doodle-ui 1.2.4

Hardware-accelerated DOM-based UI & 2D Game Engine

Doodle Engine

Hardware-Accelerated Hybrid C-Python UI & 2D Game Engine

Build games, creative tools, and interactive apps using HTML-like layouts, CSS styling, and Python scripting — all rendered natively on the GPU.

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Doodle is a high-performance, lightweight engine that combines a native C rendering core (powered by Raylib) with a highly reactive Python scripting layer. Instead of embedding a browser, Doodle parses HTML-like templates and CSS stylesheets in a single pass, mapping them directly to GPU-accelerated graphics, procedural audio, and real-time collision systems.

✨ Key Features

Category	Features
Rendering	GPU-accelerated 2D drawing, rounded rectangles, circles, lines, images, custom GLSL shaders, particle system
Layout	Flexbox engine (row/column, justify-content, align-items), absolute positioning, percentage/pixel/grow/fit sizing
Styling	Full CSS property system, hover states, dynamic runtime style changes, custom fonts, border-radius, opacity
Input	Keyboard polling (down/pressed), mouse position/buttons/wheel/cursor, node click & hover detection
Audio	Polyphonic procedural synthesizer (5 waveforms, ADSR envelopes, stereo panning, pitch slide, vibrato, tremolo, low-pass filter), cached sound/music files
Collision	Rect-Rect, Circle-Circle, Circle-Rect detection, class-group collision queries, batch collision processing
Animation	Tween engine with easing curves (linear, quad_in, quad_out)
Scripting	Full Python OOP node wrappers, property accessors (node.x += 10), reactive {{ template }} data binding
Dev Tools	Built-in FPS/draw-call/RAM profiler, runtime Python console (~ key), hot-reload for layout, styles, and shaders
Memory & Perf	Linked-list memory arenas, O(1) hash cache lookup, Trigonometry LUT, FBO render bypass, 90% reduced node layout structs
DX	camelCase + snake_case dual API, full .pyi type stubs for IDE autocomplete, descriptive error messages with layout line numbers

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🚀 Getting Started

Requirements

• OS: Windows (x64) or Linux
• Python: 3.11+
• C Toolchain: MSYS2/MinGW-w64 (Windows) or GCC (Linux)

Quick Setup

# Clone and enter the repository
git clone https://github.com/user/Doodle.git
cd Doodle

# Create virtual environment
python -m venv .venv

# Compile the native C extension
# Windows (PowerShell):
.venv\Scripts\python.exe setup.py build_ext --inplace

# Linux:
.venv/bin/python setup.py build_ext --inplace

Run the Breakout Demo

# Windows:
.venv\Scripts\python.exe examples\breakout\main.py

# Linux:
.venv/bin/python examples/breakout/main.py

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📖 How It Works

Doodle apps are built with three files:

1. layout.html — Define your UI structure

<view id="app">
    <view id="hud">
        <text id="score">SCORE: {{ score }}</text>
        <text id="lives">LIVES: {{ lives }}</text>
    </view>
    <view id="game-area" camera="true">
        <view id="player"></view>
        <view id="ball"></view>
        <circle id="coin" radius="12" color="#facc15"></circle>
    </view>
    <view id="game-over" style="display: none;">
        <text id="msg">GAME OVER</text>
        <button id="restart-btn" onclick="restart">RESTART</button>
    </view>
</view>

2. styles.css — Style everything with familiar CSS

#app {
    flex-direction: column;
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    background-color: #0a0a0a;
}

#hud {
    flex-direction: row;
    justify-content: space-between;
    padding: 12 24;
    background-color: #111;
    font-size: 18;
    color: #00ffcc;
}

#player {
    width: 80px;
    height: 16px;
    background-color: #00ffcc;
    border-radius: 4;
}

#ball {
    width: 16px;
    height: 16px;
    background-color: #ffffff;
    border-radius: 8;
}

3. main.py — Script your logic in Python

import doodle

state = {"score": 0, "lives": 3}

player = doodle.getNode("player")
ball = doodle.getNode("ball")

ball_dx, ball_dy = 5.0, -5.0

def tick():
    global ball_dx, ball_dy

    # Move player with keyboard
    if doodle.isKeyDown(263):  # Left arrow
        player.x -= 8
    if doodle.isKeyDown(262):  # Right arrow
        player.x += 8

    # Move ball
    ball.x += ball_dx
    ball.y += ball_dy

    # Bounce off paddle
    if doodle.checkCollision("ball", "player"):
        ball_dy = -abs(ball_dy)
        doodle.playSynth(440.0, 0.1, doodle.WAVE_SQUARE)
        doodle.shakeCamera(4.0, 0.15)
        doodle.spawnParticles(ball.x, ball.y, 15, "#00ffcc", 3.0, 0.4)

doodle.registerTickCallback(tick)
doodle.run(layout="layout.html", style="styles.css", width=800, height=600, state=state)

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🎮 Python API Overview

Engine Lifecycle

doodle.run(layout, style, width, height, title, state)  # Start the engine
doodle.registerTickCallback(fn)                          # Per-frame update function

Node Manipulation (OOP)

node = doodle.getNode("player")    # Get a node wrapper

node.x += 10                       # Direct position access
node.y = 300
node.position = (100, 200)         # Tuple assignment
node.width = 80                    # Resize via CSS
node.text = "Hello!"               # Update inner text
node.visible = False               # Hide from rendering
node.show() / node.hide()          # Visibility methods
node.style.background_color = "red"  # Dynamic CSS properties

Input

doodle.isKeyDown(key_code)          # Held key check
doodle.isKeyPressed(key_code)       # Single-frame press
doodle.getMousePosition()           # (x, y) tuple
doodle.isMouseButtonPressed(0)      # Left click
doodle.isNodeClicked("btn")         # Click detection on DOM node
doodle.isNodeHovered("btn")         # Hover detection on DOM node

Collision Detection

doodle.checkCollision("a", "b")              # Rect/Circle aware
doodle.getFirstCollision("ball", "bricks")   # Class group query
doodle.batchProcess(positions={...}, collisions=[...])  # Batched C call

Audio

doodle.playSound("sfx/hit.wav")                              # Cached WAV/OGG playback
doodle.playSynth(frequency, duration, wave_type=1, attack=0.01, decay=0.05, sustain=0.5, release=0.05, frequency_slide=0.0, vibrato_speed=0.0, vibrato_depth=0.0, tremolo_speed=0.0, tremolo_depth=0.0, filter_cutoff=0.0, pan=0.0) # Synthesizer
# Waveforms: WAVE_SINE=0, WAVE_SQUARE=1, WAVE_TRIANGLE=2, WAVE_SAWTOOTH=3, WAVE_NOISE=4

Effects

doodle.spawnParticles(x, y, count, color_hex, speed, lifetime)  # Particle burst
doodle.shakeCamera(intensity, duration)                         # Screen shake
doodle.animate("node", target_x=100, duration=0.5, ease="quad_out")  # Tweens

Camera

doodle.setCamera(target_x, target_y, offset_x, offset_y, zoom, rotation)

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🔧 Developer Tools

Press ~ (tilde) at runtime to open the built-in developer console. Execute Python commands live:

>>> getNode("ball").x += 100
>>> spawnParticles(400, 300, 50, "#ff0", 5.0, 1.0)

The profiler overlay shows FPS, draw calls, particle count, and CPU time per frame.

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📁 Repository Structure

Doodle/
├── doodle/                    # Python package
│   ├── __init__.py            # OOP wrappers, tweens, events, templates
│   ├── __init__.pyi           # Full type stubs for IDE autocomplete
│   └── cli.py                 # PyInstaller packaging CLI
├── src/                       # C extension core (compiles to _doodle.pyd)
│   ├── expose_raylib.c        # CPython bindings, main loop, particles
│   ├── mparser.h / .c         # DOM tree, node pool, hash-table lookup
│   ├── html_parser.h / .c     # Single-pass HTML parser with line tracking
│   ├── css_parser.h / .c      # CSS parser with functional registry pattern
│   ├── layout.h / .c          # Flexbox layout solver
│   ├── renderer.h / .c        # GPU draw traversal, shaders, z-sorting
│   ├── daudio.h / .c          # Polyphonic synth, ADSR envelope generator
│   ├── particles.h / .c       # Object-pooled particle system
│   ├── profiler.h / .c        # FPS counter, draw call tracker, dev console
│   ├── cache.h / .c           # Texture, sound, shader, font caching
│   ├── color.h / .c           # Hex/named color parser
│   ├── unit.h / .c            # CSS unit parser (px, %, grow, fit)
│   ├── string_utils.h / .c    # String trimming and helpers
│   └── dom_utils.h / .c       # Tree traversal utilities
├── examples/                  # Demo applications
│   └── breakout/              # Breakout game with CRT shader
├── docs/                      # Documentation
│   ├── getting-started.md     # Installation & first app tutorial
│   ├── api-reference.md       # Complete API reference
│   ├── layout-and-styling.md  # HTML tags & CSS properties guide
│   ├── architecture.md        # Engine internals & C architecture
│   └── cheatsheet.md          # Quick reference card
├── third_party/               # Static Raylib binaries
├── setup.py                   # Build script
├── pyproject.toml             # Package metadata
└── README.md                  # You are here!

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⚡ Performance

Doodle is engineered for speed with several custom optimizations:

• Hash-table node lookup — O(1) average case for FindNodeById instead of tree traversal
• Object-pooled particles — Pre-allocated particle array, no runtime allocation
• Batched C calls — batchProcess() combines position/text/visibility/collision updates into one Python→C roundtrip
• Fast math — SSE3 intrinsics, cached inverse values for division elimination, direct phase-boundary square waves
• Precompiled templates — {{ score }} compiles once to Python {score} format strings
• Lazy layout — Layout recomputation only when layout_dirty flag is set

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📄 License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.