A sprite's inspector listed its rows but never showed what they add up to. The picture, its frame, nine-slice, tint and shader could only be judged in the scene, often far from the object being edited. - SpritePreview draws the sprite through syncSpriteMesh, the function the scene draws it with. Slices, padding, tint and shader come out the same without a second path. syncSpriteMesh now takes only the three fields of a DrawItem it reads. - The subject is resolved by previewPicture from the Shader tab, so a placed sprite shows its own overrides. - previewFit is the rule for size and place: whole device pixels per unit from 1 on, at most 8, and the corner on a whole device pixel. Pixel art stays sharp. A sprite larger than the group shrinks freely. - A shader with a Time node keeps the preview redrawing once a frame while it is on screen. A folded group or a hidden panel stops it. - New test hook __gm.inspectorSpritePreview(). Finding: the preview redrew on a model change in a microtask at first. A drawn picture whose revision moved on is retried once, in a microtask queued by the scene's synchronous redraw. That retry ran before the preview had let go, and the old pixel art sheet stayed waiting (e2e 48l-iii read waiting [1,1,1]). The preview now redraws at once on a model change, as the scene does. Tests: - unit: 238 files, 3592 tests (+5 in preview-fit.test.ts), and the group list of a placed sprite in sections.test.ts ends in PREVIEW - e2e 48: ALL PASSED, 47 checks (+2: 48l-i asset preview with the frame, 48l-iii placed preview with its shader values) - counter-checks: without whole-pixel zoom 2 unit tests fail; with the microtask redraw 48l-iii fails with waiting [1,1,1] Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
97 lines
7.0 KiB
Markdown
97 lines
7.0 KiB
Markdown
# Game Maker
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[](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/actions?workflow=ci.yml)
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A browser-based tool "one step before a game engine": create **assets** (scenes, cameras,
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sprites), place them into scenes, tweak their properties in an inspector and press **Play** –
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all in one program, all drawn inside a single WebGL canvas.
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Live: <https://nockal.com/game-maker/> · Widget playground: <https://nockal.com/game-maker/?playground>
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**The documentation is the wiki:** <https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki> – every concept,
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node, tab and shortcut, plus the architecture and the development workflow. This file is the short
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way in.
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## In one screen
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- An **asset** is a named, typed thing (scene, camera, sprite, text, behavior, variables, struct,
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collider, rigidbody, joint, container, clip area, texture, vector art, pixel art, palette,
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animation, curve, tile, tilemap, state machine, shader, shader function, font, sound, particles)
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with properties and no position.
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- A **scene object** places an asset: position, sparse **overrides** of its properties, an optional
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parent. Only what differs from the asset is stored; the inspector paints it gold and offers ↺ / ↑.
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- A **container** is a reusable group edited once and placed many times; its content is resolved
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from the template on every read. A **screen** is a container switched on and off.
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- A **behavior** is logic as a node graph, placed like anything else and parented to the object it
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acts on. Play has no built-in behaviour – everything that happens is a graph.
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- An **account** owns projects: the editor asks for a user name and a password first, and each
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account sees only its own projects. The Account menu at the far right of the toolbar changes
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the password and signs out.
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- **Play** runs a throwaway copy of the project; every panel stays usable and Stop brings back
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exactly what was saved. **Release…** shares a link that plays the saved game on its own, without
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the editor and without signing in.
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## Quick start
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Node 22 is required.
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```bash
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npm install
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npm run dev # http://localhost:5175/game-maker/dist/ – API calls are proxied to production
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npm run check # typecheck + lint + format:check + unit tests – the gate CI runs too
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npm run build # writes dist/ and regenerates index.html; the folder is what nginx serves
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```
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The browser suite and the three example games need a machine with a GPU:
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```bash
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node tools/seed-e2e.mjs && node tools/e2e.mjs # the editor, 1744 checks (GM_STEPS=20 for one step)
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# every tool signs in first – see the Accounts page
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node tools/seed-jumprun.mjs && node tools/smoke-jumprun.mjs
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node tools/seed-tetris.mjs && node tools/smoke-tetris.mjs
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node tools/seed-actor.mjs && node tools/smoke-actor.mjs
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```
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Every push runs all of it on the Gitea runners – the gate as one job, build and suite as another
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beside it – so locally take the gate plus the step your change touches and leave the full run to
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CI. Details, the GPU requirement and the detached runner are in
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[Development](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Development).
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## Documentation
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| Page | What it covers |
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|---|---|
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| [Concepts](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Concepts) | Assets, scene objects, overrides, play mode, the camera, the console |
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| [Accounts](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Accounts) | Signing in and out, the accounts, who a project belongs to, what the check tools need |
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| [Scenes](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Scenes) | The edited scene, the start scene, and switching scenes from a graph |
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| [Scene editing](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Scene-editing) | Placing, z-order, hierarchy, the editor offset |
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| [Behaviors](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Behaviors) | Node graphs: variables, the node set, structs and lists, loops, nesting, editing |
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| [Structs](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Structs) | Struct assets: a named shape that struct variables, fields and `Pack`/`Expand` follow |
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| [Colliders](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Colliders) | Shapes (box, circle, capsule, polygon), collision events, blocking movement, one-way colliders and raycasts |
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| [Physics](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Physics) | Rigidbodies, the collider material, gravity, the fixed step, joints |
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| [Textures](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Textures) | Images, frames, nine-slice, the filter, upload limits |
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| [Vector art](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Vector-Art) | Pictures drawn from shapes: the pen, curves, gradients and texture fills, combining shapes |
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| [Pixel art](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Pixel-Art) | Pictures painted pixel by pixel: the palette, the tools, layers and frames |
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| [Fonts](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Fonts) | Font assets, the picker, what a text falls back to |
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| [Sounds](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Sounds) | Sound assets and `Play sound` |
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| [Animations](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Animations) | Animation assets and the Animation tab |
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| [Curves](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Curves) | Easings drawn by hand, the Curve tab, using one on a key or a `Lerp` |
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| [Shaders](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Shaders) | Shader graphs that sprites, texts, particle fields and cameras wear, their node set, passes, shader functions |
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| [Particles](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Particles) | Particle graphs: a particle as a function of its age |
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| [State machines](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/State-machines) | The asset, named transitions, `State branch`, `Set state` and `State transition` |
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| [Containers](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Containers) | Templates, instances, screens |
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| [Tiles](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Tiles) | The tile asset, plain tiles and the two autotile kinds, the pictures as animation steps, the Tile tab |
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| [Tilemaps](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Tilemaps) | The tilemap asset, painting in the scene view, layers, what it looks like in the game |
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| [Plugins](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Plugins) | Extending the editor: the plugin file, how it is loaded, switching one on and off, API v1 |
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| [Keyboard](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Keyboard) | Every shortcut |
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| [Architecture](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Architecture) | Stack, source layout, the rules that keep it organised |
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| [Development](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Development) | Commands, the e2e suite, the example games, CI |
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| [API](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/API) | The PHP JSON API and the project document |
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## Ideas, gaps and bugs
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They live in the issue tracker: <https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/issues>. What is not
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there yet is listed on the wiki's [Home](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki) page.
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