Project - AbstractPolygon/vcs-game-maker-absply GitHub Wiki

The Project tab is where you save, load, and start projects, browse example projects, and fill in your game's title, version, and description.

Actions

Seven icon buttons sit in a toolbar at the top of the tab, with thin dividers after Sound Banks and before Project Settings. The toolbar stays pinned to the top of the window as the tab scrolls:

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Example Projects (Atari joystick icon, first in the toolbar) — Shows the available Example Projects.

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Sound Banks (waveform icon, right of Example Projects) — Shows the available Sound Banks.

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Create New Project (blank page icon) — Clears everything and starts fresh, after a confirmation dialog.

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Open Project (folder icon) — Opens an existing .vcsgm project file.

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Save (floppy disk icon) — Writes your project back to whatever file it was last saved to or opened from, with no prompt. Each saved project also keeps the variables chosen for the emulator's debug info (see Emulator) and includes a screenshot of the emulator (the same picture the camera button saves), taken after every successful build (if there is none yet, Save builds the project first, which takes a moment); it's how the project appears on an example card. The very first time you click Save in a session (or if the browser you're using can't remember a file at all — see below), there's nothing to write back to yet, so it falls through to the same picker Save As... uses. Every save after that goes straight back to the same file silently.

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Save As... (floppy disk with pencil icon) — Always prompts you for a location, even if Save already has a file to write to. Whatever you pick here becomes the new file Save writes back to afterward.

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Project Settings (gear icon) — Shows the Project Settings section.

Note on saving: In Chrome, Edge, or another Chromium-based browser, Save and Save As... can write straight back to file on your computer. In Firefox, Safari, every save downloads a new file instead, a limitations of those browsers. The same download/file-input fallback also kicks in on a Chromium browser if VCSGM is embedded in a cross-origin iframe (e.g. on a site that embeds the app).

Project Settings

Fill in the details about you and your game. These are saved as part of the project file, and any fields you fill in also get written as a comment at the top of the generated batari Basic source code.

  • Project Title — Your game's name. Also used to build the suggested filename when you save (e.g. My_Cool_Game_2026-08-27.vcsgm).
  • Developer — Your name or studio name.
  • Version — Your game's version number (e.g. 1.0.0).
  • Increment on Save — When on, bumps the Version field's last segment automatically every time you save (1.2.3 → 1.2.4), and each save writes a new file with that version in its name instead of overwriting the last one, even with Save (not only Save As). The browser asks which folder to use once per session, and after that new files go there without prompting. This is a standing app preference, not part of the project file, so it stays set across different projects.
  • Website — A link for your game, if you have one.
  • Email — A contact address for your game, if you'd like one attached.
  • Project Description — Free-form notes about your game.

Sound Banks

The Sound Banks button in the toolbar shows sounds and sound banks you can download from GitHub and bring into the open project. Each card shows the sound's name (for a single sound, the name saved in its file) or the bank's file name, whether it is a sound or a bank, and for a bank how many sounds it holds and their names.

  • The Search field above the cards (next to the Show dropdown) narrows them down as you type: every word you enter has to appear in a card's name, developer, kernel or sound names.
  • The play button on a card previews the sound, or every sound in a bank one after another. Click it again (it becomes a stop button) to stop. With the Sound tab's DIM option on, previews play at the DIM volume.
  • Click a card to open the Import Sound Bank popup for the open project: pick which sounds to import and, when some share a name with sounds already in the project, tick Replace existing to replace those (leave it off to add them as new sound effects). A single sound has no checkboxes, only Replace existing when its name is already taken.

The sounds come from the soundbanks folder of the vcs-game-maker-content repository (and the folders inside it): .vcssnd files are single sounds, .vcsbnk files are banks. Like the examples, they are checked once each time the app starts, stored in your browser, and listed offline from the stored copies. The screen you were on is kept when you refresh the page.

Example Projects

The Example Projects button in the toolbar shows a grid of example projects: each card has a screenshot, the project's title, version and developer.

The Search field above the cards narrows them down as you type: every word you enter has to appear in a card's name, title, developer, version, kernel or description.

Click an example card to open view details about the example project. Open example loads it, Close dismisses the popup.

The examples come from the examples folder of the vcs-game-maker-content repository. Once each time the app starts, it checks that repo (the address is shown while it downloads): new or changed .vcsgm files are downloaded and stored in your browser. The list works offline from the stored copies; the first start needs an internet connection.