NME (framework)

OpenFL is a free and open-source software framework and platform for the creation of multi-platform applications and video games. OpenFL applications can be written in Haxe, JavaScript ( EcmaScript 5 or 6+), or TypeScript, and may be published as standalone applications for several targets including iOS, Android, HTML5 (choice of Canvas, WebGL, SVG or DOM), Windows, macOS, Linux, WebAssembly, Flash, AIR, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, Wii U, TiVo, Raspberry Pi, and Node.js.

The most popular editors used for Haxe and OpenFL development are:

* Visual Studio Code (with plugin)
* HaxeDevelop (supports code folding, code refactoring and interactive debugging)
* Sublime Text (with plugin)
* IntelliJ IDEA (with plugin)

OpenFL contains Haxe ports of major graphical libraries such as Away3D, Starling, Babylon.js, Adobe Flash and DragonBones. Due to the multi-platform nature of OpenFL, such libraries usually run on multiple platforms such as HTML5, Adobe AIR and Android/iOS.

More than 500 video games have been developed with OpenFL, including the BAFTA-award-winning game '' Papers, Please'', '' Rymdkapsel'', '' Lightbot, Friday Night Funkin','' and '' Madden NFL Mobile''.

OpenFL was created by Joshua Granick and is actively administrated and maintained by software engineer, board member and co-owner, Chris Speciale.

Technical details

OpenFL

OpenFL is designed to fully mirror the Flash API. SWF files created with Adobe Flash Professional or other authoring tools may be used in OpenFL programs.

OpenFL supports rendering in OpenGL, Cairo, Canvas, SVG and even HTML5 DOM. In the browser, OpenGL is the default renderer but if unavailable then canvas (CPU rendering) is used. Certain features (shape.graphics or bitmapData.draw) will use CPU rendering, but the display list remains GPU accelerated as far as possible.

Lime

OpenFL uses the Lime library for low-level rendering. Lime provides hardware-accelerated rendering of vector graphics on all supported platforms.Getting started with Haxe and Starling
, OpenFL Community, Dec 2017

Lime is a library designed to provide a consistent "blank canvas" environment on all supported targets, including Flash Player, HTML5, Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, consoles, set-top boxes and other systems. Lime is a cross-platform graphics, sound, input and windowing library, which means OpenFL can focus on being a Flash API, and not handling all these specifics. Lime also includes command-line tools.

Haxe

Haxe is a high-level cross-platform multi-paradigm programming language and compiler that can produce applications and source code, for many different computing platforms, from one code-base. It is free and open-source software, distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) 2.0, and the standard library under the MIT License.

Haxe includes a set of common functions that are supported across all platforms, such as numeric data types, text, arrays, binary and some common file formats.Introduction to the Haxe Standard Library
, Haxe Docs Haxe also includes platform-specific application programming interface (API) for Adobe Flash, C++, PHP and other languages.

Haxe originated with the idea of supporting client-side and server-side programming in one language, and simplifying the communication logic between them. Code written in the Haxe language can be source-to-source compiled into ActionScript 3, JavaScript, Java, C++, C#, PHP, Python, Lua and Node.js.Haxe, iPhone & C++ At Last
, GameHaxe website Haxe can also directly compile SWF, HashLink and NekoVM bytecode.

Starling

The Haxe port of the Starling Framework runs on Stage3D and supports GPU-accelerated rendering of vector graphics. It uses a custom Stage3D implementation, and does not require the OpenFL display list to work.Starling for OpenFL
, "The "Cross-Platform Game Engine", Github

References

See also

* Haxe
* Adobe AIR

{{Video game engines

Free software
Software licenses
Software using the MIT license
Software frameworks