Birb Engine - 3D with Three.js, Deno and Webview on Desktop

This is a project for making a game engine! Intended to be customizable and about as flexible as developing for the web!

It is a Deno app that renders a (webkit) webview on desktop. Along with a page running Three.js, plus some extra tools i'm building for making games!

⚠️ UPDATE: I am taking the backend of this project into its own repo. As a small API for running a native window with a webkit webview, built on top of the Webview library

This is a very early project. Mostly just a toy, and it is not really good for any serious application yet. But you can already use it if you want!

⚠️ Please note that I cannot guarantee that it will work. It is a VERY early project! I am not yet at version 0.1.0. So expect breaking changes at any time!

Name & Identity

I was thinking about "the birb engine" - there are a lot of birbs where I live. hahaha

Also, it makes sense. It is made with Deno. And Birbs are actual DINOSAURS!

Quick start

Check out deno.json for some uselful tasks:

First clone the repo.

• $ deno task start will just start the main.ts program. It should work as is and load the example.

• $ deno task server: will start only the server. In case you want to run the app in a normal browser.

• $ deno task build: will build your app and bundle it to /dist/app.js

Usage

You should output a "./dist/app.js" bundle with your complete Three.js app.

The entrypoint is the index.ts file. You shoudl buidl your app there. The bundler (esbuild) will build and bundle everythin into /dist/app.js.

Packages

You can import packages from esm.sh or another CDN and create a reference inside import_map.json. Then you can use them inside your project!

⚠️ Please note that you should import the dependencies you want from import_map.json otherwise esbuild will just place import statements inside app.js instead of downloading and bundling the dependency!

Dev tools

I'm working into building a workflow for accessing webkit's inspector. As well as implementing a basic inspector with html/css. See the feature/dev-tools branch.

You can open the "inspector" (for now just a sliding panel) with shift + i

You can also run the app in a normal browser, if you start only the server :D

Webview debugging

Please note, I am using my own fork of Webview_deno (see ./deps.ts) in which I enabled dubugging on the console. Otherwise the current version of the pakage disables it by default (it's harcoded). I will change back if they enable it :D

Further improvements

The original intent is to have a Three.js bundle built on Deno. Which is can be run inside a Webview window. And adding a couple of scripts to automate the process.

The idea would be to have a "desktop" solution to make games of 3D apps with Deno. Being able to write everything in TypeScript and running a single command to build and run everything :D

Contributing

If you want to contribute, first of all, Thanks! Feel free to raise an issue. I appreciate suggestions as well as errors. But keep in mind that this is very unstable still.

License

Copyright © 2022 Jorge Romero. MIT License.

Do whatever you want with it!