Export Globals

The tstl-export-to-global plugin is used to allow the export function to emulate the expected behavior of "exports" in a Defold game script.

The init, on_input, on_message, on_reload, update, fixed_update, and final functions are executed on each game script by the Defold game engine. Each of those functions are expected to be defined in the file scope of the game script for the game engine to execute them.

To adhere to these requirements, the tstl-export-to-global plugin will hoist all exports to the global scope of the file.

{
    "name": "tstl-export-to-global",
    "match": ".*\\..*script.ts$"
}

By default this behavior is configured to only operate on .*script.ts files and can be customized by modifying the RegExRegEx - Regular Expression A PCRE compatible Regular Expression statement in the "match" configuration option.

UserData Sugar

The @ts-defold/userdata-sugar plugin is used to allow the ... spread operator syntax in array like objects used in the Defold APIAPI - Application Programming Interface Computing interface which defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries.

Some of Defold's game objects are Lua UserData objects that define metamethods of __index and __len that allow them to be treated like an array.

Types defined as Array<T> & LuaUserdata in the @ts-defold/types package are transformed to allow the ... spread operator in arrays. This does not come without some cost though, so be certain you want to copy the array data and not just needlessly putting sugar on all the things.

Trim Extensions

The tstl-trim-extensions plugin is used to strip the ".lua" extension from output files to fit Defold's naming convention. For example, player.script.ts will become player.script instead of player.script.lua.

Third-Party Plugins

You may find other useful TSTL plugins on npm.