adminandClaude Opus 5.5
a295d233ed
A sound FX could only be picked where something was played: on a Play
node, a track or an item of a song. A sound that should always sound
through the same effect needed that pick everywhere it was used. Now
the asset says it once, and every place that plays it follows.
- New row Sound FX on a sound, an instrument, a pattern and a song,
right before Bus. A sound goes through it on every voice, an
instrument on every note after its graph, a pattern on all its
notes together and a song on its output.
- The fx input of Play sound, Play note, Play pattern and Play song
and the Sound FX of a song item now read "From the asset" while
empty. None is a pick of its own, stored as `#none` like `#master`.
A pick replaces the FX of the asset, it does not come on top.
- A pattern item's Instrument reads "From the asset" instead of None.
The meaning is unchanged.
- A double-click on a sound item opens the sound, as one on a pattern
item opens the pattern.
- The tabs play through the FX of their asset. The Pattern and Song
tab put it on a bus of their own between the output and the bus of
the asset. The keys of the Pattern tab play there too.
- Notes of a pattern or song go through the FX of their instrument.
Its chain is loaded with the other needs of the sequence.
Decided without asking:
- Old items and Play nodes with an empty fx now mean "From the
asset". No asset has an FX yet, so nothing sounds different.
- The label is "From the asset" as on Loop and Bus, not "From asset".
- A sound used as a Sample, as the impulse of a Reverb or as the test
sound of the Sound FX tab plays without its own FX.
Findings:
- In e2e, `__gm.inspectorField('Sound FX')` and `('Instrument')` find
the group of the Assets panel first. The check asks for the last
match.
Tests:
- Unit asset-fx (new): 8 green. Six counter-checks each turned red.
- Field lists of sound, pattern and song: Sound FX added.
- e2e 65 (melektaus-atx): ALL PASSED, 46 checks (3 new). Counter-check
without the FX bus of the tab: that check red.
- Gate (melektaus-atx): CHECK EXIT 0, 268 files, 4142 tests.
- Not checked: how it sounds, the Sound, Instrument and Pattern tab
in the browser.
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.