Getting started

The Crossfire Editor is where you make 2D games with the Crossfire Engine. You put your game together from scenes (a level, a menu) built out of nodes (a picture, some text, a camera, a wall), add your own code where you need it, and press Play to try it. This page gets you from installing the editor to running your first game.

• Installing it
• The demo project
• The window
• Your first game
• What you’ll need for scripts
• Where to go next
• Questions

Installing it

Download the editor from the project’s releases page. Pick the file for your computer:

Computer	File	How to install
Linux	the .AppImage	Make it executable (chmod +x Crossfire_Editor-*.AppImage, or tick “allow executing” in your file manager’s properties) and run it. Nothing else to install
Linux	the .tar.gz archive	Unpack it anywhere and run ./crossfire-editor. ./install-desktop-entry.sh (in the archive) adds it to your application menu, with its icon
Windows	the -setup.exe installer	Run it. It adds Crossfire Editor to the Start menu (and a desktop icon if you tick it)
Windows	the .zip archive	Unpack it anywhere and run crossfire-editor.exe
macOS	the .dmg disk image	Open it and drag Crossfire Editor onto Applications. It needs macOS 15 or newer

The editor draws with Vulkan, so your computer needs a graphics driver that has it (any recent one does; on a Mac the app brings its own).

On macOS, the app isn’t notarized by Apple yet, so the first time you open it macOS may refuse. Open System Settings > Privacy & Security and choose Open Anyway for Crossfire Editor.

The demo project

The first time you start the editor it opens the demo project: a small space game (a menu, a play scene, an options screen) and a platformer level made in LDtk. Press F5 to play it. Look around: click things in the scene tree, see their settings in the inspector, change some and play again. You can’t break anything you can’t undo (Ctrl+Z).

Where the demo lives:

• from an archive (Linux .tar.gz, Windows .zip): examples/demo_project, beside the editor;
• from the AppImage, the Windows installer or the macOS app: a copy in your Documents folder, Documents/Crossfire Editor, made the first time you start it.

To open another project, start the editor with its folder (crossfire-editor path/to/MyGame) or use File > Open Project (Ctrl+O). See Projects.

The window

+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| menu bar: File  Edit  Scripts  View  Scene  Help                 |
| toolbar: new, open, save | undo, redo | tools | play controls    |
+-----------+--------------------------------------+---------------+
| browser   | scene tabs              view buttons | scene tree    |
|           |                                      |               |
|           |   viewport                           +---------------+
|           |                                      | inspector     |
|           +--------------------------------------+               |
| preview   | bottom panel: Console, Output, ...   |               |
+-----------+--------------------------------------+---------------+
| status bar                                                       |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+

Part	What it’s for
Menu bar	Every command. Each menu shows the shortcut beside the command
Toolbar	New, Open, Save; Undo and Redo; the tools (Select, Move, Rotate, Scale, Pan); in the middle Play, Play this scene, Pause, Stop; Export on the right
Browser (left)	Your project’s files, sorted into folders: Scenes, Scripts, Images, Audio, Music, Fonts, Data, Components, Levels and more. The search box at the top filters them. + imports a file (Ctrl+I), the trash button removes one
Preview (under the browser)	What the selected file is: an image’s picture and size, a sound you can play, a scene’s facts and its settings
Viewport (middle)	The open scene, drawn the way the game draws it. Click a node to select it, drag it to move it. Each open scene has a tab above it
Scene tree (right, top)	Every node of the open scene, children indented under their parents
Inspector (right, bottom)	The selected node’s settings: its name, position, rotation, scale, and what its kind has (an image, a text, a sound…)
Bottom panel	Tabs: Console (messages from the editor and your game), Output (building), Animation, Mixer, Git, Tiles, Timeline, Live, States, Dialogue, Plugins. Ctrl+J shows or hides it
Status bar (bottom)	The project’s name, Modified or Saved, the open scene, its node count, what’s selected, the tool, whether the game is playing, and the game’s screen size

Drag the lines between the panels to resize them. Hover over almost anything (a button, a setting’s name in the inspector) to see what it does.

Help > User Manual (F1) opens this manual, and Help > Keyboard Shortcuts lists every shortcut (you can change them there too).

Your first game

A picture and a line of text on the screen. It takes five minutes and no code.

1. Make a project

1. File > New Project (Ctrl+N).
2. Name: MyFirstGame. Location: a folder for your games (Browse… picks one).
3. Create.

The editor opens it. It has one scene, Main, with one node, World. The red outline in the viewport is the game area: what the player’s screen shows (1280 x 720 pixels to start with).

2. Bring in a picture

1. Click + at the top of the browser (or Ctrl+I) and pick an image: a PNG of a character, a spaceship, anything. It’s copied into your project’s assets/ folder and appears in the browser’s Images folder. You can pick several files at once (Ctrl+click or Shift+click them in the dialog), and the dialog opens in the folder you imported from last time.
2. Click it in the browser: the preview under the browser shows it.

3. Put it in the scene

1. Click World in the scene tree, so the new node goes inside it.
2. Drag the image from the browser into the viewport, and let go inside the red game area.

A Sprite node named after the file appears where you dropped it, inside World. Drag it around with the mouse. With the Move tool (W) you get arrows: drag one to move only sideways or only up and down. Try Rotate (E) and Scale (R) too.

The inspector shows the Sprite’s Position, Rotation and Scale: you can type numbers there instead.

4. Add some text

1. Select World again.
2. Edit > Add Node… (Ctrl+Shift+A, or the + above the scene tree).
3. Type label in the search box and press Enter.

A Label appears at World’s corner (position 0, 0: the top-left of the game area). In the inspector:

• Text: Hello, game!
• Position X 640, Position Y 100: the middle, near the top.
• Font size: 48.
• Color: pick one you like.

5. Play it

Press F5 (or the toolbar’s play button). The editor saves the project and opens your game in its own window: your picture and your text. Close the window, or press Shift+F5 (Stop), to come back.

That’s a game. Not a very exciting one yet: nothing moves, and nothing listens to the keyboard. That’s what scripts are for.

6. Save

File > Save (Ctrl+S). Play saves too. A * in the window’s title, and Modified in the status bar, mean there are changes you haven’t saved.

What you’ll need for scripts

Games without code (scenes, menus that switch scenes, physics, animations) play straight away: the editor comes with a ready-made game player.

Once your project has scripts (your own Odin code), the editor compiles your game, which needs:

• Odin (the programming language): Edit > Settings… (Ctrl+,) > Toolchain > Install Odin downloads the right version (a few minutes, once).
• A linker, which can’t come with the editor: clang on Linux (from your package manager), Xcode’s command line tools on macOS (xcode-select --install), Visual Studio Build Tools on Windows (“Desktop development with C++”).

Settings > Toolchain lists what was found and what’s missing.

Where to go next

To…	Read
Organize scenes, add and arrange nodes, use the viewport	Scenes and nodes
Show pictures, animate them, use Aseprite files, write text	Sprites and images
Make things move, react to keys, keep score	Scripts
Make things fall, collide and bounce	Physics
Reuse a group of nodes (an enemy, a coin) in many places	Components
Draw levels from tiles	Tilemaps
Menus, buttons, health bars	The UI system
Animate anything over time (doors, cutscenes)	Keyframe animation
Save, copy and share your project	Projects

Questions

The editor opens a different project. It opens the demo when started without a project. Use File > Open Recent to get back to yours, or start it with your project’s folder.

Play does nothing, or the Console says Odin wasn’t found. Your project has scripts and needs Odin and a linker (What you’ll need for scripts). The Output tab shows what the build said.

My picture isn’t where I put it in the game. Without a camera the game shows the game area (the red outline) exactly. Anything outside it is off screen.

I changed something by mistake. Edit > Undo (Ctrl+Z) takes back any edit, one at a time; the Edit menu says what it will undo.