MicoJS - online multiplatform JS IDE

[RomanS]

I hope @FManga will forgive my impatience, but I can’t help but share a great new software development tool that I’m really excited about.

I will write short features that I noticed during the tests, but the author may add more details in the description later.

Beta version of multiplatform online JS IDE made by @FManga
for creating games and applications
(Pokitto, Gamebuino, ESPboy support implemented).

• Online JS editor, compiler and emulator
• Ability to load compiled applications on ESPboy from browser

Quick API manual

[RomanS]

A little update on the JS IDE from @FManga

• Added support for sprite rotation/scaling on all platforms
• Added rect function for drawing solid rectangles
• Finished automatic image conversion for all platforms.
• Image viewer allows comparing original/converted images (mouse over the image).
• All built-in fonts are now available on all platforms through setFont(R.fontName)
• Added a wiki documenting pretty much everything: Home · micojs/micojs.github.io Wiki · GitHub
• Started working on tilemap support in the IDE.
• Started looking into supporting GBA or NDS.

[RomanS]

News from @FManga

• finish tilemap support
• fix bug: files not getting saved done
• support for sound effects
• fix bug: debug function freezes on Meta
• clear/hide debug log
• fix bug: debug prints one argument per line. done
• support flashing on Meta. done, but needs more testing

before I get back to tilemap support, I’ll try making a little game as well to be sure there are no other serious bugs

[RomanS]

News from @FManga

• Added “Export” button for exporting the entire project as a zip (no way to import yet)
• Fixed bug in getWidth/getHeight
• Fixed default font printing gibberish on Pokitto
• New palette
  

[FManga]

MicoJS Online IDE

Quick Intro:

• Generates native code, no VM/interpretor
• Based on Monaco (VSCode’s editor)
• Your sourcecode is stored in your browser but can be exported as a zip file
• Aims for full JS language compatibility, not API/library compatibility
• Full-res 8-bit graphics engine with sprite zoom/rotation/recoloring support
• Built-in simulator runs well even on very slow devices
• Games are platform-independent by default
• Wiki documenting both the API and language
• Autocomplete with documentation
• Built-in asset conversion. Drag-and-drop an image into the file list and it’s ready
• Uses a general-purpose palette, based on this paper.
• Built-in ESPboy flashing support

Planned Features

• Import zipped project
• Project sharing between multiple users/browsers
• More UI polish
• Audio support
• Tilemap support
• Hotspot profiling (partially implemented already)
• Built-in image editor
• More JS language support (see wiki for up-to-date list of what’s missing)
• Export game as a single HTML file for sharing
• Debug builds that tell you where/why a crash happened on hardware without a debugger

[FManga]

Latest changes:

• Zipped project import (drag-and-drop a zip into the file tree)
• Automatically clear debug log when starting the simulator
• Ctrl+Enter (or Cmd+Enter on Mac) shortcut to start the simulator
• Ctrl+S no longer tries to save the IDE as an HTML page
• 32Blit support

[FManga]

• Added support for PicoSystem
• Added support for game metadata (still need to show game name / title in ESPboy splash screen)
• Sourcecode for the MicoJS buildbot, transpiler, and IDE is now online: GitHub - micojs/MicoBot
• Added “Performance Considerations” section to wiki

[FManga]

• Fixed minor IDE bug that happens after a file is deleted
• Update PokittoLib and fix Pokitto builds
• Add support for string.length
• Fix transpiler errors showing up as “[Object object]”
• Added pragmas documentation to wiki. These allow you to do things like including/excluding blocks of code depending on the platform, much like C’s #ifdef ... #endif blocks.

[FManga]

• Fixed a bug in the text rendering code
• Optimization: allow ints to be used as object/array keys without converting to string first
• Optimization: look up array length only once in for-of loops (non-standard behavior)
• Optimization: recycle text and rect drawing commands between frames (experimental)
• Added FAQ section to the wiki
• Implemented ternary operator

[FManga]

• @Jicehel made a really nice tutorial in French.
• Implemented bitwise not (~) operator
• Implemented constant expression folding (a = 1 + 2 becomes a = 3)
• Automatic this property caching (this.x = this.x + 1 only looks up x once)
• Implemented support for numeric object literal keys ({3:"hi"})
• Fix bug in IDE when switching between projects
• Fix bug where drawing a null sprite would draw the previous valid sprite
• Only run garbage collection when necessary
• Implemented profiler for Meta and Pokitto hardware (will document in wiki)
• Optimize string method access
• Optimize run-time string RAM use
• Implemented array.indexOf(needle) and string.charCodeAt(index)
• Fix compiler error when using the Adventurer font on ESPboy
• Use @r043v’s async technique for LCD writing on ESPboy
• Fix bug where palette had only 255 colors.

[RomanS]

MicoJS improvements from @FManga :

A small update today:

• Fixed a bug where lambdas were not capturing external local variables properly and would crash
• TileMap converter no longer exports hidden layers
• All tiles’ properties are now merged together in the base layer (including hidden layers), making them easier and faster to access
• Added scanTileMap({properties:values}, (x, y) => debug('Found match', x, y)) for all platforms (useful for instantiating player/enemies/items/etc)

[RomanS]

Today MicoJS improvement from @FManga :

Some more updates, for all platforms:

• Implemented support for for(let key in object)
• Implemented value = clamp(value, min, max)
• getWidth(R.tilemap) and getHeight(R.tilemap) return a tilemap’s total dimensions in pixels

[RomanS]

MicoJS update from @FManga

• Fixed a copy-paste bug in the abs function (was returning a negative value for floats)
• Implemented sign(value:number):number; which returns -1, 0 or 1
• Implemented hash(str:string):number which is useful for string tile properties: const isWall = getTileProperty(x, y, ‘type’) == hash(‘wall’);

[RomanS]

MicoJS weekend update list from the @FManga:

• Fixed large tilesets (>255px in one dimension) not rendering properly in the browser simulator
• Fixed the === operator returning false for (int) 1 === (float) 1 (any mixed combination of uint/int/float)

[RomanS]

@FManga:
“Initial/rudimentary Blockly support is now available in MicoJS for testing.”

[RomanS]

Fantastic Blockly features! I added a bat control to the example and it was very easy) I should try to do something interesting this year using MicoJS Blockly

[RomanS]

• You can now import a project zip into a new project by dropping it into the project list
• You can now merge a project into the current one by dropping it anywhere in the file list
• Fixed a bug where not all properties were being counted when calculating a class’s size
• Fixed duplicated row on text

[RomanS]

• Fix folders being ignored when importing a project zip
• Added support for HTML export
• Exported HTML now consumes key events to avoid scrolling around
• Exported HTML now uses the system drop-down to determine resolution, instead of having a hardcoded value
• Added confirmation when deleting a project
• You can now import a project zip into a new project by dropping it into the project list
• You can now merge a project zip into the current one by dropping it anywhere in the file list
• Fixed a bug where not all properties were being counted when calculating a class’s size
• Fixed duplicated row when rendering text on hardware

[RomanS]

news from @FManga

Fixed compiler bug: var x; for(x of []); Tentative fix for titlescreen bug on Meta Added some more functions to BlocksEditor:

• Angle difference (Math tab)
• Screen Width / Screen Height
• Image Width / Image Height

[ESPboy]

New section “MicoJS” has been added to ESPboy AppStore.

The following games are added now:

• Cronologic by @HomineLudens
• Glimpse by @carbonacat
• MugenTenTou by @FManga
• PogoKnight by @lucentbeam
• RocketMan by @jpfli
• WilderWest by @Hanski