Bokken

A cross-platform 2D game engine with a custom asset pipeline, a component-based scene model, and a TypeScript scripting runtime built on QuickJS-NG.

Bokken is for developers who like owning their tools: the asset packer, the scripting bridge, the render pipeline, and the command-line workflow are all first-party rather than glued together from black boxes.

It features component-based scenes, TypeScript scripting with QuickJS-NG compilation, Box2D v3 physics, a multi-channel audio mixer with DSP, dynamic 2D lighting with soft shadows, a JSX-based UI layer with hooks, a CPU particle system, PhysFS virtual asset archives, and a comprehensive CLI tool for building and debugging projects.

Getting started

You don't clone this engine directly to make a game. Start from the project template, which pulls the engine in automatically via CMake's FetchContent:

cookiecutter gh:bokken-technologies/template
cd my-project
make build      # First build fetches the engine and builds bokken-cli
make install    # Put bokken-cli on your PATH
bokken-cli run  # Build and launch

See the template's README for the full project workflow and bokken-cli command reference.

Building the engine directly

Cloning this repository is only needed to work on the engine itself or to run its tests:

git clone git@github.com:bokken-technologies/bokken.git
cd bokken
make

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Before opening a pull request, read CONTRIBUTING.md; all contributors must sign the Contributor License Agreement, which is handled automatically by a bot on your first PR.

1. Fork it (https://github.com/bokken-technologies/bokken/fork)
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b my-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am "Add my feature")
4. Push the branch (git push origin my-feature)
5. Open a pull request

Contributors

• Giorgi Kavrelishvili — creator and maintainer