Glossary
The platform's terms, each in a sentence or two, with a link to the page that explains it.
DescribesFormat 1, API 1 For everyone
The pieces of the platform#
| Term | What it is | Where it is explained |
|---|---|---|
| Portal | The site https://play.green.games/en, where you play in the browser with nothing to install. | Play on the web |
| Green Games | Where you play: the portal and the launcher carry that name. It is also the name of the studio. | What the platform is |
| Green Games Studio | The editor: the desktop program for making games. In this documentation, "the editor". | Editor tour |
| Launcher | Green Games on the desktop: the program for installing games and playing them on your computer, offline too. | Library |
| Editor | Green Games Studio. The desktop program for making games: scene, rules, code, testing and export. | Editor tour |
| Library | The launcher screen with your installed games and the available ones. | Library |
| Data folder | The folder on your computer where the launcher stores installed games, progress and history. | Settings |
| Preview release | The current state of the platform: it works and it is missing pieces. | What the platform is |
Inside a game#
| Term | What it is | Where it is explained |
|---|---|---|
| Game | A package of data and scripts. It is not a web page and it is not a program. | The game package |
.ggx package | The single file that holds a complete game: manifest, scenes, script, resources and bot script, compressed. | The .ggx format |
| Manifest | The juego.json file: the game's card data, with name, author, players, controls, difficulties, score tables and text. | Manifest |
| Game card | What someone sees when they open a game before playing: name, description, cover and controls. It comes from the manifest. | Game card and export |
| Cover | The game's image in the catalog, in a 16:9 ratio. | Manifest |
| Scene | A world of the game, described as data: pieces, spawn points, zones, lights, environment, the view it is played with and, if it uses them, tile maps. A game has one or more. | Scenes |
| Piece | An object in the scene with a shape, position, size and material: a box, a ramp, a wedge, a sphere, a cylinder, a sprite or a model. | The scene |
| View | The camera and the way of moving a scene is played with: third person, first person, side-on (2D platformer), flat and top-down (from above) or isometric. A zone can change it while the player is inside. | Views |
| Game type | The view a project in the editor starts with: third person, first person, isometric, top-down view, 2D platformer, hybrid or open world. | Game types |
| Sprite | A pixel drawing stored as data, with no image file (lamina in the format). It is used as a flat piece, as a tile or as a character. | Sprites |
| Tile map | A level written as a grid of text, where each character is a tile. It is used for 2D levels and for floors and walls seen from above. | Tile maps |
| Tile | A cell of a map: a color or a sprite, and a way of colliding (solid, floor, platform, danger, ladder or none). | Tile maps |
| Model | A 3D object in a .glb file, with its mesh, its materials and, if it has them, skeleton and clips. It is made in the workshop or brought in with the importer, and placed in the scene as a piece with shape modelo. | Models in the scene |
| Clip | A named animation of a model, such as caminar. It only changes how the model looks: it does not move it. | Asset workshop |
| Texture | A PNG, JPEG or WebP image from the texturas/ folder, which covers a piece from its material or shows as a flat image. | Models in the scene |
| Recorded sound | A .wav or .mp3 file from the sonidos/ folder. The game's other sounds are synthesized. | Models, textures and sounds |
| Credit | The author, license and origin of a model, a texture or a sound, in creditos.json. It travels inside the .ggx. | Import assets |
| Asset workshop | The part of the editor where sprites and textures are drawn, cube models are built with their animations and tile maps are painted. | Asset workshop |
| Importer | The part of the editor that converts models, textures and sounds from other tools to the game format. | Import assets |
| Open world | A kind of game that is not built piece by piece: the engine generates a world of cubes from a seed and a biome table, and you break and place blocks. | Open world |
| Cube terrain | The generated world of an open-world game, made of 1 x 1 x 1 blocks. It goes in the scene's terreno property. | Open world |
| Biome | A row of the terrain's table: in which climate it appears, how high it is, what it is made of and what grows. | Open world |
| Material | How a piece looks: a palette color, a finish (matte, glossy, neon, glass) and a pattern (plain, checks, stripes, grid). | Scenes |
| Palette (of colors) | The list of named colors that pieces can use. A scene can add its own. | Scenes |
| Prefab | A ready-made set of pieces that the editor places in one go (coin, goal, door with button), sometimes with the rule that makes it work. | The scene |
| Zone | An invisible volume that reports when someone enters or leaves. It is used for goals, buttons and checkpoints. | Scenes |
| Spawn point | A point in the scene where players appear. The first one is the start; the rest serve as checkpoints. | Scenes |
| Checkpoint | The spawn point a player returns to when they respawn. | Rules |
| Tag | A word you put on pieces or zones to treat them together: "everything with the tag moneda". | Scenes |
| Group | Several pieces that are selected and moved together. It is stored in the grupo property of each piece, the same one the script handles with mundo.grupo. | The scene |
| Environment | A scene's general settings: sky, ambient light, fog, gravity and fall height. | Scenes |
| Resource | A file packaged with the game. Today it is only used for the cover. | The game package |
| Avatar | The character a player controls. It is made of blocks, unless the scene draws it with a sprite. | Players API |
Rules and code#
| Term | What it is | Where it is explained |
|---|---|---|
| Rule | A "When… then…" sentence that you build in the editor without writing code. | Rules |
| Trigger | The "When" part of a rule: what has to happen (the player touches something, time passes, the match starts). | Rules |
| Action (of a rule) | The "then" part of a rule: what the game does (add points, show a message, end the match). | Rules |
| Action (button) | One of the player's buttons besides moving: jump, action and second action, and in the games that declare them, the two pointer buttons (the mouse clicks). Each game says what they do. | Controls |
| Blocks mode | The way of programming a game in the editor by snapping blocks together like pieces, with the code they write in view. A project is made with Rules or with Blocks, not with both. | Blocks |
| Canvas | The area of the Blocks tab where programs are built, with one tab per object. | Blocks |
| Palette (of blocks) | The list of blocks in Blocks mode, by category, to the left of the canvas. | Blocks |
| Script | The program with the game's logic, in TypeScript or JavaScript. It can only use the Green Games API. | Scripts |
| Rules block | The part of the script that the editor writes from your rules, between // <reglas> and // </reglas>. Your code goes outside it. | Code in the editor |
| SDK | The set of definitions that describes the format of a game and the API its script uses. | API reference |
| API | The functions a script can call. It carries the number 1. | API reference |
| Service | Each of the eleven parts of the API: juego, mundo, jugadores, interfaz, sonido, progreso, puntajes, azar, reloj, actores and camara. | API reference |
| Actor | A character driven by the script: a rival, a neighbor, an enemy. | Actors API |
| Label | A text or a bar the script draws over something in the world: a tower's health, the name of a place. | Interface API |
| Text | Everything the game shows in writing, by key and in two languages, inside the manifest. | Manifest |
| Limit | A cap every game must respect: file size, number of pieces, script time per frame. | Limits |
The match#
| Term | What it is | Where it is explained |
|---|---|---|
| Room | Where the match really happens: the physics, the players, the script and the scores. It runs isolated and does not know which program it is in. | Isolation |
| Game player | The part that shows the match and collects your input. It is the same in the portal, in the launcher and in the editor. | Isolation |
| Isolation | The barriers that keep a game's script from reading your files, using the network or touching the program that shows it. | Isolation |
| Frame | One step of the simulation. There are 60 per second, always. | Determinism |
| Seed | The number all the randomness of a match comes from. | Determinism |
| Determinism | With the same seed and the same input, the match repeats exactly the same. This is what makes it possible to test a game with a bot. | Determinism |
| Difficulty | A variant of the game that you pick before playing. Three is the norm: Easy, Normal and Hard. A piece can exist on only some of them. | Playing |
| Mode | How the match is filled: Solo, or With bots in games that support more than one player. | Playing |
| Local multiplayer | Several people, from 2 to 4, playing on the same computer. The game has to declare it. | Manifest |
| Split screen | In local multiplayer, one part of the screen for each person, with their own camera and indicators. The alternative is the shared screen: a single camera that follows the group. | Manifest |
| Score table | The list of a game's best marks. It is local, with ten marks per difficulty, by points or by time. | History and progress |
| Progress | Data a game saves between matches, on your computer. Up to 64 KB per game; an open-world game saves the changes to its terrain separately, up to 320 KB. | Progress API |
| History | The record the launcher keeps of your matches in each game. | History and progress |
Testing and tools#
| Term | What it is | Where it is explained |
|---|---|---|
| Validator | The program that checks that a game follows the format and says what to fix. The editor, the launcher and the command line use it. | Validator |
GB code | The stable identifier of each problem the validator finds, such as GB310. | Validator |
| Problem | An error or a warning from the validator. An error blocks export; a warning does not. | Editor problems |
| Bot | The automatic player. It drives the avatar with the same controls as a person. It is used to test a game from start to finish and to fill the With bots mode. | Test bot |
| Bot script | The list of steps the bot follows to finish the match: go to a point, wait, press a button. | Test bot |
| Test with bot | Running the whole match with no screen, on each difficulty and with two seeds, to check that the game can be finished. | Play and test |
| Export | Turning an editor project into a .ggx file. It only happens if the game validates and the bot finishes it. | Game card and export |
| Import | Opening a .ggx file in the launcher, which validates it and installs it. | Import a .ggx |
| Template | A starter game so you do not begin from scratch. The editor offers them when you create a project, and the command line does with greengames crear. | New game |
| Assistant | The editor panel that builds changes from a written request. It can use an AI model that runs on your computer; without a model, it is a basic assistant that recognizes common requests. | Assistant |
Command line (greengames) | The tool to create, validate, test and package games from a terminal. | Command-line tool |
| Format | The version of a game's structure. Today it is 1. | Changelog |