EN Install Requirements

Requirements

Français · Type: reference · Audience: author, contributor · Context: engine repository, created project · Status: ready · Applies from: 4.2.1

What a machine needs to make a game with quest'n'click, or to work on the engine. Two contexts recur on this page: a created project (a game made with quest-n-click create, the engine installed under node_modules/quest-n-click) and the engine repository (a clone of wanoo/quest-n-click). Only Node.js is needed for everything; the rest depends on what you do.

Tool	Needed for	Created project	Engine repository
Node.js 22.12 or newer	everything	required	required
Node.js 22.13 or newer	the local Studio, the tools that write a game, a Bridge on SQLite	when you use them	when you use them
Python 3 and requirements.txt	npm run assets (the art), the image tools	required to prepare art	required for assets and the asset tests
ffmpeg	sounds and videos in assets, the audio pipeline	optional	optional (required by doctor -- --release)
Playwright Chromium	browser tests, the Studio's checks, doctor	not used, but doctor needs Playwright (see below)	required
Playwright WebKit, Firefox	the second browsers of the e2e	not used	optional
fluidsynth, Furnace, uv	the Mega Drive audio pipeline	not offered	optional

doctor checks most of this for you: doctor: checking your machine.

Node.js

Version

22.12 or newer. The engine's package.json says "engines": { "node": ">=22.12" }, and the quest-n-click package carries the same field: Vite 8 and Vitest 5 need it (4.1.8). The repository's .nvmrc says 22, so nvm use takes the newest 22 you have installed.

Node 22.13 for the Studio, the writing tools and SQLite

From 4.2.1, the local Studio and the tools that write a game (ids, i18n, voices, import-layout, provenance, the Studio's own edits) write through a journal kept under .cache/studio-journal/ in SQLite, through node:sqlite, which needs Node 22.13 or newer. A Reality Bridge on its local profile (SQLite) needs it too. Playing and building a game still run on 22.12.

Checked by

CI runs Node 22 and 24 on Ubuntu, and installs the release archives on Ubuntu, macOS and Windows with Node 22 (and Ubuntu with Node 24), in the candidate's external-consumer job.

Limit · doctor-node-major doctor only checks that Node's major version is 22 or more: it passes Node 22.0 to 22.11, which the engine does not support. Read node --version yourself. npm prints an EBADENGINE warning, not an error, when you install the engine on an older Node.

Python 3 and its modules

Needed for

npm run assets (tools/assets.py) prepares the images a game names, and the image tools (tools/cut-sheet.py, the talking-mouth tools) cut and fix sheets: both are Python. Without Python, a game still plays with assets already prepared, and doctor calls Python optional.

Version

requirements.txt pins the modules: Pillow 13.0.0, NumPy 2.4.6, SciPy 1.18.1 (Pillow moved to 13.0.0 in 4.3.0). CI uses Python 3.12. No other Python version is checked.

Install

# in the engine repository
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

# in a created project: the file comes with the engine package
python3 -m pip install -r node_modules/quest-n-click/requirements.txt

In a created project, npx quest-n-click assets runs python3, or the interpreter the variable PYTHON names (a virtual environment's, for instance). In the engine repository, npm run assets always calls python3.

Limit · opencv-not-pinned The talking-mouth tools (tools/talk-apply.py, tools/talk-normalize.py) also import OpenCV (cv2), which requirements.txt does not list and doctor does not check. Install it yourself if you use them.

The image tools are on Image toolchain.

ffmpeg

Needed for

assets converts music, sound effects and videos with ffmpeg; the audio pipeline (npm run audio) renders and encodes with it. A game without sounds or videos to convert never calls it. doctor calls it optional; npm run doctor -- --release (the engine repository's release check) requires it.

Install

Any recent build on your PATH: brew install ffmpeg on macOS, your distribution's package on Linux. CI installs it with scripts/ci-ffmpeg.sh.

Playwright browsers

Needed for

In the engine repository, the e2e scripts and the Studio's checks drive Chromium through Playwright, a development dependency. doctor requires Chromium there, and calls Firefox and WebKit optional.

# in the engine repository, after npm ci
npx playwright install chromium

In a created project

No command of quest-n-click opens a browser through Playwright, and the engine package does not depend on it. Only doctor imports it, so npx quest-n-click doctor stops on a missing playwright module in a fresh project: Install troubleshooting gives the workaround.

Audio pipeline tools

fluidsynth, Furnace 0.6.8.3 (downloaded by npm run audio -- setup on macOS and Linux) and, for audio sources, uv with a Python 3.11 virtual environment. They serve the engine repository's npm run audio only: Audio toolchain.

Windows, macOS, Linux

• Linux and macOS: every command of these pages runs as written. The maintainer works on macOS; CI runs on Ubuntu.
• Windows: CI runs a windows-latest job (since 4.1.8): doctor, the type checks, the unit suite except six test files that assume POSIX (file modes, / in paths; named in ci.yml), without the Telnet and SSH tests and the Studio Server's worker, then build and the production server answering. Each release candidate installs the archives on Windows, creates and builds a game, and plays it to its ending through quest-n-click/testing (no browser). Nobody has checked npm run dev and the Studio on Windows yet. Run the shell blocks of these pages in Git Bash, the shell CI uses there.
• The audio pipeline does not download Furnace on Windows: install it yourself (Audio toolchain).
• A hosted Studio's processing worker and its previews run on Linux only.

The support matrix, with what people have and have not checked, is Support matrix.

Related

• doctor: checking your machine
• Install from the release archive
• Install from the repository to work on the engine
• Environment variables: PYTHON, FURNACE_BIN

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