Pixscape Studio free 0.2.2

Pixscape Studio Free 0.2.2 — Physics Authoring and Spatial Collisions

Pixscape Studio Free 0.2.2 is a major physics, runtime integration, and production workflow update.

This release introduces a redesigned persistent physics authoring model, tighter integration between Spatial Blocks and Box2D collisions, improved Runtime Availability and progressive Preview loading, multi-animation entities, and extensive editor and rendering optimizations.

It also includes important improvements to particle workflows, asset metadata, scene switching, prefab handling, HTML Preview, and overall editor responsiveness.

Pixscape Studio Free remains fully open source under the Apache License 2.0.

No Pixscape royalties.
No runtime fees.
No hidden export fees.

Important compatibility note

Pixscape Studio Free 0.2.2 introduces breaking changes to the physics authoring model.

Existing physics scenes and prefabs using the previous fixture schema must be recreated or re-exported with this version.

This release replaces the legacy physics authoring model with persistent Runtime physics shapes and introduces stable shape identities across:

• scene editing
• save and reload
• duplication
• copy and paste
• prefab creation
• prefab instantiation
• undo and redo

Particle emitter positioning has also been simplified.

Particle effects now use the owning entity's Transform.x/y directly. Legacy particle local-space and transform-origin positioning behavior is no longer preserved.

Pixscape Studio Free 0.2.2 requires Pixscape Runtime 0.1.9.

Persistent physics authoring

Physics authoring has been redesigned around persistent Runtime physics shapes.

The new model provides:

• stable physics shape identities
• persistent authored geometry
• validated polygon geometry
• derived runtime fixture compilation
• coherent prefab and clipboard behavior
• stable joint references
• consistent undo and redo
• atomic validation before invalid physics state can be published

Body, fixture, polygon, joint, clipboard, prefab, and scene workflows now use the same authored physics model.

Tiled layer physics bodies are always static.

Polygon editing has also been refined with circular vertex handles, while resize and Spatial handles remain visually distinct.

Spatial Blocks and physics collisions

Spatial Blocks can now directly author physics collisions.

A new Physics collision option creates a linked static polygon shape derived from the Spatial Block footprint.

Linked collisions remain synchronized with the authored Spatial geometry.

Highlights include:

• automatic collision generation from Spatial Block footprints
• stable linked physics shape identities
• automatic recompilation after Spatial geometry changes
• automatic recompilation after pixels-per-meter changes
• atomic deletion of Spatial Blocks and their linked collisions
• full undo and redo restoration
• read-only linked geometry
• editable Sensor, material, collision-filter, and enabled properties
• a visible Linked to Spatial Block #... indicator

This creates a much cleaner workflow for walls, structures, passages, and other 2.5D environments that need both deterministic Spatial ordering and physical collision.

Spatial actor workflow

This release also introduces a dedicated Spatial actor layer.

Spatial actors can now be created with their required physics body and footprint configuration already prepared for Spatial ordering.

This reduces the amount of manual setup required for characters and other moving actors participating in 2.5D depth relationships.

Multi-animation entities

Animation entities can now own multiple Animation assets.

This makes it possible to keep related character animations on one entity and switch between them instead of creating separate animation entities.

For example, one character can own:

• idle
• run
• attack
• hit
• death

Animation assets can be switched from the Properties panel, while their authored clip and FPS metadata remain authoritative.

Animation editing now stays synchronized across:

• active entities
• multiple entities using the same Animation asset
• asset edits
• animation switching
• undo and redo
• scene reloads

Prefab atlas dependency collection has also been updated so prefabs containing multi-animation entities include all required animation assets.

Runtime Availability and progressive Preview loading

Preview loading has been significantly improved.

Desktop and HTML Preview now use the Runtime's progressive scene-loading pipeline and enter normal gameplay only after Runtime READY.

The HTML Preview pipeline now defers selected-scene resources to Runtime Availability instead of eagerly copying or loading everything during bootstrap.

This includes:

• scene data
• atlas pages
• particle effects
• prefab fragments
• other declared Runtime Availability resources

The Preview now displays simple loading progress while the Runtime prepares the selected scene.

The HTML Preview pipeline has also been simplified so the fixed player and current Runtime export can be served directly instead of rebuilding a complete temporary player tree for every launch.

HTML prefab support

Runtime prefab spawning through Runtime Availability is now supported correctly in HTML/WebGL2.

The embedded HTML Preview player has been rebuilt with the updated Runtime GWT reflection configuration required by runtime prefab fragments.

This fixes prefab spawning paths that worked on Desktop and Android but previously failed in HTML when the prefab was instantiated dynamically.

Particle workflow improvements

Particle editing and playback received several important improvements.

Particle entities now use a dedicated fixed-size viewport marker instead of synthetic rectangular dimensions and resize handles.

Particle Transform properties expose only X and Y, matching the actual emitter position.

Additional improvements include:

• more consistent particle selection and hover behavior
• improved dragging and lasso selection
• reduced editor overhead for non-render entities
• cached particle atlas readiness
• fewer unnecessary atlas rebinds
• fewer full asset refreshes after particle file drops
• corrected fallback looping behavior
• corrected premultiplied-alpha behavior
• safer shared atlas texture ownership
• failure-atomic particle effect replacement

A failed particle effect replacement now preserves the previously valid effect instead of leaving the entity without a visible effect.

Asset and atlas pipeline improvements

Studio asset resolution has been substantially optimized and consolidated.

Asset metadata is now indexed by:

• Asset ID
• logical path
• source ownership

Sprite, animation, tiled fallback, tiled ghost, and render-rebind paths now reuse centralized asset resolution instead of repeatedly scanning atlas contents.

Other improvements include:

• centralized atlas and standalone visual resolution
• Runtime atlas binding reuse inside Studio
• reduced repeated asset metadata loading
• reduced duplicate resolution during scene changes and undo/redo
• atlas page decoding off the render thread
• GPU snapshot preparation off the render thread
• prepared atlas pages reused for normal textures and texture arrays
• reduced particle-related Preview stalls
• improved prefab dependency collection for animation assets

These changes significantly reduce unnecessary editor work during atlas rebuilds and asset changes.

Scene switching and editor reliability

Scene switching now uses an explicit unsaved-changes workflow.

When changing scenes with pending changes, Pixscape now asks whether to:

• Save
• Don't Save
• Cancel

Scene activation waits for a successful visible save when Save is selected.

If saving is cancelled or fails, the previous scene remains active and the scene selector is restored.

The previous silent automatic scene save has been removed.

Other reliability improvements include:

• stable physics selection after fixture or body changes
• stable picking after undo/redo and scene activation
• atomic prefab and clipboard physics instantiation
• corrected entity identity handling after delete/undo/redo
• linked collision activation when a tiled layer initially has no transform
• copied entities correctly adapting to their destination layer
• prevention of partial state after failed physics or Spatial operations
• asynchronous save failures no longer leaving the progress dialog open indefinitely

Canvas and editor improvements

The Canvas now permanently displays the active editing mode.

The indicator distinguishes contexts such as:

• Normal
• Physics
• Spatial
• Tiled
• Lights

In Tiled mode, the same indicator also displays the logical grid coordinates under the mouse cursor.

The Studio interface has also been refined with:

• a more compact layout
• clearer panel hierarchy
• harmonized dialogs
• unified icon-based list controls
• clearer Asset ID and stable entity ID presentation
• logical asset names in labels and tooltips

Performance improvements

0.2.2 contains a substantial amount of work aimed at reducing unnecessary editor and Preview processing.

Highlights include:

• reduced repeated atlas lookups
• reduced particle fallback work
• reduced repeated asset metadata loading
• reduced atlas rebinds after particle changes
• reduced undo/redo overhead
• asynchronous atlas page decoding
• asynchronous GPU snapshot preparation
• reuse of prepared atlas pages
• tiled fallback rendering disabled when no standalone fallback is required
• cached particle atlas readiness

These changes improve responsiveness during editing, scene changes, asset updates, atlas repacks, and Preview startup.

Di...

Pixscape Studio free 0.2.1

Pixscape Studio Free 0.2.1 — TMX Import and Spatial V3

Pixscape Studio Free 0.2.1 is a major workflow and runtime integration update focused on two important areas:

• importing maps and tilesets from Tiled
• introducing Spatial V3 for more reliable and precise 2.5D scenes

This release also includes extensive improvements to tileset placement, tiled animations, image layers, repeatable sprites, physics integration, scene activation, rendering stability, and editor reliability.

Pixscape Studio Free remains fully open source under the Apache License 2.0.

No Pixscape royalties.
No runtime fees.
No hidden export fees.

Important compatibility note

This release introduces breaking changes for existing scenes containing older tiled-map or Spatial tiled data.

Affected scenes should be re-imported or recreated with Pixscape Studio Free 0.2.1.

These changes were necessary to support:

• Tiled transformation flags
• tiled animations
• image collection tilesets
• tileset profiles
• repeatable images and sprites
• improved runtime mapping
• Spatial V3 canonical tile ordering and connected wall structures

Tiled and TMX import

Pixscape can now import supported .tmx maps as new scenes.

The new import pipeline includes preflight validation, import planning, scene materialization, diagnostics, and rollback handling.

Supported workflows include:

• external and inline .tsx tilesets
• standalone .tsx import for supported single-image tilesets
• orthographic and isometric maps
• CSV and supported Base64-compressed tile data
• single-image tilesets
• image collection tilesets
• Tiled tile animations
• horizontal, vertical, and diagonal tile transformations
• Tiled image layers imported as editable Pixscape Classic layers
• image-layer visibility, opacity, offsets, and parallax
• repeatable image layers using repeatx and repeaty
• tileset margin and spacing

Unsupported features are reported before import instead of being silently ignored.

TMX object layers are currently detected and reported, but are not imported yet.

Tileset profiles

This release introduces tileset profiles for controlling how tiles are placed and rendered independently from their native image dimensions.

Profiles can define:

• logical cell size
• native render size
• orthographic or isometric projection
• anchor position
• placement offsets

This improves support for tall isometric tiles, oversized environment sprites, and tiles whose image dimensions differ from the map cell size.

Tileset profiles are exported through tileset-profiles.json and used consistently by both the Studio and Pixscape Runtime.

Spatial V3

Spatial V3 introduces a redesigned model for deterministic 2.5D wall, tile, and actor ordering.

Highlights include:

• connected wall structures
• automatic wall merging and splitting
• deterministic corner and junction handling
• precise wall footprint editing
• exposed-face compilation
• canonical tiled ordering
• circular actor-footprint relations
• altitude-aware structures
• improved ordering around corners, seams, and enclosed structures
• stable rendering without relying on the previous Spatial V2 fallback paths

Spatial-generated collision fixtures are now managed coherently while Use for physics collision is enabled.

Generated fixture geometry is locked, while Sensor, material, and filter properties remain editable. Deleting the generated fixture automatically disables the Spatial collision option, with full undo and redo support.

Reliability and editor improvements

This release also fixes and improves several important editor workflows:

• Spatial ordering remains active after changing scenes
• tiled and Spatial scenes use a stable single-load activation pipeline
• rejected Spatial operations no longer advance undo/redo history
• changing Spatial layer defaults immediately invalidates and rebuilds affected geometry
• failed Spatial compilation no longer leaves stale overlay geometry visible
• invalid tiled edits linked to Spatial walls are rejected before mutation
• selected fixture properties no longer remain bound to deleted fixtures
• Studio atlas-backed tiled rendering keeps tileset profile metadata after reload and atlas rebind
• Preview detects missing or stale runtime exports and profile manifests
• repeated image layers now render consistently in both Studio and Preview
• sprite rendering remains coherent after physics-body changes
• TMX diagnostics are displayed in a scrollable dialog
• the Studio foreground / always-on-top behavior has been corrected

Distribution

This release is available as:

• Windows x64 ZIP
• Linux x86_64 AppImage
• Linux x64 tar.gz portable archive

SHA-256 checksum files are provided for the downloadable builds.

Requirements

Pixscape Studio Free 0.2.1 requires Java 21.

Projects exported by this release use Pixscape Runtime 0.1.8.

Pixscape Runtime 0.1.8 is published on Maven Central with Java 8-compatible bytecode for broader LibGDX ecosystem compatibility.

Current TMX limitations

• TMX import creates a new scene
• reimport and synchronization are not included yet
• importing layers into the current scene is not included yet
• object layers are detected but not imported
• unsupported Tiled features are reported during preflight
• standalone TSX import currently supports single-image tilesets
• tileset profiles are global per tileset; per-tile overrides are not included yet

Project direction

Pixscape Free is the open-source foundation of the project.

Pixscape Pro will remain a separate optional edition focused on advanced production workflows. Its purpose is to fund the long-term development of Pixscape without replacing, restricting, or weakening Studio Free.

Thank you to everyone who tested the TMX import pipeline, Spatial V3, Linux builds, and Preview workflows.

Pixscape Studio free 0.2.0

Pixscape Studio Free 0.2.0 — First Open Source Release

Pixscape Studio Free is now open source under the Apache License 2.0.

This is the first public open-source release of the Pixscape editor. The runtime was already open source; now the Studio Free code is public too.

Pixscape Studio Free is not a trial version. It is the open-source foundation of Pixscape: developers can inspect it, build it, modify it, fork it if necessary, and use it to create real games, including commercial games.

No Pixscape royalties.
No runtime fees.
No hidden export fees.

Pixscape Studio Free exports projects for Pixscape Runtime, which is also open source under Apache 2.0.

Highlights

• Open-source 2D visual editor for LibGDX and Pixscape Runtime
• Scene-based workflow
• Sprite and animation editing
• Orthographic and isometric tiled maps
• 2.5D spatial ordering
• Prefab authoring
• Box2D physics editing
• Shader, light, and particle workflows
• Desktop, Android, and HTML5/WebGL2 export pipeline
• Runtime dependency updated to Pixscape Runtime 0.1.7

Requirements

Pixscape Studio Free requires Java 21.

Pixscape Runtime 0.1.7 is published with Java 8-compatible bytecode for broader LibGDX ecosystem compatibility.

Project direction

Pixscape Free is the foundation. Pixscape Pro will be a separate optional edition focused on advanced production tools, helping fund long-term development without replacing or weakening Studio Free.