Defold IntelliJ Plugin

Build Defold games directly inside IntelliJ IDEA. This plugin focuses on the authoring and debugging workflows so you can write Lua, navigate code, and launch the game engine without leaving the IDE.

Features

• 📁 Project awareness – Detects Defold workspaces and keeps paths in sync.
• 🧠 Smart Lua editing – EmmyLua2 + LSP4IJ provide completion, annotations, syntax highlighting, linting, navigation, refactors, and other editor goodies for your Lua scripts.
• 📄 Script templates – Create scripts from IntelliJ with the expected boilerplate.
• 🪲 Debugger – Full mobdebug experience without starting the Defold editor: breakpoints, run-to-cursor, expression evaluation, watches, inline values, call stacks, and coroutine support.
• 🚀 Build + Run + Debug – Trigger clean, build, run, and debug from IntelliJ with automatic engine launching and port management.
• 🔥 Hot reloading – Reflect changes to Lua scripts with a simple hotkey.
• 🖥️ Multi-platform – Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Requirements

• IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2 or newer
• Java 17+ (JDK or JRE)

Usage

The plugin auto-detects the project, configures toolchains, and generates the .luarc.json file needed for LuaLS.

No manual setup is required. Just open your Defold project through File | Open, and you're good to go 🖖

A few things to keep in mind:

• This plugin is primarily focused on coding and debugging. Keep using the official Defold editor for the rest of your workflow.
• For syntax highlighting, no need to maintain manually downloaded annotation files. The plugin manages LuaLS configuration automatically—just leave the generated .luarc.json in place.
• For debugging, you do not need to sprinkle mobdebug snippets across the code. The plugin manages that for you. In fact, keeping code like mobdebug.start() in your project will trigger an error.

Dependencies

The plugin depends on other open-source IntelliJ plugins to deliver Lua editing, language server support, and asset helpers. They are downloaded automatically when you install the Defold plugin:

• EmmyLua2 – Lua language support, annotations, syntax highlighting, code completion, and more.
• LSP4IJ – Language Server Protocol client.
• OpenGL Plugin – shader syntax highlighting used by Defold resources.
• INI4Idea – .ini editing utilities for game.project.
• Defold Annotations – LuaLS-compatible annotations for Defold API.

Open Files from Defold Editor

To open script files from the Defold Editor directly in IntelliJ IDEA, first locate the IDE's installation path.

Then, head to Defold Editor's File | Preferences | Code and update the fields as follows (macOS example):

Set these parameters to open specific files and lines:

• Open File: . {file}
• Open File at Line: . --line {line} {file}

The . character here is required to open the entire workspace, not an individual file.