Rune SDK

Rune SDK is a free, object-oriented JavaScript game engine for creating raster-based, two-dimensional applications and games.

Rune is inspired by the Macromedia/Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR era: display lists, sprites, scenes, bitmap graphics, game loops, and that wonderful feeling of making something small, weird and playable in a browser-sized window. The goal is not to imitate the past for nostalgia alone, but to bring back a clear, class-based way of building 2D software that many older developers remember and many new developers can still learn to love.

Rune is primarily designed to run inside Electron.

For the full API reference, see the Rune SDK reference manual.

Philosophy

Rune SDK is built around object-oriented programming.

A Rune application is composed from classes: scenes, display objects, sprites, tilemaps, cameras, inputs, resources and other focused systems. Instead of treating a game as a loose collection of scripts, Rune encourages developers to model their application as interacting objects with clear responsibilities.

If you enjoyed ActionScript 3, Flash display lists, movie clips, sprites and frame-based game loops, Rune should feel familiar. If you are new to that way of working, Rune aims to make object-oriented game development approachable, practical and fun.

In short: structure matters, pixels matter, and small games deserve good code.

Getting Started

The easiest way to get started with Rune SDK is to use Rune-tools.

Rune-tools is a command line interface for creating and managing Rune-based projects.

Install Rune-tools globally:

npm install -g rune-tools

Create a new Rune project:

rune-tools create -a "MyApp" -d "com.example" -b "1.0.0"

Then enter the project directory and install dependencies:

cd ./MyApp
npm update
npm test

To update an existing project to the latest Rune SDK build:

rune-tools update

Features

Rune SDK includes support for:

• Flash-like display-list rendering.
• Object-oriented display objects and containers.
• Sprites and texture atlas based animation.
• Tweening and interpolation based animation.
• Tilemaps for larger worlds.
• TileGraphic objects for smaller display-list based tilemaps.
• Shared tile collision and pathfinding logic.
• Cameras and split-screen rendering.
• Keyboard and gamepad input.
• Bitmap text fields.
• Rectangle-based hitbox collision.
• Simple physics helpers.
• Sound and music channels.
• Local highscore tables.
• Resource loading and bundling.

File Structure

Rune's source code is structured as follows:

• asset: Project assets and templates.
• bin: Runtime entry point using the compiled SDK.
• bin-debug: Runtime entry point using source files.
• demo: Test and demonstration application.
• dist: Compiled Rune SDK distribution.
• docs: Documentation resources.
• scripts: Build scripts.
• src: Source code.

Development

Rune SDK follows ECMAScript 5 style JavaScript. The codebase favors explicit constructors, prototype inheritance and clear class boundaries over modern syntax shortcuts. This is intentional: Rune should remain understandable, portable and close to the object-oriented style that inspired it.

Documentation

The full API reference is available here:

https://vectorpanic.github.io/rune-docs/

License

Rune SDK is released under the MIT License.