Luxe 101
Below we’ll briefly cover some concepts you need to get started with luxe.
As you go further into the guide, all of the concepts will be expanded in detail.
In luxe, things in your game are represented inside of a world.
A player character, level elements, UI elements, all of these typically exist in a world.
The world gives you the tools to manage your things, and lets you create spaces where your game can happen. You also often have more than one world, like a UI world and a game world.
Entity
Section titled “Entity”In luxe we call a thing an entity.
Entities are the things that exist in a World, like the player or even a menu item.
An Entity is how we talk about a unique thing, which makes it the basic building block of making games in luxe!
Modifiers
Section titled “Modifiers”An entity just exists, it can’t do anything yet.
To make an entity do something, we attach modifiers to it!
A modifier describes something you want the entity to be able to do.
If you want your entity to look like a triangle, you attach a modifier to describe that. If you want it to bounce around with some physics too, another modifier is added.
This allows an entity to change at any time, which is very flexible. What it looks like, how it behaves, and what it actually is can change during the game, just by attaching and detaching modifiers.
Systems
Section titled “Systems”Systems are what power the modifiers.
A modifier is added to an entity through a world system.
When you talk about a modifier, you talk to the system that gives it to you. A modifier describes what you want, but the system is what actually makes it happen.
For example, attaching a Transform gives an entity a position in a world. You ask the Transform system to attach it, and then you can ask the system to move it around.
Services
Section titled “Services”Some systems exist at a lower level, powering everything, and some exist outside the world at a higher level.
We call these systems a service API.
These are systems that serve a general need beneath the other systems. For example, rendering (drawing things) is a system that acts as a service. It is used by higher level world systems to provide your game with drawing. The random number generator, is also a service API.
Modules
Section titled “Modules”luxe is designed as a rich set of systems - ready to make games - but it couldn’t possibly provide all systems that all different types of games may need without becoming too big and unfocused.
With luxe, modules solve this by providing a way for you to expand the tools, systems and services that are available to you as a user.
luxe is designed for modules to serve this need, which makes them a fundamental part of using luxe. In fact, the luxe API itself is a module too!
Code vs Editor workflow
Section titled “Code vs Editor workflow”Luxe isn’t centered around the editor interface.
With luxe, if you prefer working through code only, you can.
The code focused workflow is complemented by the editor tools.
They help you create assets that would be faster to create in a tool, but is optional.
The same will eventually be true for editor focused workflows. Right now the engine leans a little toward code focused, because the editor is a work in progress and higher level modules which provide those workflows are being made now. In the future it would be possible to work only from the editor and make a wide range of content without opening the code.