Global Functions and Types¶

In Lemonate, most classes and functions must be explicitly imported before use, typically using Lua’s require mechanism. For example:

local Vector3 = require 'engine/math/vector3'

This modular approach keeps the global namespace clean and helps avoid naming conflicts, which is particularly important in large codebases or user-generated content scenarios. However, a small set of core types and functions are made available globally by default, without needing to import them.

These globally available elements are fundamental to engine scripting and are frequently used in almost all scripts. Making them global improves ergonomics and reduces repetitive boilerplate, especially for users new to the engine.

The following table lists all global functions and types provided by Lemonate.

Name	Type	Description
`Class`	Type	Base class used for defining custom class types. Supports inheritance and metaclass behavior.
`Entity`	Type	The base type for all scripts. Used to provides basic functionality for scripts like adding properties
`Promise`	Type	An asynchronous task abstraction used for chaining operations, similar to JavaScript Promises.
`Property`	Type	Defines reactive fields on entities that automatically synchronize with the UI
`Console`	Type	Provides logging utilities and access to the developer console. Useful for debugging and diagnostics.
`dump`	Function	Serializes a Lua value (including tables) in a readable format and returns as string. Mainly for debugging.
`printDump`	Function	Like `dump`, but prints the result to the console directly.
`import`	Function	Imports and returns a module, similar to `require`, but used to load a user scripts by a relative path
`await`	Function	Waits for a Promise to resolve. Used to pause execution in asynchronous code blocks