Get Started

Need help getting started?
📺 Check out these video tutorials on YouTube.
🤖 Or chat with the Panels Partner custom GPT.

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Requirements

• Playdate SDK
• Playdate Console (optional)

Setup

From Template Project

1. Clone the Panels Project Template. This is a Template Repo. Click “Use this template” to create your own fresh repo with all the contents of the project template.

2. The template project includes the Panels framework as a git submodule. Be sure to properly initialize the submodule when cloning the repo.

   In most cases the easiest way to this will be to clone with the recurse-submodules option:
   git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/cadin/panels-project-template.git

3. Start editing table in myComicData.lua.

Manual Setup

1. Clone the Panels repo into your project, preferrably into a libraries/panels folder.
2. Inside your main.lua file import Panels.
3. Create or import your comicData table.
4. Start Panels with your comicData table as the sole argument.

Example main.lua File:

import 'libraries/panels/Panels'
local comicData = {
    -- comic data goes here...
}
Panels.start(comicData)

Project Structure

Panels expects to be placed in a folder called libraries within your project source folder.

📁 MyProjectSource
├── 📄 main.lua
├── 📁 audio
├── 📁 images
└── 📁 libraries
    └── 📁 panels

If you need to place Panels somewhere else in your project, you’ll need to update the path setting before starting Panels:

Panels.Settings.path = "frameworks/panels/"
Panels.start(comicData)

Images and Audio

Panels will attempt to load images and audio files from the images and audio folders respectively. These folders can also be changed by altering settings before calling start().