ludic/changes
Orkuncakilkaya be74b4de6f feat(bundle): ship a game as a macOS .app, with a splash it controls
`ludic build` produces a program. Double-clicked it opens a Terminal window, it
wears the generic executable icon, it calls itself whatever the file is called,
and it carries none of its assets. `ludic bundle` produces an application.

Everything it needs is in package.ludic, so the command takes no arguments: an
Info.plist and PkgInfo from `app` lines, an .icns built by sips and iconutil at
all ten sizes macOS asks for from a single source PNG, the asset pack in
Contents/Resources, and an ad-hoc signature - which is not optional on Apple
silicon, where an unsigned binary is killed rather than warned about. The bundle
identifier falls back to the package path reversed, so a project that never
thinks about it still gets a defensible one instead of two apps sharing a key
Launch Services hangs the Dock, saved state and permissions off.

A bundled game is moved to ~/Library/Application Support/<name> before main,
because Finder starts a .app with its working directory at "/" where no save
could ever be written. Reads come out of the pack, writes land somewhere real
and per-user, and the game's save code needs no change and no platform
knowledge.

The splash is the other half of looking like an application. A game that loads
165 MB spends a visible moment doing it with nothing on screen, which from the
outside is indistinguishable from a launch that failed. splash_show puts a
borderless window up from the same constructor that mounts the pack - before
main, so it appears while the process is still starting rather than after the
slow part it exists to cover - and reads the artwork out of the pack like any
other asset. It turns the run loop enough times to be mapped and composited
there and then; once composited the backing store survives a busy main thread,
so it stays up for the whole load.

Nothing hides it automatically. Only the game knows when its first real frame is
ready, and a splash that vanishes before that leaves the same black gap it was
covering, so the game calls App.splash_hide(). Headless there is no splash and
the call lowers to nothing.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-09-10 16:57:27 +03:00
..
asset-packs.md feat(bundle): ship a game as a macOS .app, with a splash it controls 2026-09-10 16:57:27 +03:00
boot-splash.md feat(bundle): ship a game as a macOS .app, with a splash it controls 2026-09-10 16:57:27 +03:00
macos-bundle.md feat(bundle): ship a game as a macOS .app, with a splash it controls 2026-09-10 16:57:27 +03:00
README.md refactor(cli)!: split the contributor tool out of the ludic CLI 2026-09-05 23:15:12 +03:00

Changesets

A changeset is one small Markdown file describing a single user-facing change, dropped in this directory. ludic-dev release consumes every changeset here into a new CHANGELOG.md section, bumps VERSION, and deletes the consumed files.

Format

bump: minor
type: feat
One or more lines describing the change, in the past-agnostic imperative used in
the changelog. Markdown is fine.
  • bump: — major, minor, or patch (SemVer). The release version is bumped by the highest level among the pending changesets (unless ludic-dev release <level> overrides it).
  • type: — the Conventional Commit type (feat, fix, perf, docs, …). It decides which group the change lands in: feat → Features, fix → Fixes, perf → Performance, and so on, in that order. A type with no known heading gets one named after itself.

Writing the body

The body is markdown and reaches the changelog as markdown: it becomes one list item, with continuation lines indented to stay inside it. Nested bullets, blank lines between paragraphs and inline code all survive.

bump: minor
type: feat
**Tiled map support** — load and draw Tiled maps.

- **TMX/TSX** — the XML formats, decoded to the same intermediate as JSON.
- **Collision** — the `collision` layer projects onto the engine tilemap.

Lead with the thing that changed, not with the mechanism. A reader scanning the release should be able to stop after your first clause.

Adding one

Create a file with a short, unique name, e.g. changes/regex-namespace.md. Any filename works except this README.md, which the release step always skips.

Preview how the next release will read before cutting it — this writes nothing:

ludic-dev release --dry-run