Quick Start Guide

Howdy!

This brief document only covers the basics of Arrow usage. For more information, please read other pages of the wiki as well.

New Project

Arrow welcomes you with a unsaved project, every time you open it. To have a new project, you just need to save that untitled project, by pressing the Save button on the title-bar or via Inspector (panel) > Project (tab) > New (menu button) > Save Current and Continue.

You'll be asked for a title and a file (name.)

Quick Tip

Arrow comes with an exported demo project file called demo.arrow-project.json.

As the name suggests, this file is a demonstration of all the Arrow's built-in node-types. The project can serve you as an interactive walkthrough.

You can open that file to play and edit via:
Inspector (panel) > Project (tab) > New (menu button) > Import Project File

Where Project Files Are

Arrow keeps all the projects in a single work directory.

This directory is by default user:// or the platform-specific directory for the user local data.

You can change work directory from Preferences panel.

Press the Arrow menu button on the top left corner and select Preferences.

Changing work directory won't move your project files, and if you save an open project, after change in the work directory path it will be regarded as a new project.

Projects are saved with .arrow-project file extension.

Since Arrow v1.0.1, users can choose whether saved data shall be formatted as textual (JSON) or binary (Godot variants), via the Preferences panel.

The default is textual.
File extension remains the same .arrow-project and Arrow auto-detects them.

Nodes and Graphs

Right Click on the Grid, to insert new nodes. From this popup menu you can also copy, cut, paste or delete selected nodes.

Right clicking on the nodes won't select or deselect them. It's considered as a normal right click on the grid.

You can change play/execution order of nodes by connecting their slots (small circles attached to them.)

Position of nodes on the Grid won't affect the order of execution.

Node Inspection

To change how a node behaves, and its parameters, you can open a node in the Node tab of the Inspector panel by

• Double Clicking on a Node
• or just select one if Auto-Inspect is on.

The parameters you can modify depends on type of the node; yet there are few common parameters:

• UID: Name of the node which is editable but shall be unique throughout the project.
• Skip: Deactivates the node without removing it.
• Node Notes: The arbitrary metadata you may add to any node (e.g. ToDo or Dev Notes.)

Behavior of skipped nodes depend on their types.

Nodes shall be updated in order to keep changes, otherwise when you inspect another node, the changes are gone.

Updating nodes changes in-memory data, to save them permanently, save the project.

Snapshots: History of Changes

Arrow currently doesn't support continuous history (Ctrl+Z.)

We have Snapshots.

A snapshot of a project or a snapshot of another snapshot, can be taken, previewed or restored as the main working draft, in the Project tab of the Inspector.

Snapshots can be edited in the preview mode but changes are volatile, unless stored by taking another snapshot of the edited snapshot.

Snapshots are not currently saved with the project, but you can preview then save them as a copy via Inspector > Project > Export

Save a Copy function always saves what is loaded in the editor, whether it's the main working draft or a previewed snapshot.

Test-Play (Console)

You can use the Console panel to test-play your creation without exporting it. There are few buttons on the top right corner of the editor which open console and play from a special starting point.

PE plays from the project's entry node. PS plays from the open scene's entry node. CL just re-opens the Console in whatever state it was. PN plays from the selected node without clearing the console, so you can play in any order you like on the same set of variable values.

Console keeps the changes made in the variables while it's not cleared. You can also manually modify variables from the console via Console > Settings > Inspect Variables.

Test-playing in the Console will not change your project data, so play with ease of mind.

Exporting

When a project is open, you can export it via Inspector > Project > Export

Arrow supports .json and .html exports.

.html export will produce a single-file playable document using the official HTML-JS runtime template. The generated document can be played within any modern web browser.

JSON is also a very popular format you can use in many programming languages and game engines to further develop your narrative and/or use it as a database of your game content.

Extras

• Panel Resize and Move

  • Grab top-right corner of a panel to resize it
  • Grab a panel's title-bar to move it

  When panels overlap, grabbing title-bar of any panel will take it to the top layer above others.