At 4K and 60 fps the user's computer reaches about 39 fps in real time.
Reading each frame back from the GPU takes longer than a frame, and
neither reading back later nor the canvas route helped. With Real time
off the run moves on by one frame of the recording at a time, however
long the computer takes, so the file has every frame.
- Start recording has a new check Real time, on by default. Only the
node records so, the editor recording stays in real time.
- SteadyPace in recording.ts is the pace as a pure class. A step is
1/fps once the frame before is taken and the sound up to it is made,
otherwise 0 and the run holds. A frame's time is its number.
- The sound is made apart, as decided in the issue. AudioSwitch routes
what the run plays to the live library, or to the offline library of
a SteadySound while such a recording lasts. That library has the same
mix, buses, FX and limiter and is rendered up to each next frame.
- A driven video holds at every picture asked for, and the frame waits
for it. Its sound is decoded from the MP4 and played in step through
its bus.
- Two Chrome quirks measured and worked around. A held video hands
over the picture of a seek before seeked, so the frame callback is
asked for when the seek begins. A seek right onto where a picture
begins shows that one or the one before, so such a seek lands half a
millisecond further. Together 30 s became 10.7 s for 2 s of video.
- The notice tells how far the recording has got, and the line at the
end how long it took.
Deviations and limits:
- Input is not ignored, it still reaches the game, which runs slower.
- At most ten minutes per recording. Chrome holds the whole buffer of
the OfflineAudioContext while rendering, 230 MB for ten minutes.
- A free video plays on in real time and does not fit. A sound playing
before the start stays at the speakers.
Found along the way:
- A check in e2e 60 was red since 77365f1. It expected one log line,
the start line of the recording came on top. CI was off, so nobody
saw it. The expectation is updated.
Tests:
- First gate run red: 1 test in node-catalog.test.ts still expected
the settings of Start recording without realTime. Updated.
- Second gate run on melektaus-atx green: 310 files,
4818 tests.
- e2e 66 + 68 all passed, 50 checks, 68j new with 3 checks. ffmpeg
reads all 120 frames 1/60 s apart, the colour changes at frames
30/60/90, the video's sound from the first frame, the blip 8 ms off.
- e2e 60 (20 checks) and 67 green.
- Counter-check without the pace: all three 68j checks red, 32 of 119
frames, colour changes at 33/62/96, no sound. AudioSwitch's unit test
goes red when the ids are mixed up.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Feuerwerk
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/feuerwerk/ · Widget playground: https://nockal.com/feuerwerk/?playground
The documentation is the wiki: https://git.nockal.com/meleki/feuerwerk/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, sound FX, instrument, pattern, song, bus, 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/feuerwerk/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, 2083 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 clips, Play sound, buses and the Master routing, sound FX |
| Instruments | Instruments as node graphs, Chips and presets, the keys of the Instrument tab, Play note |
| Patterns | Patterns and the piano roll, playing one in a loop or from a game |
| Songs | Songs, their tracks and items, routing, recording, playing one from a game |
| 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/feuerwerk/issues. What is not there yet is listed on the wiki's Home page.
