adminandClaude Opus 5 60d0146bde The topbar is icons only: the leading Project dropdown, the Scene picker and the labelled Play/Pause buttons are gone and in their place stand five icon buttons - menu, undo, redo on the left, play and pause in the middle - while Notice, the save state, fps and the Account menu keep the right side; the Play button swaps its icon for a stop square while the project runs and Pause swaps for a second play sign while it is held (Button.setIcon()), and iconSpace() drops the gap between icon and label when a button has no label, which is what kept a 24 px icon button 3 px off its own centre; the menu carries New project, Open project..., a separator and Project settings..., where the picker (src/editor/OpenProjectDialog.ts) preselects the open project and marks it "open", opens on a double click and puts Delete on the left of Cancel and Open - it closes itself before it asks whether to delete, because two modals on top of each other would have left the question standing over a list it no longer speaks about - and the settings dialog (src/editor/ProjectSettingsDialog.ts) holds the name, the "Play starts" switch (Start scene / Active scene, a preference of this browser and so no command) and the collision layers from #152, which retires CollisionLayersDialog.ts and the "Collision layers..." entry; what Apply actually writes is the pure function settingsChanges(), so renaming and the layers are each their own undo step and each drop out when nothing differs; the Scene dropdown falls away without replacement, the active scene is switched by double clicking it in the Assets panel, which is the way that was there anyway; new module 46 runs last with 9 checks (no label left in the bar, the run buttons in edit mode, the four menu entries, the picker with the open project preselected, Cancel leaving the project standing, the settings dialog on the state of the project, renaming with undo and redo through the icon buttons) and it neither opens nor deletes a project, because that would pull the project out from under every earlier module; modules 8, 18 and 35 and the harness follow the new bar, 6 unit tests cover settingsChanges and 3 the icons (#183)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-09-20 16:34:14 +02:00
Plugins belong to the project, and they load before it: the project file gained the field plugins: ["demo-plugin.js"] (default empty, no formatVersion bump), the Plugins tab's switch writes into it as an ordinary undo step (SetPluginActiveCommand) instead of into a server-wide plugins.json, and the start order is turned around - startPlugins only fetches the list of files, then editor.boot() runs and ProjectStore.load(id, prepare) hands the raw JSON through before it is deserialized, where pluginsOf(raw) reads the list and PluginManager.syncTo() activates exactly those; that is the point of the issue, because what a plugin registers has to stand there before normalizeGraph would throw it away as unknown (#126, #127), a project switch first stops what the new project does not name and then starts what it does, a file the server does not have is passed over silently, and after signing out the manager is dead so a late event cannot start anything in a torn-down session; on the server plugins.json, PluginStore::setActive, isActive, the route PUT ?r=plugins/{file} and the 403 for inactive modules are gone and GET ?r=plugins only answers {file,bytes,updatedAt}, which makes every plugin file fetchable - the consequence accepted in #117, written down in the wiki for #115 and #116; publishPlugins(root) only copies files now, the seeder switches the demo plugin on in the fixture project, and the Plugins tab carries a puzzle piece as its icon while only a plugin's own tab still goes without one (the knob and the socket are cubic curves, not arcs, which Pixi's parser draws as a spike after an L); 3 new e2e checks in module 38 and 5 new unit tests cover the project as the owner of the switch, its undo, the order, pluginsOf against crude input and an unknown file name (#119)
2026-09-20 14:24:27 +02:00
The topbar is icons only: the leading Project dropdown, the Scene picker and the labelled Play/Pause buttons are gone and in their place stand five icon buttons - menu, undo, redo on the left, play and pause in the middle - while Notice, the save state, fps and the Account menu keep the right side; the Play button swaps its icon for a stop square while the project runs and Pause swaps for a second play sign while it is held (Button.setIcon()), and iconSpace() drops the gap between icon and label when a button has no label, which is what kept a 24 px icon button 3 px off its own centre; the menu carries New project, Open project..., a separator and Project settings..., where the picker (src/editor/OpenProjectDialog.ts) preselects the open project and marks it "open", opens on a double click and puts Delete on the left of Cancel and Open - it closes itself before it asks whether to delete, because two modals on top of each other would have left the question standing over a list it no longer speaks about - and the settings dialog (src/editor/ProjectSettingsDialog.ts) holds the name, the "Play starts" switch (Start scene / Active scene, a preference of this browser and so no command) and the collision layers from #152, which retires CollisionLayersDialog.ts and the "Collision layers..." entry; what Apply actually writes is the pure function settingsChanges(), so renaming and the layers are each their own undo step and each drop out when nothing differs; the Scene dropdown falls away without replacement, the active scene is switched by double clicking it in the Assets panel, which is the way that was there anyway; new module 46 runs last with 9 checks (no label left in the bar, the run buttons in edit mode, the four menu entries, the picker with the open project preselected, Cancel leaving the project standing, the settings dialog on the state of the project, renaming with undo and redo through the icon buttons) and it neither opens nor deletes a project, because that would pull the project out from under every earlier module; modules 8, 18 and 35 and the harness follow the new bar, 6 unit tests cover settingsChanges and 3 the icons (#183)
2026-09-20 16:34:14 +02:00
The topbar is icons only: the leading Project dropdown, the Scene picker and the labelled Play/Pause buttons are gone and in their place stand five icon buttons - menu, undo, redo on the left, play and pause in the middle - while Notice, the save state, fps and the Account menu keep the right side; the Play button swaps its icon for a stop square while the project runs and Pause swaps for a second play sign while it is held (Button.setIcon()), and iconSpace() drops the gap between icon and label when a button has no label, which is what kept a 24 px icon button 3 px off its own centre; the menu carries New project, Open project..., a separator and Project settings..., where the picker (src/editor/OpenProjectDialog.ts) preselects the open project and marks it "open", opens on a double click and puts Delete on the left of Cancel and Open - it closes itself before it asks whether to delete, because two modals on top of each other would have left the question standing over a list it no longer speaks about - and the settings dialog (src/editor/ProjectSettingsDialog.ts) holds the name, the "Play starts" switch (Start scene / Active scene, a preference of this browser and so no command) and the collision layers from #152, which retires CollisionLayersDialog.ts and the "Collision layers..." entry; what Apply actually writes is the pure function settingsChanges(), so renaming and the layers are each their own undo step and each drop out when nothing differs; the Scene dropdown falls away without replacement, the active scene is switched by double clicking it in the Assets panel, which is the way that was there anyway; new module 46 runs last with 9 checks (no label left in the bar, the run buttons in edit mode, the four menu entries, the picker with the open project preselected, Cancel leaving the project standing, the settings dialog on the state of the project, renaming with undo and redo through the icon buttons) and it neither opens nor deletes a project, because that would pull the project out from under every earlier module; modules 8, 18 and 35 and the harness follow the new bar, 6 unit tests cover settingsChanges and 3 the icons (#183)
2026-09-20 16:34:14 +02:00
The topbar is icons only: the leading Project dropdown, the Scene picker and the labelled Play/Pause buttons are gone and in their place stand five icon buttons - menu, undo, redo on the left, play and pause in the middle - while Notice, the save state, fps and the Account menu keep the right side; the Play button swaps its icon for a stop square while the project runs and Pause swaps for a second play sign while it is held (Button.setIcon()), and iconSpace() drops the gap between icon and label when a button has no label, which is what kept a 24 px icon button 3 px off its own centre; the menu carries New project, Open project..., a separator and Project settings..., where the picker (src/editor/OpenProjectDialog.ts) preselects the open project and marks it "open", opens on a double click and puts Delete on the left of Cancel and Open - it closes itself before it asks whether to delete, because two modals on top of each other would have left the question standing over a list it no longer speaks about - and the settings dialog (src/editor/ProjectSettingsDialog.ts) holds the name, the "Play starts" switch (Start scene / Active scene, a preference of this browser and so no command) and the collision layers from #152, which retires CollisionLayersDialog.ts and the "Collision layers..." entry; what Apply actually writes is the pure function settingsChanges(), so renaming and the layers are each their own undo step and each drop out when nothing differs; the Scene dropdown falls away without replacement, the active scene is switched by double clicking it in the Assets panel, which is the way that was there anyway; new module 46 runs last with 9 checks (no label left in the bar, the run buttons in edit mode, the four menu entries, the picker with the open project preselected, Cancel leaving the project standing, the settings dialog on the state of the project, renaming with undo and redo through the icon buttons) and it neither opens nor deletes a project, because that would pull the project out from under every earlier module; modules 8, 18 and 35 and the harness follow the new bar, 6 unit tests cover settingsChanges and 3 the icons (#183)
2026-09-20 16:34:14 +02:00
2026-09-13 10:35:16 +02:00
The topbar is icons only: the leading Project dropdown, the Scene picker and the labelled Play/Pause buttons are gone and in their place stand five icon buttons - menu, undo, redo on the left, play and pause in the middle - while Notice, the save state, fps and the Account menu keep the right side; the Play button swaps its icon for a stop square while the project runs and Pause swaps for a second play sign while it is held (Button.setIcon()), and iconSpace() drops the gap between icon and label when a button has no label, which is what kept a 24 px icon button 3 px off its own centre; the menu carries New project, Open project..., a separator and Project settings..., where the picker (src/editor/OpenProjectDialog.ts) preselects the open project and marks it "open", opens on a double click and puts Delete on the left of Cancel and Open - it closes itself before it asks whether to delete, because two modals on top of each other would have left the question standing over a list it no longer speaks about - and the settings dialog (src/editor/ProjectSettingsDialog.ts) holds the name, the "Play starts" switch (Start scene / Active scene, a preference of this browser and so no command) and the collision layers from #152, which retires CollisionLayersDialog.ts and the "Collision layers..." entry; what Apply actually writes is the pure function settingsChanges(), so renaming and the layers are each their own undo step and each drop out when nothing differs; the Scene dropdown falls away without replacement, the active scene is switched by double clicking it in the Assets panel, which is the way that was there anyway; new module 46 runs last with 9 checks (no label left in the bar, the run buttons in edit mode, the four menu entries, the picker with the open project preselected, Cancel leaving the project standing, the settings dialog on the state of the project, renaming with undo and redo through the icon buttons) and it neither opens nor deletes a project, because that would pull the project out from under every earlier module; modules 8, 18 and 35 and the harness follow the new bar, 6 unit tests cover settingsChanges and 3 the icons (#183)
2026-09-20 16:34:14 +02:00
Plugins belong to the project, and they load before it: the project file gained the field plugins: ["demo-plugin.js"] (default empty, no formatVersion bump), the Plugins tab's switch writes into it as an ordinary undo step (SetPluginActiveCommand) instead of into a server-wide plugins.json, and the start order is turned around - startPlugins only fetches the list of files, then editor.boot() runs and ProjectStore.load(id, prepare) hands the raw JSON through before it is deserialized, where pluginsOf(raw) reads the list and PluginManager.syncTo() activates exactly those; that is the point of the issue, because what a plugin registers has to stand there before normalizeGraph would throw it away as unknown (#126, #127), a project switch first stops what the new project does not name and then starts what it does, a file the server does not have is passed over silently, and after signing out the manager is dead so a late event cannot start anything in a torn-down session; on the server plugins.json, PluginStore::setActive, isActive, the route PUT ?r=plugins/{file} and the 403 for inactive modules are gone and GET ?r=plugins only answers {file,bytes,updatedAt}, which makes every plugin file fetchable - the consequence accepted in #117, written down in the wiki for #115 and #116; publishPlugins(root) only copies files now, the seeder switches the demo plugin on in the fixture project, and the Plugins tab carries a puzzle piece as its icon while only a plugin's own tab still goes without one (the knob and the socket are cubic curves, not arcs, which Pixi's parser draws as a spike after an L); 3 new e2e checks in module 38 and 5 new unit tests cover the project as the owner of the switch, its undo, the order, pluginsOf against crude input and an unknown file name (#119)
2026-09-20 14:24:27 +02:00

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, rigidbody, container, texture, font, sound, animation, state machine, shader, particles, variables, tile, tilemap) 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. Logout sits at the far right of the toolbar.
  • 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.

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, 1147 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
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
Fonts Font assets, the picker, what a text falls back to
Sounds Sound assets and Play sound
Animations Animation assets and the Animation tab
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.

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