adminandClaude Opus 5.5
2ff3a78607
A vector drawing was one flat list of shapes. With many shapes the list got hard to read, and several shapes could not be kept or moved together. Now the shapes stand on layers, as in pixel art, and can be put into groups that nest. - A drawing has layers, each with a name and an eye. A hidden layer is neither in the tab nor in the picture a sprite wears, and its shapes cannot be pressed. One layer is the one worked on: the pen and Add shape draw onto it, and SHAPES lists what is on it. - The inspector has a list LAYERS over the shapes. Its plus adds a layer, the cross on a row removes it with all on it, the last one stays. A double-click renames, a drag sorts. - Group (Ctrl+G) puts the selected shapes into a group, Ungroup (Ctrl+Shift+G) takes it away. A group stands over its rows in the list, the rows one step in, and a row is dragged into a group or out of it. - In the tab a press on a shape takes its outermost group, and a drag moves the group as one undo step. - The model has layers with a tree of shapes and groups instead of a flat shapes array. The rules are pure functions in core/model/vectorTree.ts. A drawing saved before opens with all its shapes on one layer. - SortableList takes rows with a depth and drops into a tree. The flat lists of tilemap and pixel art run as before. Decided here: - A group has no transformation of its own and cannot be hidden or locked. Rotating and scaling is the follow-up #291. - A group is never empty: the one that loses its last shape goes with it. - Several selected shapes are dragged together, grouped or not, and a click on a shape of the selection keeps the selection. This is what #217 asked for. - Shift+click selects like Ctrl+click. With Select, Shift pans only beside the shapes, as in the scene view. The middle button pans anywhere, and with the pen and Paint Shift pans as before. - A row of the list picks one shape of a group alone. - Shapes change their layer through a row Layer in the inspector, which is there from two layers on. Rows are not dragged between layers. - A group cannot span two layers, the button is off then. - The pen does not draw onto a hidden layer, the hint says so. - Groups are always shown unfolded. - The four order buttons work inside the own group or layer. Tests: - Gate: 204 files, 3067 tests (3008 + 59), exit 0 - e2e 47,48: 108 checks. e2e 39,40,47,48 before the Shift change: 209 checks. No full run, the sum of 1645 (1639 + 6) is reckoned and CI measures it. - 59 unit tests: 36 in tests/core/vector-tree.test.ts, 23 in tests/editor/vector-layers.test.ts - Six e2e checks with a real mouse in block 47j - 47 unit counter-probes for layers and groups and three for the Shift click all fail tests, run on stein2 - Three browser counter-probes fail their checks - Two screenshots looked at (group in the list, hidden layer) - Only unit tested: the row Layer, sorting and removing layers, copying a group, the Shift pan beside the shapes Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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, variables, struct, collider, rigidbody, container, clip area, texture, vector art, pixel art, palette, animation, curve, tile, tilemap, state machine, shader, font, sound, particles) 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.
- An account owns projects: the editor asks for a user name and a password first, and each account sees only its own projects. The Account menu at the far right of the toolbar changes the password and signs out.
- Play runs a throwaway copy of the project; every panel stays usable and Stop brings back exactly what was saved. Release… shares a link that plays the saved game on its own, without the editor and without signing in.
Quick start
Node 22 is required.
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:
node tools/seed-e2e.mjs && node tools/e2e.mjs # the editor, 1645 checks (GM_STEPS=20 for one step)
# every tool signs in first – see the Accounts page
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.
Documentation
| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Concepts | Assets, scene objects, overrides, play mode, the camera, the console |
| Accounts | Signing in and out, the accounts, who a project belongs to, what the check tools need |
| Scenes | The edited scene, the start scene, and switching scenes from a graph |
| Scene editing | Placing, z-order, hierarchy, the editor offset |
| Behaviors | Node graphs: variables, the node set, structs and lists, loops, nesting, editing |
| Structs | Struct assets: a named shape that struct variables, fields and Pack/Expand follow |
| Colliders | Shapes (box, circle, capsule, polygon), collision events, blocking movement, one-way colliders and raycasts |
| Physics | Rigidbodies, the collider material, gravity, the fixed step |
| Textures | Images, frames, nine-slice, the filter, upload limits |
| Vector art | Pictures drawn from shapes: the pen, curves, gradients and texture fills, combining shapes |
| Pixel art | Pictures painted pixel by pixel: the palette, the tools, layers and frames |
| Fonts | Font assets, the picker, what a text falls back to |
| Sounds | Sound assets and Play sound |
| Animations | Animation assets and the Animation tab |
| Curves | Easings drawn by hand, the Curve tab, using one on a key or a Lerp |
| Shaders | Shader graphs a sprite wears, their node set, the properties they declare |
| Particles | Particle graphs: a particle as a function of its age |
| State machines | The asset, named transitions, State branch, Set state and State transition |
| Containers | Templates, instances, screens |
| Tiles | The tile asset, plain tiles and the two autotile kinds, the pictures as animation steps, the Tile tab |
| Tilemaps | The tilemap asset, painting in the scene view, layers, what it looks like in the game |
| Plugins | Extending the editor: the plugin file, how it is loaded, switching one on and off, API v1 |
| Keyboard | Every shortcut |
| Architecture | Stack, source layout, the rules that keep it organised |
| Development | Commands, the e2e suite, the example games, CI |
| 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 page.