Copy of Introduction to PlayCanvas

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Terminology

Pack - A level or scene.
Entity - A thing in your game.
Component - Adds behavior to an entity.
Attribute - A property of a component.

Ray Casting

Visibility checks
Lasers
Character controllers

checkGround: function () {
    var start = this.entity.getPosition();
    var end = start.clone();
    end.y -= 1.1;
    this.onGround = false;

    // Fire ray straight down to just below the bottom of rigid body
    // If it hits something, the character is on the ground
    context.systems.rigidbody.raycastFirst(start, end, function (res) {
        this.onGround = true;
    }.bind(this));
}

Contact Detection

Useful for triggering events
e.g. audio, particles

        initialize: function () {
            this.entity.collision.on('collisionstart', this.onHit, this);
        },
        
        onHit: function (result) {
            var a = this.entity;
            var b = result.other;
            console.log(a.getName() + ' has touched ' + b.getName());
        }

Format	Chrome	Firefox	IE	Opera	Safari
WAVE, PCM	✔	✔	✘	✔	✔
WebM, Vorbis	✔	✔	✘	✔	✘
Ogg, Vorbis	✔	✔	✘	✔	✘
MP4, MP3	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
MP4, AAC	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔

Controlling Audio from Script

Example 1: trigger audio on some event

update: function (dt) {
    if (context.keyboard.wasPressed(pc.input.KEY_SPACE) && onGround) {
        this.entity.audiosource.play('jump_sound');
    }
}

Example 2: modify audio source properties over time

update: function (dt) {
    this.timer += dt;
    this.entity.audiosource.volume = Math.sin(this.timer) * 0.5 + 0.5;
}

Finding Content

List of Resources