taylor_config.json.md

The Config File

The taylor_config.json file is the file where all the configuration for your Taylor game goes.

A freshly created Taylor game will come with a taylor_config.json that looks like this:

{
  "name": "taylor_game",
  "version": "v0.0.1",
  "input": "game.rb",
  "export_directory": "./exports",
  "export_targets": [
    "linux",
    "windows",
    "osx/intel",
    "osx/apple",
    "web"
  ],
  "load_paths": [
    "./",
    "./vendor"
  ],
  "copy_paths": [
    "./assets"
  ]
}

Let's go through each option one by one.

Name

"name": "taylor_game",

This specifies the name when you export your game, this would cause you to get a taylor_game.exe on Windows when you export. It also sets your window title in the default game.rb that's created.

Version

"version": "v0.0.1",

This specifies the version of your game and is part of the name of the exported zip files. For instance you'd get the file taylor_game-linux-v0.0.1.zip if you exported this for Linux.

This field is never parsed anywhere and can be anything, but I suggest sticking to semantic versioning for your version numbers.

Input

"input": "game.rb",

This is the Ruby file that Taylor will run if you run taylor in this folder and it will be where the export process starts from. I expect this field to change in the future to entrypoint.

Export Directory

"export_directory": "./exports",

When you run taylor export this is the folder where it will save your exports to.

Export Targets

"export_targets": [
  "linux",
  "windows",
  "osx/intel",
  "osx/apple",
  "web"
],

What platforms do you want to support when you export your game. The default list is all of the officially support platforms for Taylor. All of the supported platforms are:

• Linux (glibc 2.28+)
• Windows (Windows 7+ tested)
• OSX Intel CPU based computers
• OSX Apple (ARM) CPU based computers
• Web (Chrome has best performance, Firefox works but has a huge performance hit)

Now, there is pre-alpha support for Android which you can enable by adding "android" to this list but be warned, it's incredibly early access and at time of writing this document, is broken.

Load Paths

"load_paths": [
  "./",
  "./vendor"
],

This defines all the load paths that Ruby will look for when you do require "blah". With the default load_paths this would look first for ./blah.rb and then ./vendor/blah.rb.

Copy Paths

"copy_paths": [
  "./assets"
]

This is where you will be putting all files you want copied into your exported zip files. I will probably rename this to resource_paths in the future. These are usually the folders where you keep your images/sounds/fonts/etc that your game will load.

Extra Options

There are actually a couple more options that aren't specified by default, right now they are only for web builds but I expect more and more of these to come into existence as Taylor evolves.

Web

This sections if for web export specific configuration.

Shell Path

"web": {
  "shell_path": "shell.html"
}

This defines the shell file that is passed to emscripten. You can see this used in the Taylor Playground to setup a completely different web based environment. The default file looks like this and is a good jumping off point for your own custom shell.

Total Memory

"web": {
  "total_memory": 64
}

This sets the total memory that is allowed to be used by web export in megabytes. If this is set to -1 it allows for (memory growth)[https://emscripten.org/docs/optimizing/Optimizing-Code.html?highlight=total%20memory#memory-growth] but I've had issues with that recently causing memory to bloat out to 8GB on page load and then come back down, so I've decided to set it to 64 by default, but this may change in the future to be a bit higher depending on actual use.

Putting It All Together

A file with every option set would end up looking like this:

{
  "name": "taylor_game",
  "version": "v0.0.1",
  "input": "game.rb",
  "export_directory": "./exports",
  "export_targets": [
    "linux",
    "windows",
    "osx/intel",
    "osx/apple",
    "web"
  ],
  "load_paths": [
    "./",
    "./vendor"
  ],
  "copy_paths": [
    "./assets"
  ],
  "web": {
    "shell_path": "shell.html",
    "total_memory": 64
  }
}