adminandClaude Opus 5.5
4716726b6b
A shader could only say what colour a pixel has. Where the picture is drawn was fixed to the four corners of its rectangle, so nothing could wave, bend or wobble. - The new node Vertex output takes x and y, in pixels of the picture, and moves every corner of the wearer's grid by them. The UVs stay with the corners, so the picture bends along. - Subdivisions on that node says how fine the grid is: cells per axis, 1 to 64, 8 by default. 1 is the plain quad. A shader without the node keeps the quad every sprite shares. - A graph holds one Vertex output at most. UV, Time, Property, Number and the math nodes may feed it, and one node may feed both outputs. - Texture color, Texture alpha, Sample texture, Texture size and Color cannot feed it. The node says "Not available per corner" and the shader does not compile. - Sprites, texts and the preview in the shader tab wear the grid. A nine-slice sprite and particles draw as if the node were not there. - Picking, the selection frame, the size and colliders stay with the rectangle. A wearer with a Vertex output is never culled, as with Padding, and with Padding the grid covers the room around the picture too. - tools/perf-shaders.mjs takes GM_PERF_SUBDIVISIONS to measure a grid against the plain quad. Measured on stein2 (Intel HD 630), frames per second, one run per row: at 800 sprites 58 with a shader on the quad, 46 with 8 cells, 41 with 32. Up to 400 sprites a grid hardly shows. Every sprite holds its own grid. Tests: - Gate on melektaus-atx: 220 files, 3416 tests, CHECK EXIT 0. - 15 new unit tests for the compiler and the grid. - Four new e2e checks in modules 28 and 30: a fixed offset moves the picture, 8 cells bend only the lower half where 1 cell shears it all, Texture alpha is refused at the node, a text moves. - e2e 28,30 on melektaus-atx: 110 checks, all pass. - The e2e total of 1699 is counted (1695 + 4), the full suite did not run. - No counter-probe, no screenshot. Not looked at: the preview, Time in the browser, flipped sprites, Padding together with the grid. 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, 1699 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.