Pixelbolt v0.13.0

0.13.0

Characters that move as if animated: walks, runs and jumps that read, tails that follow through, four-legged creatures and drafted turned drawings for small parts; crystals that grow; bodies that break; a parts view and motion arcs for reviewing figures.

• Walks, runs and jumps that read:
  • Arms swing against the legs, legs are long at contact, the body dips after each step, and the lifted foot leaves behind and lands in front.
  • The jump tucks its legs at the apex and reaches down to land.
  • Feet drawn with views roll heel to toe.
  • A far hand never floats free of its arm.
  • A figure keeps one outline round its silhouette.
  • The hero example is redrawn from a brief.
  • The motion review checks the gait (armSwing, contactLegs, kneeLift), so a walk that slides nowhere but still looks wrong now fails.
• Tails that follow through: rig.tail hangs on damped springs that the body's own motion drives. The tail trails in a run, lifts as the body falls, whips after a strike and settles after landing. Each motion's follow (0–2) sets how far it swings.
• Four-legged creatures:
  • rig.fore and rig.hind, with optional rig.chest and rig.neck.
  • Gaits: a lateral-sequence walk, a new trot template and a gallop run whose spine curls and stretches.
  • Idle, jump and hurt for four legs.
  • A new red fox example and preset, fox.
• Draft views: pixelbolt compile x.poses.json --draft-views boot:15,345 (MCP pixel_compile draftViews) drafts small grid parts turned by pixel-art rules, for you to correct and paste into views. --preview draws each draft beside the flat drawing and today's turn.
• Seeing motion and parts: the motion review draws one cycle's path of each foot, hand and the head. A new parts view (also in the studio's review menu) paints each pixel by the part that drew it.
• Crystal growth: a new source format, pixelforge-crystal (pixel_help topic crystal, pixelbolt/crystal). Faceted prisms, cubes and octahedra, clusters and geodes, and snowflakes all grow from a seed and come to rest. New presets: geode, quartz cluster, pyrite and snowflakes.
• Rigid bodies:
  • Breaking bodies: breaks and the break power. A knocked body breaks into convex pieces that carry its picture. New preset: crate smash.
  • Blade bloom: strikes, cuts, pivots, smears and crowds of thousands. New preset: blade bloom.
  • Heavy loads rest on light bodies, and touching bodies are drawn side by side.
  • Bodies in a liquid share its pressure solve, so a light plank lands on a pool instead of erupting it.
• For agents:
  • The presets listing is a line per preset, 9 KB instead of 21 KB.
  • A held prop turns with the hand.
  • A cut-down expanded poses source compiles.
  • pixelbolt exits quietly when piped to head.
• Fixes from a review of this release:
  • The crate smash preset no longer crashes as video frames (pixelbolt sequence, pixel_compile sequence).
  • Breaks no longer stop silently at the crowd limit: there is room for every body with breaks by default, and a compile warns when a break is cut short.
  • Fixed bodies that events break count toward the work limit.
  • Figures facing left bend their knees and lean the way they face.
  • Quick or many-framed four-legged gaits compile.
  • A tail can't also be a leg or arm bone, the chest or the neck.
  • The schemas refuse what the compilers refuse.
• Docs: README in Korean and Spanish.

Known issues:

• Tails of five or more short links can thrash.
• A far elbow can snap between frames in walks of 32 or more frames.
• Left-facing jumps, attacks and hurts aren't mirrored.
• A plank nearly as wide as its pool, thrown in fast, can be launched out of it.

The full list of changes is in CHANGELOG.md.

The bundle keeps its 0.8.0 name, pixelbolt.mcpb (checksum pixelbolt.mcpb.sha256). The pixelforge command still works as an alias.

pixelbolt.mcpb contains the local Node.js MCP server, its eight tools, schemas, authoring help and the shipped examples, so every preset compiles from the bundle. The server makes no network requests.

Download pixelbolt.mcpb and open it in Claude Desktop, or use Settings -> Extensions -> install from file. Choose a workspace for recipes and generated artwork, then ask the agent to call pixel_help. The bundle uses the client's Node.js runtime (20 or newer); it does not include Node.js.

Download pixelbolt.mcpb.sha256 beside the bundle to check its SHA-256:

sha256sum --check pixelbolt.mcpb.sha256
gh attestation verify pixelbolt.mcpb --repo skulitom/Pixelbolt --signer-workflow skulitom/Pixelbolt/.github/workflows/release.yml

On PowerShell, (Get-FileHash pixelbolt.mcpb -Algorithm SHA256).Hash should match the hash in the checksum file.

The GitHub release makes the bundle available immediately. MCP Registry publication is a separate, manually dispatched step after testing; see Publishing.

What's Changed

• [compass] Remove dead code: unread terrain fields, unused defaults, a duplicate scene map, an unreachable PNG check, stale comments by @skulitom in #104
• [compass] Fix: Studio labels: example frame counts, pose save names, gait checks (main's red walk) by @skulitom in #105
• [compass] Perf: contact sheets and patch previews about 3x faster, byte-identical by @skulitom in #106
• [compass] Clean up tests: presets cache tests list a small copy of the package by @skulitom in #107
• [compass] Pixelbolt Fluids for Aseprite: the seven gas presets as a free Aseprite extension by @skulitom in #108
• [compass] README and llms.txt: point Unreal Engine users to the tested Paper2D import guide by @skulitom in #110

Full Changelog: v0.12.1...v0.13.0