Why: decrease the game development iteration loop to be as short as possible.

How: Catapult detects changes in assets, source, and game data files, and is available to notify the game client is different ways: a pushed notification via websockets, or through http polling.

The game client can then download new assets, or perform other functions, e.g.

• Download and reload image textures so that as soon as you save a texture file your game client can reload it at runtime.
• Download parsed Json of spreadsheet data (hxods format).
• Reload the game client (e.g. an HTML5 game upon detection of source code change).

The main goal is to see changes in your game as soon as any change is detected for super-fast iteration.

Build from source or install via npm (easier).

npm install catapult

Install the demo folder

git clone --recursive git://github.com/dionjwa/catapult.git

And run with:

node node_modules/catapult/index.js --watch=catapult/demo/assets/bootstrap,catapult/demo/src

The server is at the currently in the experimental stage and is written for Haxe 3, but is platform/language agnostic.

Clone this repo and add required dependencies:

git clone --recursive git://github.com/dionjwa/catapult.git
cd catapult
npm install websocket
npm install commander
npm install node-static
npm install source-map-support
haxelib install nodejs_std
haxelib install nodejs_externs
haxelib install format
haxe build.hxml

And run with:

node build/index.js --watch=demo/assets/bootstrap,demo/src

In a browser, go to

http://localhost:8000/web/index.html

Then open the "test.ods" file in LibreOffice. You can edit the x, y, and scale values, and the images will be automatically updated.

Also, try these URLs in your web browser to see the data format of the asset manifests, and spreadsheet data returned:

http://localhost:8000/manifests.json
http://localhost:8000/bootstrap/stuff/test.ods
http://localhost:8000/bootstrap/stuff/gamedata.ods
http://localhost:8000/bootstrap/manifest.json

The catapult server is platform agnostic: you can simply poll the asset server from any client using http requests.

Todo:

• Add some example client reloading using Flambe.