The title screen / world picker now works in the browser, not just natively.
`./web/build.sh <folder-of-game-folders>` stages every game inside it plus
collection.json and bakes the lot into one wasm; the engine boots into the
shelf exactly as it does on the desktop. Sixteen cases of Police Squad Quest
come to 2.1 MB total.
- embedded_world() becomes embedded_world_at(prefix), so one bundle can hold
many games; embedded_games() / embedded_collection_name() are the browser
twins of world::scan_collection / collection_name.
- The picker is now keyed by String on both platforms and resolved through one
load_by_key() — a filesystem path natively, an embedded subdirectory in the
browser — so Mode::Title has a single implementation.
- Esc is a no-op on the web when there is nowhere to back out to. Breaking the
main loop in a browser just leaves a dead black canvas; found by pressing it.
- ascii_fold() on every game-text draw. macroquad's built-in font has no em
dash, curly quote, star or dagger, so room names like "— Squad Room —" and
every death card were drawing tofu boxes in both builds. Folding at the draw
layer fixes the whole engine without making game authors type worse prose.
- web/build.sh uses the rustup toolchain explicitly: cargo/rustc on PATH may be
Homebrew's, which ships no wasm32 std even though `rustup target list` shows
the target installed, and the resulting "can't find crate for core" is a
thoroughly misleading error.
Verified in a real browser: shelf renders, arrows move the selection and swap
the live room preview, Enter loads and plays the case, Esc returns to the shelf
with the selection preserved. Native --shot and all 13 core tests still pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Point --game at a directory that is not itself a game but contains game
folders, and the GUI boots into a title screen: the collection's name in
gold (optional collection.json {"name": ...}, else the folder name), a
shelf of games sorted by folder with display names from each game.json,
a dimmed live preview of the selected game's start room baked by the
headless renderer, arrow-key selection, Enter to play, and Esc from
inside a game returning to the shelf instead of the desktop.
Shelf names strip a shared "Series — " prefix when every game has one —
the collection title already names the series, and it also sidesteps the
em-dash glyph missing from macroquad's default font.
Core grows world::is_game_dir / scan_collection / collection_name with a
unit test; the GUI grows Mode::Title. --shot pointed at a collection
captures the title screen (that is how the screenshots in this commit's
review were taken). Sample/kit scaffolding is skipped for collection
dirs so a shelf never gets a stray sprites/ folder written into it.
Closes the "title screen / world picker" roadmap item in MANUAL §20.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- MANUAL.md brought up to the workspace era: game folders + manifest,
flags & gated puzzles, hidden dialogue choices, audio file
overrides, a Programmatic control section (CLI/HTTP/MCP/Python),
and the new two-crate architecture map.
- games/lost-fuse: three rooms that demonstrate every mechanic in one
chain — item, needs-lock, object sets_flag, a dialogue choice hidden
behind requires_flag, dialogue sets_flag, and a flag-locked wins
finale. Verified winnable headlessly, gate included.
- games/lost-fuse/expansion/roof.jsonl: a live lore drop that upserts
a fourth room into a running game and rewires an exit — the "drop
JSON lore in" workflow, runnable as a one-liner.
- games/README.md: the guided tour — mechanic-to-JSON map, the live
expansion demo, and how to prompt an LLM (or point Claude's MCP at
the engine) to write valid lore.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
