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Getting started

Modoki is an AI-native 2D/3D game engine with a visual editor. You author a game as an entity-component-system world — entities carrying data traits, driven by systems — and ship the exact same TypeScript to iOS, Android, and the web.

This page gets you from install to a running game.

Install the editor

Modoki ships as a desktop editor for macOS and Windows. Grab the latest build from the Download page, open it, and it reopens your last project — or start a new one from File → New Project.

Early access

The macOS build is Apple-signed and notarized — it opens normally. The Windows build isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn on first launch (click More info → Run anyway).

Windows: put your projects on a Dev Drive

Node and npm are noticeably slow on Windows' default NTFS, which the editor uses heavily for installs and builds. If you develop on Windows, keep your projects on a Windows 11 Dev Drive — a ReFS-backed volume tuned for dev workloads that dramatically speeds up npm install and the build steps. For the biggest win, move your npm cache onto the Dev Drive too (npm config set cache E:\packages\npm, adjusting the drive letter) — Microsoft's guide covers relocating package caches.

Your first project

File → New Project scaffolds a complete, runnable hello-world game — one sprite, a little UI, nothing else. Every project is fully self-contained: its own scene, config, assets, and (when you build for mobile) its own native iOS/Android folders.

Once open, you get the editor shell — a set of dockable panels:

  • Hierarchy & Inspector — the entities in your scene and their traits
  • SceneView — the authoring viewport with transform gizmos
  • Assets — models, textures, materials, prefabs
  • Game — a live preview running all three render layers (3D · 2D · UI)

The three render layers

A single scene can composite all three at once, each driven by a Renderable.layer:

LayerRendererFor
3dThree.js / WebGPUmodels, cameras, lights, environments
2dPixiJS v8sprites, particles, high-throughput 2D
uiReact DOMHUD, menus, ECS-driven flexbox layout

Author, then verify

Modoki is built to be driven by an AI agent as well as by hand. Game logic runs on an injectable clock with a seeded RNG and a tick-stamped event journal, so an agent can verify logic headlessly and deterministically — by data, not screenshots.

Ship it

When you're ready, the Build menu compiles one TypeScript codebase to:

  • Web — a static bundle you host anywhere
  • iOS / Android — native Capacitor apps, signed with your own team
  • Playable ad — a single self-contained index.html for ad networks

Where to go next

Walk through each part of the editor:

Built with Modoki.