adminandClaude Opus 5.5
8a4e4a6762
A sound could only be played as it was, one at a time. An instrument
is a node graph that makes a note a sound: Notes nodes bring the note
in, Samples play sound assets for it, the effects of a sound FX shape
it and the Output sums the layers. Its tab plays it from a keyboard,
a behavior with Play note. It is what patterns and songs (#330) will
play.
- New asset type instrument, under the heading Music, not placeable.
A new one starts as Notes into a Sample into the Output.
- Notes are counted as MIDI does: 60 is C4, names like C#4, sharps
only, the lowest C-1. Notes has From and To, outputs any, note,
frequency and velocity, and with Single notes a trigger per note,
each with an optional name for a drum kit.
- New port type trigger, only into the trigger of a source. Inputs
can take any number of edges now (PortDef.many): a trigger, and
the Output, which plays everything into it side by side.
- Sample plays a sound asset. Follow note shifts it by note - root
through the pitch worklet of #317, so it keeps its length. Gate
fades it out at the end of the note, One-shot plays through. Loop
runs between Loop start and Loop end, also in the worklet.
- Parameters declares the instrument's own parameters with a
default. Sound FX sends the sound through a sound FX asset, its
parameters as inputs, the sound set in where its Input was.
- compileInstrument walks the graph once per note. A trigger is on
only for the notes it stands for, a silent source silences what it
alone feeds, a Mix with a silent side is the other side. velocity
and the parameters stay open for the voice. Builds are cached per
note until the graph or a sound or FX it names changes.
- The player takes a note as one voice of several layers, each way
with its own file and volume. release fades the gated ways out,
one-shots play on. playNote can release after a duration.
- Play note plays one note with velocity, volume, duration and
detached, and hands out voice for Set sound FX parameters and
Stop sound. Velocity is always loudness. Instrument parameters
picks values for the instrument's parameters like Sound FX
parameters does for an FX, renames follow.
- The tab has the graph, a header field per parameter, Stop, and
128 keys below. Keys without sound are grey. A key plays while it
is held. Focused, the computer keyboard plays as in a tracker by
KeyboardEvent.code, the arrows move the octave.
Findings:
- A label of the keys set fill on the shared small text style and
darkened every small label of the editor. Caught in a screenshot
before the commit, the keys have a style of their own now.
- Suite task 523 on cf6799a failed two checks of e2e 34 that timed
audio by the page's clock: a 2.95 s echo tail was gone after 1 s,
and Quad in was further along than 0.7 s allow. Both time on the
audio clock now through a new hook __gm.sound.clock().
Tests:
- instrument.test.ts (new, 22): notes, asset, palette, round trip,
compile per note, drum kit, zones, Mix, velocity and parameters,
Sound FX node with rename, problems, cache, Play note, the keys
- sound-library +7 (layers, release, duration, early release, loop
region in buffer and worklet), pitch-player +2 (loop region),
node-catalog +4, graph adjusted. 582 tests in the touched files.
- e2e 4 and 34 on melektaus-atx: ALL PASSED, 34 with 44 checks (+7)
- Gate on melektaus-atx: CHECK EXIT 0, 243 test files, 3750 tests
- Counter-checks: any always on, release ending one-shots, Sound FX
inputs ignored, loop region ignored. 3, 2, 1 and 1 tests failed.
- Browser probe on stein2: keys, held key, Single notes names and
the header looked at in screenshots.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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, 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, 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/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, 1744 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 Play sound |
| 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/game-maker/issues. What is not there yet is listed on the wiki's Home page.