Textures are uploaded files named by their content, so they cannot be edited in place. Pixel art is therefore its own asset type, like vector art. Its pixels live in the project and the tab rasters them into a texture that sprites, tiles and animations can use. - New asset types Pixel art and Palette. The first pixel art of a project gets a palette with the 16 PICO-8 colours in the same undo step. Every pixel is a palette index, 0 is transparent. - Each layer on each frame is its own file data/pixels/<sha256>.px. The project only holds the names, so undo swaps names. The browser computes the hash and uploads new cels before the project is saved. - New route POST ?r=pixels in api/lib/PixelStore.php. It answers 201 and 422 for broken data. data/pixels/ is git-ignored. - Tools: pencil, eraser, fill (contiguous or all pixels of a colour), eyedropper, line, rectangle and ellipse (outline or filled), brush size 1 to 8. - Layers can be added, deleted, renamed, reordered, hidden, faded and merged down. Frames can be added, duplicated, deleted and reordered, with onion skin and a small playing preview. - Zoom 1x to 32x in whole steps, grid from 8x, a 3x3 tile preview and Resize... with a 3x3 anchor. - All frames sit side by side in one image. Each frame is a region like a cut texture frame, so texture rows offer "Asset / Frame 2" and the context menu has Create animation from frames. Decisions: - Merging down drops the opacity of the upper layer. Indexed colours know no blends. - Only the last palette colour can be removed. Otherwise the indices of every image using the palette would shift. - Undo stores the whole layer per stroke instead of pixel diffs. - Alt+click picks a colour. It is a mouse gesture, not a shortcut. Follow-up issues: #197 import from texture, #198 selection and flipping, #199 PNG export, #200 more tools. Tests: - ./check.sh: 136 files, 2049 tests (before 135 / 2011). 34 new in tests/core/pixel-art.test.ts, 4 from the icon tables. - e2e module 48 fresh: ALL PASSED, 29 checks, console empty. - Counter-probes bite: five on the unit tests, upload order (2 tests fail) and cels not uploaded in the browser (1 check fails). - Check total 1259 in README is computed (1232 measured in CI + 27). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
89 lines
6.0 KiB
Markdown
89 lines
6.0 KiB
Markdown
# 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. 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.
|
||
|
||
## Quick start
|
||
|
||
Node 22 is required.
|
||
|
||
```bash
|
||
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:
|
||
|
||
```bash
|
||
node tools/seed-e2e.mjs && node tools/e2e.mjs # the editor, 1259 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](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Development).
|
||
|
||
## Documentation
|
||
|
||
| Page | What it covers |
|
||
|---|---|
|
||
| [Concepts](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Concepts) | Assets, scene objects, overrides, play mode, the camera, the console |
|
||
| [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 |
|
||
| [Scenes](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Scenes) | The edited scene, the start scene, and switching scenes from a graph |
|
||
| [Scene editing](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Scene-editing) | Placing, z-order, hierarchy, the editor offset |
|
||
| [Behaviors](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Behaviors) | Node graphs: variables, the node set, structs and lists, loops, nesting, editing |
|
||
| [Colliders](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Colliders) | Shapes (box, circle, capsule, polygon), collision events, blocking movement, one-way colliders and raycasts |
|
||
| [Physics](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Physics) | Rigidbodies, the collider material, gravity, the fixed step |
|
||
| [Textures](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Textures) | Images, frames, nine-slice, the filter, upload limits |
|
||
| [Fonts](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Fonts) | Font assets, the picker, what a text falls back to |
|
||
| [Sounds](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Sounds) | Sound assets and `Play sound` |
|
||
| [Animations](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Animations) | Animation assets and the Animation tab |
|
||
| [Shaders](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Shaders) | Shader graphs a sprite wears, their node set, the properties they declare |
|
||
| [Particles](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Particles) | Particle graphs: a particle as a function of its age |
|
||
| [State machines](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/State-machines) | The asset, named transitions, `State branch`, `Set state` and `State transition` |
|
||
| [Containers](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Containers) | Templates, instances, screens |
|
||
| [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 |
|
||
| [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 |
|
||
| [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 |
|
||
| [Keyboard](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Keyboard) | Every shortcut |
|
||
| [Architecture](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Architecture) | Stack, source layout, the rules that keep it organised |
|
||
| [Development](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Development) | Commands, the e2e suite, the example games, CI |
|
||
| [API](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/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](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki) page.
|