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A Tutorial Introduction

Let's make your first game. When prosperon is launched, it looks in the folder it's in for a config.js and main.js. These are your first two examples of a module and a program.

A module is a file that returns a single value. It could be any value: a number, a function, a string. Usually, it's an object. Values are frozen before returning, so they cannot be modified. A module is ran once and cached, so any program that accesses a module subsequently is simply getting the already cached object. Modules can import other modules. Circular references are not allowed.

The config.js module must return a single object that describes your game. It sets up the window name, starting size, etc. Below is the default config, demonstrating all of the values that can be set on it.

Key Default Value Type Description
title Prosperon [\${prosperon.version}-\${prosperon.revision}] string Title of the game window, typically including version information.
width 1280 number Initial width of the game window.
height 720 number Initial height of the game window.
icon graphics.make_texture(io.slurpbytes('icons/moon.gif')) object Icon texture for the game window, loaded from the provided file.
high_dpi 0 number Enables (1) or disables (0) High DPI support for the window.
alpha 1 number Alpha channel setting for the window (0 to disable, 1 to enable transparency).
fullscreen 0 number Sets whether the window should launch in fullscreen (1) or windowed (0).
sample_count 1 number Multisampling count for rendering. Increasing this can improve image quality at the cost of performance.
enable_clipboard true boolean Enables clipboard functionality within the application.
enable_dragndrop true boolean Enables drag-and-drop functionality for files into the window.
max_dropped_files 1 number Maximum number of files that can be dropped into the window at once.
swap_interval 1 number Controls vertical synchronization (VSync). Commonly 1 for enabling or 0 for disabling VSync.
name "Prosperon" string Human-readable name of the application.
version prosperon.version + "-" + prosperon.revision string Version string for the application, dynamically built from Prosperon's version info.
identifier "world.pockle.prosperon" string Package or bundle identifier for your game/application.
creator "Pockle World LLC" string Name of the creator or organization behind the application.
copyright "Copyright Pockle World 2025" string Copyright declaration for the application.
type "application" string The general content type or category of this project.
url "https://github.com/johnbrethauer/prosperon" string URL link associated with the project, such as a repository or official homepage.

With the engine configured, prosperon starts main.js as the first actor of the game. Actors are created from files that do not return a value. An actor executes the statements in its script. Initialization should happen here. An actor can pull in other chunks of code by importing modules. Modules are imported with the use statement. use returns the value the module returned, and it can be assigned to any variable. To use the internal io module, for example, you might say var io = use('io').

Actors exist until they are explicitly killed, by invoking their kill function. Because the actor created from main.js is the root actor for the entire game, when it is killed, the program exits. In an actor script file, this is set to the actor being spawned from the script.

Our first program

With that out of the way, we can establish our first simple program.

In the folder with your prosperon executable, create a config.js and set it to be the following:

return {
  title: "Hello World",
  width: 500,
  height:500
}

This will cause prosperon to launch a 500x500 window with the title 'Hello World'. In your main.js, write the following:

console.log("Hello world")

this.delay(_ => {
  this.kill();
}, 3)

delay is a function on all actors in prosperon. It executes a given function after a number of seconds. In this case, after 3 seconds, the root actor kills itself, closing the window.

The prosperon global

The global object called prosperon has a variety of engine specific settings on it that can be set to influence how the engine behaves. For example, prosperon.argv contains a list of the command line arguments given to prosperon; prosperon.PATH is an array of paths to resolve resources such as modules and images. prosperon is fully documented in the API section.

Getting help

The prosperon global has a 'doc' function, which can be invoked on any engine object to see a description of it and its members. For example, to learn about prosperon, try printing out prosperon.doc(prosperon) in your main.js.

Writing documentation for your own modules and game components will be explored in the chapter on actors & modules.