Does Phaser need to have a canvas in order to run?

[Lutcikaur]

I was wondering if phaser will start a game without a canvas to render to. Trying to prototype a client/server architecture and I plan on using node.js and either socket.io or sock.js with express+jade. I was looking between this and a few other html5 engines to test it on, but most of the others hadn't had too much documentation on it, and I've already grown a bit attached to phaser with a nice base movement system that's ready for socket.io. I'm also keen on phaser because this forum is semi active. I'm about to start fiddling with it now that I'm a bit familiar with it, but I figured id poke my head in here and ask while i'm looking.

 

Thanks in advance.

[rich]

Technically this should be possible, we already have a HEADLESS render type, but it still needs a canvas to initialise at the moment. We'll look into evolving it further in the future, but it's not a huge priority I'm afraid, so for now you'd have to hack it around yourself.

[Lutcikaur]

Yea. Almost immediately after I posted, I went into the docs and found Phaser.HEADLESS, but couldn't edit my post or respond to it because of the first post verification. Now my goal is to get it to run alone in a .js file (because I don't know how js version of C's #include<> works, which looks like i need to figure out JQuery for that to work)

[Elyx0]

So does Phaser HEADLESS still requires a canvas to run the physics ? It would be great to run in node.

[valueerror]

rich said in his post above: "we already have a HEADLESS render type, but it still needs a canvas to initialise at the moment"

[Lutcikaur]

He necro'd my old post from a year ago. Other than that : here's someone else's experience with node+phaser