JetLag: 2D Games for Web and Mobile

JetLag is a framework for making 2D games that run in desktop and mobile browsers. It is the evolution of LibLOL, and at a high level, it is faithful to the spirit of LibLOL. In particular:

• JetLag is designed for beginners
• JetLag strives to put all of the code for a level of the game in a single section of a single file

As an HTML5 project, JetLag differs from LibLOL in a few ways:

• It uses PIXI.js and Howler.js, and a different version of Box2D than LibGDX, so some names and features are a little bit different
• It uses TypeScript instead of Java, which leads to simpler, cleaner code

Note that JetLag still is a mobile-friendly framework. It uses Hammer.js for multi-touch and gesture support, and also enables accelerometer by default.

Documentation and Support

There is a tutorial series for JetLag, which is available at https://www.cse.lehigh.edu/~spear/jetlag_tutorials/.

Documentation for JetLag is available on GitHub Pages

Quick Start

Once you have downloaded JetLag, enter the JetLag directory and type npm install to fetch all of the supporting code for JetLag. Once you have done that, you can run npm start to compile your code. JetLag uses esbuild for compilation, so every time you make a change, the code will recompile. To test your game, open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:7000.

The main file that you'll want to edit is src/game/game.ts. When you initially clone JetLag, you'll get a simple one-level game with very few features. Please see the tutorials for help getting started.

To add images and sounds to JetLag, follow these steps:

1. Copy the image or sound file into the assets folder
2. Add the name of the file to the appropriate list in src/game/game.ts
3. Now you can refer to the asset by its filename in your code

Note that JetLag supports spritesheets using TexturePacker. Please see the tutorials for more information.

Coding Standards

JetLag is supposed to be a library that its users will hack for their own purposes. Consequently, we prefer that programmers preserve the structure we have in the repository, where both jetlag and game are sub-folders of the src folder.

Contributors

The following people have contributed to JetLag and its predecessors, LibLOL and ALE. If you contributed, and we missed your name, please send a note reminding us to give you credit!

• Mike Spear
• Dan Spear
• Greyson Parrelli
• Jennifer Bayzick
• Rachel Santangelo
• Micah Carlisle
• Maximilian Hasselbusch
• Jimmy Johnson
• Marc Soda
• Egide Ntwari
• Nana Nyanor
• Sebastian Chavarro