Documentation · 57 pages
Gamewright docs
How to make a game with Gamewright Studio, how Gamewright is built and why, and references generated from its code, so they always match it.
57 pages
Guides
For a person making a game: install the Studio, make a first game, work with the Director, read the checks.
- Install Gamewright StudioGamewright Studio is the app you make games in. It is built in Godot, the engine your games run on, and it runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.
- Your first gameThe quickest way to a game of your own is to start from one that already plays.
- The StudioGamewright Studio is where you make a game: its documents on the left, the game in the middle, the Director and the Inspector on the right, and what the checks found underneath.
- The Game DirectorThe Game Director is the AI you make a game with. You say what you want; it proposes the change, checks it, and waits for you to approve it.
- The checks, L0 to L5A game is not done because its files look right. Gamewright checks every game on a ladder of six rungs, from its documents to the game playing in a browser.
- Export a gameExport makes your game one zip that anyone can download and play, for Linux, Windows, macOS or the web.
- Game Packs and documentsIn Gamewright a game is a Game Pack: a folder of small JSON documents, plus any media they name. It holds no code, no Godot scenes and no scripts.
- Work on Gamewright from sourceTo make a game, start with installing the Studio. This page runs Gamewright's own checks from a checkout of its source, as its developers do.
Design
How Gamewright is built and where it is going: the architecture, the roadmap and the design of each milestone.
- Gamewright architectureThe map of Gamewright: a game made of documents, one Godot player for every game, the core, the Director and the checks, and how they talk.
- RoadmapEvery milestone, from the foundations to the Studio: what each delivered or will, and the check anyone can rerun to see it.
- M1 design: the player and the Tideline sliceM1: one Godot player that runs any game from its bundle, the first kits, and Tideline, a game written by hand as a Game Pack, with no AI.
- M1 content: the Tideline packTideline, document by document: a night coast, a campfire and one broken machine that keeps its round, with the numbers its playtests hold.
- M2 design: the Game Director, from Claude CodeM2: the Game Director in Claude Code over MCP. One tool registry, a brief and a template first, then every change a proposal the person approves.
- M3 design: verification depthM3: checks that find the bugs a generated game really has: bots that play like people, an explorer, engine invariants, readable frames, a judge and the web.
- M4 design: the second to sixth templatesThe templates after the first (grid puzzle, platformer, visual novel, adventure, twin-stick) and how few new kits each one needed.
- M6 design: presentation depthM6: a look the Director can change safely. Restyles proven not to change play, music written as a score, sprites that move, motion presets.
- M11 Gamewright Studio: the planThe plan for Gamewright Studio, the desktop app to make games in: a Godot window over a bundled core, built and proven in six steps.
- M12: runners, the web Studio's heavy work on your own computerThe web Studio (docs/design/web-studio.md) runs every game's core on the host: builds, playtests, the Director's previews and turns.
- Abilities, Effects and beatable platformer foesThe October audit's Wave 4 item "Abilities and Effects on every mover; beatable platformer enemies" (docs/design/audit-2026-10.md).
- The game's own accessibility optionsThe October audit's Wave 4 item "Localization and the game's own accessibility options", part two (docs/design/audit-2026-10.md).
- Your own art and sound: the Asset kindYour own pictures and sounds in a game: what the player takes and why, the Asset that pins each file and says who made it, and Import in the Studio.
- The October 2026 audit: where Gamewright falls short of best-in-class, and the planOn 2026-10-09 the owner asked for a critical analysis of everything still missing, then a plan, then the building.
- Tool runs as fast as the machine allowsHow tours, replays and shots run as fast as the machine allows instead of in real time, with every shot and state hash as before.
- Using up a carried itemUsing up a carried item: bread eaten when hungry, a potion drunk in a fight, a torch that lights five times, and how a person sees it worked.
- Games in more than one languageThe October audit's Wave 4 item "Localization and the game's own accessibility options", part one: languages (docs/design/audit-2026-10.md).
- Text a phone can readHow every game's text stays readable on a phone, at 11 points or more beside its touch controls, and how L3 proves it.
- Free and ProThe owner, 2026-11-03: Gamewright sells two plans, Free and Pro; the AI is always the person's own (bring your own key, as Bookwright); the desktop Studio stays free to download…
- Pointer inputUntil now the mouse did nothing in a game: input was actions (keys, a pad, touch buttons) that the InputMap maps into input frames.
- Scenes joined by doorsThe October audit's Wave 4 item "Scenes joined by doors" (docs/design/audit-2026-10.md). Before it, a game was played in one place: one generated world, everything in it at once.
- gamewright.diy: a product site, docs, downloads and the web StudioThe plan for gamewright.diy as a product site: guides and docs, downloads, a changelog, support, and the web Studio behind sign-in.
- A store page kitBuilt 2026-10-21, toward Wave 5 of the audit (design/audit-2026-10.md: "itch.io upload; store-ready packages").
- The Studio's layout, second pass: the game in the middleDesigned 2026-10-06, after the owner installed 0.1.0 on a Mac ("the ui/ux is completely fucked and not resizable … nowhere near close to being done") and after driving every…
- Paint a level: the Studio's level editorDesigned 2026-10-06.
- See what a document makes: previews in the StudioDesigned 2026-10-06, after driving the published 0.1.0 Studio.
- Timelines: things that happen one after anotherThe October audit's Wave 4 item "a Timeline kind for cutscenes and boss phases" (docs/design/audit-2026-10.md).
- A top-down 2D tile world, with autotilesThe October audit's Wave 4 item "A top-down 2D tile world with autotiles" (docs/design/audit-2026-10.md): the storybook-RPG look.
- Touch controlsOn-screen controls for every game, made from its InputMap and drawn around the game's frame, never over it, so any game plays on a phone.
- The web Studio: gamewright host and the Studio in a browserThe Studio in a browser: its host's sign-in, games, daemons and routes, the Studio's web mode and export, and deploying both to Fly.
Decisions
The architecture decision records: what was chosen, what else was weighed, and why.
- ADR-0001: Record architecture decisionsWhy Gamewright writes down the decisions that are expensive to reverse, and how each record is kept.
- ADR-0002: A game is data; one player runs every gameA game is a Game Pack of documents and media, never code. The core writes and bakes it, and one Godot player runs every game.
- ADR-0003: The expressivity ladder, and where code may liveHow what a game can say grows: parameters, then expressions, then rule and behavior graphs, then new kits of reviewed engine code.
- ADR-0004: What "deterministic" means for a gameFixed ticks, seeds by name, input keyed to the tick and state hashes, so every run of a game replays exactly.
- ADR-0005: Schema conventionsThe conventions every document follows: closed objects, flat lists with parent ids, kind-prefixed ids, units in names, canonical files.
- ADR-0006: Three independent axes: template, theme, styleTemplate, theme and style are separate: what a game plays like, what it is about, and how it looks and sounds.
- ADR-0007: Compatibility is the baseline renderer; frames come from the frame serverCompatibility is the baseline renderer every game must look right in, and frames are drawn and read back at named moments.
- ADR-0008: One tool registry; MCP first; the Director never grades itselfOne tool registry behind every Director surface, MCP first. Every change is a proposal, decisions are the person's, and the Director never grades itself.
- ADR-0009: The web platform: one player, bundles, a separate play originThe web platform: the site on Vercel, and games on a separate play origin in a sandboxed frame, each one shared player and a bundle.
- ADR-0010: Engine code standards and test toolingHow engine code is written and tested: typed GDScript with warnings as errors, pure logic beside thin nodes, gdUnit4 and a script-error scan.
- ADR-0011: Assets are recipes first; generated files are frozenTier 1 builds models, sprites and sounds from recipes, offline. Tier 2 adapters call hosted models, and every result is frozen and checked.
- ADR-0012: One UI kit, plain words and pro-tool habits for the StudioBy step 4 of M11 the Studio worked: it opened, checked, played and talked to the Director. It was not yet a product.
- ADR-0013: The web Studio runs on a host of its own, with sign-in by emailed codeThe web Studio runs on a host of its own, with invite-only sign-in by an emailed code and each person's own key sealed.
Reference
Generated from the code, so it always matches it: every command, Director tool, document kind, kit and template.
- Command lineAll 29 gamewright commands, their options and what each does, from the CLI's own help.
- Director toolsAll 35 tools the Game Director works with, in the Studio and in Claude Code over MCP, with their inputs.
- Document kindsAll 39 kinds of document: what each is, where it lives in a pack and its fields, from the schemas.
- KitsThe 22 kits of engine code a game's documents use, and everything each adds: components, actions, events, functions and more.
- TemplatesThe six genre templates a game starts from: when to use each, what the Director asks first and what bots must show on it.
- The Game Director's playbookWhat the Game Director reads before it starts: how to take a person from a pitch to a game that plays, through proposals they approve.