Files
feuerwerk/README.md
T
adminandClaude Opus 5 73a71473f1
game-maker / gate (push) Successful in 2m11s
game-maker / suite (push) Successful in 7m43s
The shader tab previews the effect on the last picked image (#168)
A shader could only be judged by placing it on a sprite and running
the scene. The shader tab now shows its effect next to the graph, on
the image the user picked last, without a picker to maintain.

- The preview follows the last selection that has an image: a placed
  sprite with its overrides, size and tint, a sprite asset, a texture
  or a frame. Clicking the shader, a node, a behavior or a scene keeps
  the picture.
- Without such a selection, or when the picked image is deleted, a
  built-in 64 px test image is shown. Its colour runs with u and v, a
  checkerboard shows where a UV lands and the border fades for alpha.
- Each property gets a slider. The sliders belong to the preview and
  never write to the project. They start at the sprite's values when
  it carries this shader, otherwise at the default.
- The preview has its own clock. Hold and Restart are only enabled
  when a Time node is in the graph.
- The graph | splitter | panel layout of the particles tab moves into
  PreviewSplit, and both tabs use it.
- A nine-sliced frame is previewed unsliced. This is documented.

Findings:

- The slider row stayed squeezed to a few pixels when the properties
  changed while the tab was hidden. The layout was triggered one level
  too high. The slider check in block 28n holds this.
- The graph canvas is narrower now, 385 px at a 1280 px window, the
  same as in the particles tab. Block 28b clicked at a fixed x+420 and
  now uses the measured width.

Tests:

- ./check.sh: 132 files, 1952 tests (was 131 / 1941), exit 0
- npm run build: exit 0
- GM_STEPS=28,31 freshly seeded: ALL PASSED, 105 checks
- 11 new unit tests in tests/editor/shader-preview.test.ts
- 7 new e2e checks in block 28n
- Counter-probes: start values ignoring the sprite fail 1 unit test,
  a preview ignoring the selection fails 2 e2e checks
- Check total 1209 in README is computed (1202 + 7), CI measures it

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-09-21 08:55:02 +02:00

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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.

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, 1209 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.