PlayCanvas WebGL Game Engine

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PlayCanvas is an open-source game engine. It uses HTML5 and WebGL to run games and other interactive 3D content in any mobile or desktop browser.

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Project Showcase

Many games and apps have been published using the PlayCanvas engine. Here is a small selection:

You can see more games on the PlayCanvas website.

Users

PlayCanvas is used by leading companies in video games, advertising and visualization such as:
Animech, Arm, BMW, Disney, Facebook, Famobi, Funday Factory, IGT, King, Miniclip, Leapfrog, Mojiworks, Mozilla, Nickelodeon, Nordeus, NOWWA, PikPok, PlaySide Studios, Polaris, Product Madness, Samsung, Snap, Spry Fox, Zeptolab, Zynga

Features

PlayCanvas is a fully-featured game engine.

🧊 Graphics - Advanced 2D + 3D graphics engine built on WebGL 1 & 2.
🏃 Animation - Powerful state-based animations for characters and arbitrary scene properties
⚛️ Physics - Full integration with 3D rigid-body physics engine ammo.js
🎮 Input - Mouse, keyboard, touch, gamepad and VR controller APIs
🔊 Sound - 3D positional sounds built on the Web Audio API
📦 Assets - Asynchronous streaming system built on glTF 2.0, Draco and Basis compression
📜 Scripts - Write game behaviors in Typescript or JavaScript

Usage

Here's a super-simple Hello World example - a spinning cube!

import * as pc from 'playcanvas';

const canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
document.body.appendChild(canvas);

const app = new pc.Application(canvas);

// fill the available space at full resolution
app.setCanvasFillMode(pc.FILLMODE_FILL_WINDOW);
app.setCanvasResolution(pc.RESOLUTION_AUTO);

// ensure canvas is resized when window changes size
window.addEventListener('resize', () => app.resizeCanvas());

// create box entity
const box = new pc.Entity('cube');
box.addComponent('model', {
  type: 'box'
});
app.root.addChild(box);

// create camera entity
const camera = new pc.Entity('camera');
camera.addComponent('camera', {
  clearColor: new pc.Color(0.1, 0.2, 0.3)
});
app.root.addChild(camera);
camera.setPosition(0, 0, 3);

// create directional light entity
const light = new pc.Entity('light');
light.addComponent('light');
app.root.addChild(light);
light.setEulerAngles(45, 0, 0);

// rotate the box according to the delta time since the last frame
app.on('update', dt => box.rotate(10 * dt, 20 * dt, 30 * dt));

app.start();

Want to play with the code yourself? Edit it on CodePen.

A full guide to setting up a local development environment based on the PlayCanvas Engine can be found here.

How to build

Ensure you have Node.js 18+ installed. Then, install all of the required Node.js dependencies:

npm install

Now you can run various build options:

Command	Description	Outputs To
`npm run build`	Build all engine flavors and type declarations	`build`
`npm run docs`	Build engine API reference docs	`docs`

PlayCanvas Editor

The PlayCanvas Engine is an open-source engine that you can use to create HTML5 apps/games. In addition to the engine, we also make the PlayCanvas Editor:

For Editor-related bugs and issues, please refer to the Editor's repo.

import * as pc from 'playcanvas'; const canvas = document.createElement('canvas'); document.body.appendChild(canvas); const app = new pc.Application(canvas); // fill the available space at full resolution app.setCanvasFillMode(pc.FILLMODE_FILL_WINDOW); app.setCanvasResolution(pc.RESOLUTION_AUTO); // ensure canvas is resized when window changes size window.addEventListener('resize', () => app.resizeCanvas()); // create box entity const box = new pc.Entity('cube'); box.addComponent('model', { type: 'box' }); app.root.addChild(box); // create camera entity const camera = new pc.Entity('camera'); camera.addComponent('camera', { clearColor: new pc.Color(0.1, 0.2, 0.3) }); app.root.addChild(camera); camera.setPosition(0, 0, 3); // create directional light entity const light = new pc.Entity('light'); light.addComponent('light'); app.root.addChild(light); light.setEulerAngles(45, 0, 0); // rotate the box according to the delta time since the last frame app.on('update', dt => box.rotate(10 * dt, 20 * dt, 30 * dt)); app.start();

Command

Description

Outputs To

npm run build

Build all engine flavors and type declarations

build

npm run docs

Build engine API reference docs

docs