The builder

Open a project and the app opens it in the Godot editor, with Flockbay added. The chat is a dock on the left. Around the view of your world are a column of tool buttons and the panel of the tool in your hand, when that tool has one. Under the view is a strip with the tool’s controls and, at its right end, a hint line that says what the tool does and which keys it answers to. The rest is Godot’s own: the main menu, the Scene dock, the Inspector, FileSystem, and Output and the Debugger at the bottom. Simple editor, at the right end of the title bar, leaves only the view, the chat and Flockbay’s tools.

The screens at the top are Godot’s 2D, 3D, Script and Asset Store, with Flockbay’s Game screen among them. You build in the 3D view (2D in a 2D game) and you play in the Game screen. Switching screens only shows and hides: it never starts, stops or restarts your game.

The builder works on the live world, not on a picture of it. The hill you raise is the hill the player walks on when you press Play.

Click a button in the column to pick that tool up, and hover a button to read its name. The strip changes to that tool’s controls, and its panel opens on the right if it has one. Esc puts the tool down again.

With no other tool in your hand you hold Select, the first button. Click something you placed and it is selected, with a box around it, a ring to turn it and a disc to scale it. Click anything else and the editor selects it the way Godot always does.

The column shows only the tools your world can use, so two projects can show different columns. Water appears when the world has water, Weather when it has weather, Characters when there is a player, and People only when someone in the world can be changed.

Sculpt, Paint and Plants are brushes: pick a verb in the strip, set the brush, and drag on the ground. Water, Sky and Weather are rows of settings in the panel, and each change shows in the world as you make it. Characters holds the player’s settings, which you feel when you press Play. People changes how someone in the world behaves: click them, then change their rows.

Place puts things into the world. It opens the library on the right, with Built-in, your Project’s own files and the Catalogue: search it, import from the Catalogue, click an item, then click the ground. Shift+click keeps placing the same thing. L opens the library, and the keys 1 to 9 pick up the first nine slots of your palette.

Camera makes the shots your game can cut to. Fly the view to the angle you want, pick Camera and press Add a still here. With Camera in your hand the stills show in the view: click one to change its settings, then W moves it and E turns it.

Select something you placed and the strip shows its name, Move, Rotate, Scale and Raise or lower, Copy, Solid, Delete, Align upright, and Ask Flockbay. W moves it, E rotates it and R scales it, the same keys Godot uses for its own handles. A moved object stays on the ground.

The arrow keys turn it and tip it by 15 degrees. U stands it upright. Delete removes it. Ctrl+D copies it two metres away. Solid decides whether the player bumps into it or walks through it.

Ask Flockbay opens a short list of things to ask about that object. Pick one and the sentence lands in the chat’s message box, ready to send or change.

Moving the view is Godot’s own navigation. Hold the right mouse button to look around, and fly with W, A, S and D while you hold it (Q and E go down and up). Drag with the middle button to orbit, and turn the wheel to zoom. The builder’s tools never take the right or middle button, so this works whatever is in your hand.

In the row above the view, Frame world brings the whole world back into view; F does the same while you hold any tool but Select. Map, or M, shows the world from above in the corner of the view, with where you stand and which way you look. Click a point on the map and the view goes there. The same row has Work music, with a menu to choose the piece.

The first time a project opens, the view already shows the whole world. After that it opens where you left it.

There is no Save button to remember. Each stroke, placement or change is saved into your project a moment after you finish it. If Flockbay is in the middle of a turn, the hint line says your changes will be saved when Flockbay finishes, and they are.

Ctrl+Z undoes one finished stroke or change at a time, and Ctrl+Shift+Z redoes it. The undo is the editor’s own, so it sits in the same history as anything else you do there.

If a change could not be saved, the hint line says "Not saved:" and why. Nothing is dropped quietly.

Press Play in the chat, press Play on the Game screen’s bar, or press F5, and the game starts in the Game screen with everything you have changed. F8 stops it. Pressing Play while the game is running starts it again from the beginning.

Leave the Game screen and the game pauses and goes quiet until you come back. If you change the world while the game is running, the bar says "You changed the world since this run started." and offers Restart. Nothing restarts on its own.

Esc in the game opens a small card with Resume and Quit. Quit ends the game and takes you back to the 3D view, or the 2D view in a 2D game.

A 2D game gets the same column beside the 2D view, with the tools a flat world has. Paint lays the tile ground: drag to cover cells, and drag with the right mouse button to clear them. The tiles, the edges and the collision all follow from which cells are ground.

Place puts sprites from the library onto the grid, and Select moves, turns, scales, copies and deletes them. Characters holds the person’s own settings, and draws the camera’s three rectangles on the 2D view: what is in view, the dead zone, and how far the view may scroll. Drag their edges to change them.

There is no Sculpt, Plants, Water, Sky or Weather in a flat world, and that is not a gap. Its ground is a grid of cells and its sky is a colour and one band of scenery, and those carry the work a whole row of tools does in 3D.

To move around the 2D view, drag with the middle button or hold Space and drag, and turn the wheel to zoom. Frame world and the map belong to the 3D view.