Plasmacore Project Management
From Plasmaworks
Contents |
Windows Command Line
First Time Setup
- You will need to open a command prompt to compile your programs - click Start and type in "cmd". If you haven't used a command prompt before you'll need to learn the basics - here's a tutorial: http://dosprompt.info/
- You will need a text editor to edit source code. We recommend Vim; for more information and Slag configuration files see our Vim Primer page. TextPad is another popular editor for Windows.
Starting a New Project
- Download and unzip the latest version of Plasmacore.
- Rename or copy the "new_project" folder to the name of your game.
- Start a Command Prompt (click Start, type in "cmd") and navigate to your new project folder.
- Type "gogo" (no quotes). The build system will prompt you to choose support for at least one platform. Chose "plasmacore-windows", which will then be downloaded and installed.
- Type "gogo build" (no quotes) to build and launch a placeholder app. The GoGo build system will prompt you to enter some initial configuration values.
- Edit src\[game name].slag to start programming your game!
Upgrading an Existing Project
- Type "gogo upgrade" and follow the prompts.
- Type "gogo" one or more additional times until the upgrade process is complete and the normal gogo menu presents itself.
Using With Code Repositories
Run "gogo clean" before importing your Plasmacore project into a code repository. Don't add the files "local.properties" or "build.etc" to your repository.
The Plasmacore build system will ignore the hidden ".svn" files and the like when creating distributables.
Mac Command Line
First Time Setup
- You will need to open a command prompt to compile your programs - run Applications->Utilities->Terminal. If you haven't used a command prompt before you'll need to learn the basics - here's a tutorial: http://guides.macrumors.com/Terminal
- You will need a text editor to edit source code. We recommend Vim; for more information and Slag configuration files see our Vim Primer page.
- If instructions call for you to type "gogo", type "./gogo" instead on Mac.
Starting a New Project
- Download and unzip the latest version of Plasmacore.
- Rename or copy the "new_project" folder to the name of your game.
- Start a Command Prompt (Applications->Utilities->Terminal) and navigate to your new project folder.
- Type "./gogo" (no quotes). The build system will prompt you to choose support for at least one platform. Chose "plasmacore-mac", which will then be downloaded and installed.
- Type "./gogo build" (no quotes) to build and launch a placeholder app. The GoGo build system will prompt you to enter some initial configuration values.
- Edit src/[game name].slag to start programming your game!
Upgrading an Existing Project
- Type "./gogo upgrade" and follow the prompts.
- Type "./gogo" one or more additional times until the upgrade process is complete and the normal gogo menu presents itself.
Using With Code Repositories
Run "./gogo clean" before importing your Plasmacore project into a code repository. Don't add the files "local.properties" or "build.etc" to your repository.
The Plasmacore build system will ignore the hidden ".svn" files and the like when creating distributables.
Eclipse plug-in (Windows & Mac)
First Time Setup
The Slag Syntax plug-in for Eclipse is courtesy of RiverMan Media.
- Download and install the Eclipse IDE (any version; "for Java Developers" is fine).
- Open Eclipse, click Help->Software Updates, click on Available Software at the top.
- Click Add Site..., type http://www.rivermanmedia.com/slagsyntax. When it shows up on the list of sites, click the check box to the left of the root folder (which will be called the same name as the URL by default). This will automatically check all of the boxes lower in the hierarchy.
- Click Install..., and click Okay if it warns about a possible compatibility issue.
- Click Finish, then allow it to restart Eclipse.
Starting a New Project
- In Eclipse, choose File->new->Project. Under General, select Project, and click Next.
- Name the project whatever you want, and make sure that the Location field matches wherever you want to keep the project. Click Finish.
- Download and unzip the latest version of Plasmacore. Find it in Windows Explorer or Mac Finder and navigate into new_project/. Copy everything in new_project to the clipboard.
- Navigate to the new project Eclipse in Windows Explorer (probably in C:/workspace on Windows). Open up the folder containing the Eclipse project you just created, and paste in everything that you copied. That project folder should now contain bin/, src/, etc.
- Go back to Eclipse and click on your project. Press F5 to refresh it, and you should see that it now contains all of the pasted items.
- Click Window->Show View->Ant to open the Ant box (you have a lot of control over the layout of things in Eclipse, so move the Ant box somewhere convenient). Now drag build.xml into the Ant box, and your project should show up as "game". Click the + (or flippy triangle) button to the left of the ant build to expand it and see all of the targets. Double click "build" to run the game.
- Click the project and press F5 again to refresh, and you will see that it generated the build files as well as game.slag. You can now rename game.slag (rename is F2) and edit the first line of build.xml to match it. Save build.xml, and now instead of being called "game" in the ant box, it will automatically change to the project name you entered.
Upgrading an Existing Project
This is best done using the Command prompt for Windows or Mac as described in the sections above.
Using With Code Repositories
Run the "clean" task before importing your Plasmacore project into a code repository. Don't add the files "local.properties" or "build.etc" to your repository.
The Plasmacore build system will ignore the hidden ".svn" files and the like when creating distributables.