Crankscript is a collection of tools that lets you write Playdate games in TypeScript. TypeScript code is enriched with Playdate type definitions, and transformed to Lua with TypeScript-to-Lua.

The crankscript cli application is the main entry point for using Crankscript. To create a new project, use the command:

npx crankscript@latest new <project-name>

Optionally, a template can be specified:

npx crankscript@latest new <project-name> --template <template-name>

However, at the moment, only the "blank" template is available.

After that, install all dependencies with:

cd <project-name>
npm install

Build the project and run it in the Playdate Simulator with:

npm run simulator

That's it!

A more detailed documentation is in progress. For now, here's an important note about platform support.

The simulator command supports --watch. In MacOS, when a change is detected, the simulator is launched again. This will not open a new simulator window, but will instead reload the game in the existing window.

This behavior is not supported in Linux or Windows, so a workaround is needed. In those platforms, it is possible to use the following command:

npm run simulator -- --watch --recompile-only

This will recompile the project when a change is detected, but the simulator will not be reopened. In order to see the changes, a reload must be triggered from the Lua side.

The package @crankscript/core provides a helper function which can do just that. It will check the latest modified time of "main.pdz" at regular intervals, and if a change is detected, it will reload the game using playdate.file.run.

To use the utility, simply wrap your update function with it.

import { withReload } from '@crankscript/core';
playdate.update = withReload(
    () => {
        // Your update code here
    },
    {
        // It is possible to specify the interval in milliseconds
        interval: 1000, // this is the default interval
    },
);

Please report any issues you encounter.