Phaser React Template

This is a Phaser 3 project template that uses the React framework and Vite for bundling. It includes a bridge for React to Phaser game communication, hot-reloading for quick development workflow and scripts to generate production-ready builds.

This Template is also available as a TypeScript version.

Versions

This template has been updated for:

• Phaser 3.87.0
• React 18.3.1
• Vite 5.3.1

Requirements

Node.js is required to install dependencies and run scripts via npm.

Available Commands

Command	Description
npm install	Install project dependencies
npm run dev	Launch a development web server
npm run build	Create a production build in the dist folder
npm run dev-nolog	Launch a development web server without sending anonymous data (see "About log.js" below)
npm run build-nolog	Create a production build in the dist folder without sending anonymous data (see "About log.js" below)

Writing Code

After cloning the repo, run npm install from your project directory. Then, you can start the local development server by running npm run dev.

The local development server runs on http://localhost:8080 by default. Please see the Vite documentation if you wish to change this, or add SSL support.

Once the server is running you can edit any of the files in the src folder. Vite will automatically recompile your code and then reload the browser.

Template Project Structure

We have provided a default project structure to get you started. This is as follows:

• index.html - A basic HTML page to contain the game.
• src - Contains the React client source code.
• src/main.jsx - The main React entry point. This bootstraps the React application.
• src/App.jsx - The main React component.
• src/game/PhaserGame.jsx - The React component that initializes the Phaser Game and serve like a bridge between React and Phaser.
• src/game/EventBus.js - A simple event bus to communicate between React and Phaser.
• src/game - Contains the game source code.
• src/game/main.jsx - The main game entry point. This contains the game configuration and start the game.
• src/game/scenes/ - The Phaser Scenes are in this folder.
• public/style.css - Some simple CSS rules to help with page layout.
• public/assets - Contains the static assets used by the game.

React Bridge

The PhaserGame.jsx component is the bridge between React and Phaser. It initializes the Phaser game and passes events between the two.

To communicate between React and Phaser, you can use the EventBus.js file. This is a simple event bus that allows you to emit and listen for events from both React and Phaser.

// In React
import { EventBus } from './EventBus';

// Emit an event
EventBus.emit('event-name', data);

// In Phaser
// Listen for an event
EventBus.on('event-name', (data) => {
    // Do something with the data
});

In addition to this, the PhaserGame component exposes the Phaser game instance along with the most recently active Phaser Scene using React forwardRef.

Once exposed, you can access them like any regular react reference.

Phaser Scene Handling

In Phaser, the Scene is the lifeblood of your game. It is where you sprites, game logic and all of the Phaser systems live. You can also have multiple scenes running at the same time. This template provides a way to obtain the current active scene from React.

You can get the current Phaser Scene from the component event "current-active-scene". In order to do this, you need to emit the event "current-scene-ready" from the Phaser Scene class. This event should be emitted when the scene is ready to be used. You can see this done in all of the Scenes in our template.

Important: When you add a new Scene to your game, make sure you expose to React by emitting the "current-scene-ready" event via the EventBus, like this:

class MyScene extends Phaser.Scene
{
    constructor ()
    {
        super('MyScene');
    }

    create ()
    {
        // Your Game Objects and logic here

        // At the end of create method:
        EventBus.emit('current-scene-ready', this);
    }
}

You don't have to emit this event if you don't need to access the specific scene from React. Also, you don't have to emit it at the end of create, you can emit it at any point. For example, should your Scene be waiting for a network request or API call to complete, it could emit the event once that data is ready.

React Component Example

Here's an example of how to access Phaser data for use in a React Component:

import { useRef } from 'react';

// In a parent component
const ReactComponent = () => {

    const phaserRef = useRef(); // you can access to this ref from phaserRef.current

    const onCurrentActiveScene = (scene) => {
    
        // This is invoked

    }

    return (
        ...
        <PhaserGame ref={phaserRef} currentActiveScene={onCurrentActiveScene} />
        ...
    );

}

In the code above, you can get a reference to the current Phaser Game instance and the current Scene by creating a reference with useRef() and assign to PhaserGame component.

From this state reference, the game instance is available via phaserRef.current.game and the most recently active Scene via phaserRef.current.scene.

The onCurrentActiveScene callback will also be invoked whenever the the Phaser Scene changes, as long as you emit the event via the EventBus, as outlined above.

Handling Assets

Vite supports loading assets via JavaScript module import statements.

This template provides support for both embedding assets and also loading them from a static folder. To embed an asset, you can import it at the top of the JavaScript file you are using it in:

import logoImg from './assets/logo.png'

To load static files such as audio files, videos, etc place them into the public/assets folder. Then you can use this path in the Loader calls within Phaser:

preload ()
{
    //  This is an example of an imported bundled image.
    //  Remember to import it at the top of this file
    this.load.image('logo', logoImg);

    //  This is an example of loading a static image
    //  from the public/assets folder:
    this.load.image('background', 'assets/bg.png');
}

When you issue the npm run build command, all static assets are automatically copied to the dist/assets folder.

Deploying to Production

After you run the npm run build command, your code will be built into a single bundle and saved to the dist folder, along with any other assets your project imported, or stored in the public assets folder.

In order to deploy your game, you will need to upload all of the contents of the dist folder to a public facing web server.

Customizing the Template

Vite

If you want to customize your build, such as adding plugin (i.e. for loading CSS or fonts), you can modify the vite/config.*.mjs file for cross-project changes, or you can modify and/or create new configuration files and target them in specific npm tasks inside of package.json. Please see the Vite documentation for more information.

About log.js

If you inspect our node scripts you will see there is a file called log.js. This file makes a single silent API call to a domain called gryzor.co. This domain is owned by Phaser Studio Inc. The domain name is a homage to one of our favorite retro games.

We send the following 3 pieces of data to this API: The name of the template being used (vue, react, etc). If the build was 'dev' or 'prod' and finally the version of Phaser being used.

At no point is any personal data collected or sent. We don't know about your project files, device, browser or anything else. Feel free to inspect the log.js file to confirm this.

Why do we do this? Because being open source means we have no visible metrics about which of our templates are being used. We work hard to maintain a large and diverse set of templates for Phaser developers and this is our small anonymous way to determine if that work is actually paying off, or not. In short, it helps us ensure we're building the tools for you.

However, if you don't want to send any data, you can use these commands instead:

Dev:

npm run dev-nolog

Build:

npm run build-nolog

Or, to disable the log entirely, simply delete the file log.js and remove the call to it in the scripts section of package.json:

Before:

"scripts": {
    "dev": "node log.js dev & dev-template-script",
    "build": "node log.js build & build-template-script"
},

After:

"scripts": {
    "dev": "dev-template-script",
    "build": "build-template-script"
},

Either of these will stop log.js from running. If you do decide to do this, please could you at least join our Discord and tell us which template you're using! Or send us a quick email. Either will be super-helpful, thank you.

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