# Game Maker

A browser-based tool "one step before a game engine": create **assets** (scenes, cameras,
sprites), place them into scenes, tweak their properties in an inspector and press **Play** –
all in one program, all drawn inside a single WebGL canvas.

Live: <https://nockal.com/game-maker/> · Widget playground: <https://nockal.com/game-maker/?playground>

**The documentation is the wiki:** <https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki> – every concept,
node, tab and shortcut, plus the architecture and the development workflow. This file is the short
way in.

## In one screen

- An **asset** is a named, typed thing (scene, camera, sprite, text, behavior, collider, container,
  texture, font, sound, animation, state machine, shader, particles, variables) with properties and
  no position.
- A **scene object** places an asset: position, sparse **overrides** of its properties, an optional
  parent. Only what differs from the asset is stored; the inspector paints it gold and offers ↺ / ↑.
- A **container** is a reusable group edited once and placed many times; its content is resolved
  from the template on every read. A **screen** is a container switched on and off.
- A **behavior** is logic as a node graph, placed like anything else and parented to the object it
  acts on. Play has no built-in behaviour – everything that happens is a graph.
- **Play** runs a throwaway copy of the project; every panel stays usable and Stop brings back
  exactly what was saved.

## Quick start

Node 22 is required.

```bash
npm install
npm run dev          # http://localhost:5175/game-maker/dist/ – API calls are proxied to production
npm run check        # typecheck + lint + format:check + unit tests – the gate CI runs too
npm run build        # writes dist/ and regenerates index.html; the folder is what nginx serves
```

The browser suite and the three example games need a machine with a GPU:

```bash
node tools/seed-e2e.mjs && node tools/e2e.mjs      # the editor, 1009 checks (GM_STEPS=20 for one step)
node tools/seed-jumprun.mjs && node tools/smoke-jumprun.mjs
node tools/seed-tetris.mjs && node tools/smoke-tetris.mjs
node tools/seed-actor.mjs && node tools/smoke-actor.mjs
```

Every push runs all of it on the Gitea runner – the gate as one job, build and suite as another
beside it – so locally take the gate plus the step your change touches and leave the full run to CI. Details, the GPU requirement and the detached runner are in
[Development](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Development).

## Documentation

| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| [Concepts](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Concepts) | Assets, scene objects, overrides, play mode, the camera, the console |
| [Scenes](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Scenes) | The edited scene, the start scene, and switching scenes from a graph |
| [Scene editing](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Scene-editing) | Placing, z-order, hierarchy, the editor offset |
| [Behaviors](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Behaviors) | Node graphs: variables, the node set, structs and lists, loops, nesting, editing |
| [Colliders](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Colliders) | Collision events and blocking movement |
| [Textures](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Textures) | Images, frames, nine-slice, the filter, upload limits |
| [Fonts](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Fonts) | Font assets, the picker, what a text falls back to |
| [Sounds](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Sounds) | Sound assets and `Play sound` |
| [Animations](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Animations) | Animation assets and the Animation tab |
| [Shaders](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Shaders) | Shader graphs a sprite wears, their node set, the properties they declare |
| [Particles](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Particles) | Particle graphs: a particle as a function of its age |
| [State machines](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/State-machines) | The asset, named transitions, `State branch`, `Set state` and `State transition` |
| [Containers](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Containers) | Templates, instances, screens |
| [Keyboard](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Keyboard) | Every shortcut |
| [Architecture](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Architecture) | Stack, source layout, the rules that keep it organised |
| [Development](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Development) | Commands, the e2e suite, the example games, CI |
| [API](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/API) | The PHP JSON API and the project document |

## Ideas, gaps and bugs

They live in the issue tracker: <https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/issues>. What is not
there yet is listed on the wiki's [Home](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki) page.