adminandClaude Opus 5.5 5e09ba9a50 Group the asset panel by category, then by type
The asset panel listed one heading per type, 30 of them side by side.
Now the types sit under five categories, and each type heading reads
like its entry in the + menu.

- ASSET_GROUPS replaces ASSET_GROUP_LABELS and gives every type a name
  and a category: Basics, Visuals, Logics, Physics or Audio.
- The categories keep that fixed order. The groups in a category and
  the assets in a group stay sorted by name.
- A category heading folds like a group heading. A project opens with
  every category open and every group folded, as before.
- Selecting an asset unfolds its category and its group. Folding the
  category of the selected asset lets go of the selection.
- The headings are singular now (Scene, Sprite, Sound FX). The old
  plural names only kept them apart from the + menu entries.
- locate looks in the popup layer first. A click by text meant for a
  menu entry hit the heading of the same name, since the panel is drawn
  first. Below an open menu a click only closes the menu anyway.
- New test hook __gm.assetCategories().

Tests:
- Unit asset-groups: 6 green, counter-check (empty categories kept)
  1 red
- e2e 04: ALL PASSED, 63 checks (1 new). Counter-check with locate
  taking the first hit again: 2 red, the click on Behavior created
  no asset
- Gate: CHECK EXIT 0, 261 files, 4040 tests
- The category names got their final plural form after these runs.
  The unit test ran again on them (6 green), e2e 04 did not.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-07 17:59:08 +02:00
2026-09-13 10:35:16 +02:00

Game Maker

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, joint, container, clip area, texture, vector art, pixel art, palette, animation, curve, tile, tilemap, state machine, shader, shader function, 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, 1744 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 runners – 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, joints
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 that sprites, texts, particle fields and cameras wear, their node set, passes, shader functions
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.

S
Description
Browser game maker: Pixi v8 canvas editor with visual behavior graphs, PHP API
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