80 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
80 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
# Game Maker
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A browser-based tool "one step before a game engine": create **assets** (scenes, cameras,
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sprites), place them into scenes, tweak their properties in an inspector and press **Play** –
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all in one program, all drawn inside a single WebGL canvas.
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Live: <https://nockal.com/game-maker/> · Widget playground: <https://nockal.com/game-maker/?playground>
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**The documentation is the wiki:** <https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki> – every concept,
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node, tab and shortcut, plus the architecture and the development workflow. This file is the short
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way in.
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## In one screen
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- An **asset** is a named, typed thing (scene, camera, sprite, text, behavior, collider, container,
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texture, font, sound, animation, state machine, shader, particles, variables, tile, tilemap) with
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properties and no position.
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- A **scene object** places an asset: position, sparse **overrides** of its properties, an optional
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parent. Only what differs from the asset is stored; the inspector paints it gold and offers ↺ / ↑.
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- A **container** is a reusable group edited once and placed many times; its content is resolved
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from the template on every read. A **screen** is a container switched on and off.
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- A **behavior** is logic as a node graph, placed like anything else and parented to the object it
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acts on. Play has no built-in behaviour – everything that happens is a graph.
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- **Play** runs a throwaway copy of the project; every panel stays usable and Stop brings back
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exactly what was saved.
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## Quick start
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Node 22 is required.
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```bash
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npm install
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npm run dev # http://localhost:5175/game-maker/dist/ – API calls are proxied to production
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npm run check # typecheck + lint + format:check + unit tests – the gate CI runs too
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npm run build # writes dist/ and regenerates index.html; the folder is what nginx serves
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```
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The browser suite and the three example games need a machine with a GPU:
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```bash
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node tools/seed-e2e.mjs && node tools/e2e.mjs # the editor, 1042 checks (GM_STEPS=20 for one step)
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node tools/seed-jumprun.mjs && node tools/smoke-jumprun.mjs
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node tools/seed-tetris.mjs && node tools/smoke-tetris.mjs
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node tools/seed-actor.mjs && node tools/smoke-actor.mjs
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```
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Every push runs all of it on the Gitea runner – the gate as one job, build and suite as another
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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
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[Development](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Development).
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## Documentation
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| Page | What it covers |
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|---|---|
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| [Concepts](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Concepts) | Assets, scene objects, overrides, play mode, the camera, the console |
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| [Scenes](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Scenes) | The edited scene, the start scene, and switching scenes from a graph |
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| [Scene editing](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Scene-editing) | Placing, z-order, hierarchy, the editor offset |
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| [Behaviors](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Behaviors) | Node graphs: variables, the node set, structs and lists, loops, nesting, editing |
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| [Colliders](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Colliders) | Collision events and blocking movement |
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| [Textures](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Textures) | Images, frames, nine-slice, the filter, upload limits |
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| [Fonts](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Fonts) | Font assets, the picker, what a text falls back to |
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| [Sounds](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Sounds) | Sound assets and `Play sound` |
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| [Animations](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Animations) | Animation assets and the Animation tab |
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| [Shaders](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Shaders) | Shader graphs a sprite wears, their node set, the properties they declare |
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| [Particles](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Particles) | Particle graphs: a particle as a function of its age |
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| [State machines](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/State-machines) | The asset, named transitions, `State branch`, `Set state` and `State transition` |
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| [Containers](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Containers) | Templates, instances, screens |
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| [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 |
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| [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 |
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| [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 |
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| [Keyboard](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Keyboard) | Every shortcut |
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| [Architecture](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Architecture) | Stack, source layout, the rules that keep it organised |
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| [Development](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/Development) | Commands, the e2e suite, the example games, CI |
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| [API](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki/API) | The PHP JSON API and the project document |
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## Ideas, gaps and bugs
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They live in the issue tracker: <https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/issues>. What is not
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there yet is listed on the wiki's [Home](https://git.nockal.com/meleki/game-maker/wiki) page.
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