The page of a released game always drew the camera at Auto, the
largest whole step that fits. A camera of 300x180 in a window of
1280x800 stands at step 4 and leaves a border left and right. The
issue asks for Fit next to it. Answered there: a setting of its own
rather than the scale of the Game tab, and no switch for the player.
- The project has a field gameLinkZoom, 'auto' or 'fit'. A document
without it reads as 'auto', so nothing changes for a project that
is there already. No format bump.
- Project settings has a row "Link zoom" with a menu of Auto and
Fit. It is an undo step of its own, SetGameLinkZoomCommand.
- GameScreen hands the field to cameraView where it passed a fixed
'auto'.
- gameScale, the scale of the Game tab, is not touched and does not
reach the link.
- The released copy is frozen, so the change reaches the link only
with "Update release".
Decided here:
- The row is called "Link zoom", not "Game link zoom" as proposed.
The longer label is wider than the label column of the dialog and
pushed its button 12 px out of line with the others.
- The undo step keeps the name "Game link zoom", which is what the
tooltip of the undo button shows.
- A note under the row says "The released game at the largest whole
step that fits, or filling the window."
Tests:
- Gate on melektaus-atx: 211 files, 3227 tests (3219 + 8), exit 0
- e2e 60 on melektaus-atx: 19 checks, all pass
- e2e 35,46,59,60: 74 checks, all pass
- No full run and no smokes. The sum of 1671 (1668 + 3) is reckoned,
1668 is what CI counted for 9e869df.
- Eight unit tests: the default, saving and loading, values that
are not a choice, undo, gameScale left alone, the factor of Fit
for a window larger and smaller than the camera, and the rule
behind Apply.
- Three e2e checks in block 60i of module 60, with the real mouse:
Auto to Fit in the dialog, update the release, open the link
without a session and measure scale, frame and pixels. Fit reads
4.267 where Auto reads 4.
- Nine unit counter-probes and three browser counter-probes all fail
their tests.
- Not checked in the browser: Fit in a window smaller than the
camera, which has a unit test, and Fit under a display scale above
100 %. Nothing was looked at after the build.
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, container, clip area, texture, vector art, pixel art, palette, animation, curve, tile, tilemap, state machine, shader, 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, 1671 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 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.
