependency paths on the official cargo documentation, here.

Adding Game Logic

Any object-specific game logic should be added using scripts. A script is a "container" for data and code, that will be executed by the engine. Read the Scripts chapter to learn how to create, edit, and use scripts in your game.

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