Typescript to Lua for TIC-80

Base project for writing TIC-80 games in Typescript by transpiling to Lua.

Utilizes TypeScriptToLua

Running the Project

In tsconfig.json, the "files" config determines what is transpiled to Lua. You will need to adjust this to include the files you want to transpile when you run tstl.

You can run this project with either:

pnpm run build
# or
npx tstl

Watch mode

Or, you can run in watch mode to automatically transpile when files are changed:

pnpm run dev
# or
npx tstl --watch

Bundling

In development no bundling is needed. Using the typescript import function will generate lua code utilizing the require function. TIC-80 will find the file being imported via require in the current directory.

In production or when wanting to run the application without being in the same directory as the source files, it is recommended to use TQ-Bundler to bundle the application into a single file. To use TQ-Bundler, replace the require function in lua code with include statements.

-- Lua syntax
include "macros" -- will look for ./macros.lua
include "tools.utils" -- ./tools/utils.lua

TQ-Bundler will replace the include statements with the contents of the file being included. Follow instructions in the TQ-Bundler repository to install and use.

Minification

Included in the scripts folder is a script to minify the lua code. This is not required, but can be used to reduce the size of the lua code. To use, run node scripts/minify.js <path to lua file>. This will create a new file with the same name as the original file in the dist folder, but with .min.lua appended to the end.

Note: Comments will not be included in minified code. Therefore, TIC-80 metadata will not be included. This can be added back in manually.

This is largely untested and may not work as expected for TIC-80 specific API code. You can also try using TQ-Bundler to bundle the application and minify the bundled file.