Game Developer Guide

This guide is your complete path from zero to shipped game. Whether you're building a 2D platformer, a 3D action game, or a puzzle in the browser, this section walks you through every system you'll touch-with practical examples at every step.

Who This Is For

• New to Web Engine Dev, start at Core Game Loop and work through sequentially
• Web developer new to game dev, ECS and game loops work differently from app UIs; this guide bridges that gap
• Experienced game developer, jump to any section to understand how this engine's patterns map to what you know

The Learning Path

Follow this sequence for the most productive onboarding:

Foundation (Start Here)

Step	Topic	What You'll Learn
1	Core Game Loop	How World, systems, the scheduler, and the main loop work together
2	Scripting	Adding gameplay logic to entities with the scripting layer
3	Entities & Components	ECS patterns: players, enemies, bullets, inventory
4	Scenes & Prefabs	Organizing your world into levels and reusable templates

Interaction & Feel

Step	Topic	What You'll Learn
5	Input Handling	Keyboard, gamepad, touch, virtual buttons, action mapping
6	Camera Systems	Follow cameras, zoom, screen shake, split-screen
7	Physics	Rigidbodies, collisions, triggers, joints, character controllers
8	Animation	Sprite sheets, skeletal animation, blend trees, state machines

World Building

Step	Topic	What You'll Learn
9	2D Development	Tilemaps, sprite batching, 2D lighting, pixel art
10	3D Development	glTF models, terrain, PBR materials, 3D lighting
11	Audio	BGM, SFX, spatial audio, adaptive music
12	UI & HUD	Health bars, menus, dialogue, HUD layout
13	Visual Effects	Particles, VFX graphs, post-processing, screen effects

Game Systems

Step	Topic	What You'll Learn
14	AI & NPCs	Pathfinding, behavior trees, GOAP, steering behaviors
15	Save & Load	Persisting game state, checkpoints, cloud saves
16	Networking & Multiplayer	Client-server, rollback netcode, matchmaking

Shipping

Step	Topic	What You'll Learn
17	Performance Optimization	Profiling, bottleneck analysis, batching, pooling
18	Deployment & Publishing	Web hosting, PWA, mobile (Capacitor), itch.io

Quick Reference

Minimal Game Bootstrap

import { World, CoreSchedule } from '@web-engine-dev/ecs';
import { createDevice } from '@web-engine-dev/renderer';

const world = new World();

// Register systems
world.addSystem(InputSystem);
world.addSystem(PlayerMovementSystem);
world.addSystem(PhysicsSystem);
world.addSystem(RenderSystem);

// Run
let last = performance.now();
function loop() {
  const now = performance.now();
  const dt = (now - last) / 1000;
  last = now;
  world.runSchedule(CoreSchedule.Update, dt);
  requestAnimationFrame(loop);
}
requestAnimationFrame(loop);

The Golden Rules

1. world.get() returns a copy, always world.insert() to persist changes
2. Systems are pure functions over components, no shared mutable state
3. Entities are IDs, they have no behavior, only data
4. Use commands for deferred mutations, never mutate the world mid-iteration
5. Resources are singletons, use them for global state (input state, game settings)

Tutorials

If you prefer to learn by building, jump straight to the Tutorials section where you'll build complete games from scratch.