Getting started

Start here if you want to make this game yourself. To follow the course in order, go to the course guide.

What you need

Engine	Godot 4.7.1 Standard
Language	GDScript (no extra install)
Assets	Download the assets — all free
Phone	An Android device. Install and check at the end of every lesson, starting with Lesson 1

Running the game

1. Install Godot 4.7.1.
2. Clone the repository.
3. Follow Download the assets and fetch the assets.
4. In the Godot Project Manager, open apps/game/project.godot.

To run from the command line:

pnpm game

tip

It is fine if godot is not on PATH

Installing Godot often does not give you a command named godot. The executable in the install folder is named with a version, like Godot_v4.7.1-stable_win64.exe.

pnpm game above finds the executable for you. If it cannot, it tells you where it looked, and you can set GODOT_BIN to the full path.

# Windows
set GODOT_BIN=C:\...\Godot_v4.7.1-stable_win64_console.exe
# macOS / Linux
export GODOT_BIN=/path/to/godot

Running on a phone

In the Godot editor, set up the Android build template and a debug keystore first.

pnpm android:build
pnpm android:run

android:build cleans the build template and Gradle output, and isolates the Play Billing plugin from the direct-distribution APK. Do not call Godot yourself for Android export.

Do not bypass the wrapper for Android export

pnpm android:build prepares relative paths and the output folder. The wrapper also isolates the Play Billing plugin from the direct-distribution APK, so do not call godot --export-debug yourself.

warning

am start will not launch it

adb shell am start -n com.crossplatformkorea.moonlitbeacon/com.godot.game.GodotApp fails with SecurityException: not exported. GodotApp is an internal activity. The real launcher activity is com.godot.game.GodotAppLauncher. Throwing a launcher intent with monkey, as above, is the safest way.

This game's display settings

Item	Value
Internal resolution	808 × 360
Orientation	landscape locked (Sensor Landscape)
Stretch	canvas_items / expand
Texture filter	Nearest
Renderer	Compatibility

Why 808 × 360. Pixel 10 landscape is 2424 × 1080. 808 × 360 is exactly 1/3 of that, so it scales by an integer 3×. 16px pixel art does not land on a half pixel. At 16px tiles that is 50 tiles across and 22.5 down, so one arena fits on one screen.

Why expand instead of keep. Android devices have many aspect ratios. keep makes black-bar thickness differ by device. expand fills the screen with no bars and extra width becomes extra view. So UI anchors to the screen edges, and the background image is shifted by the leftover width to stay centered.

Physics at 30Hz, render interpolated. physics_ticks_per_second=30 fits a mobile CPU and battery budget. The display draws at 60Hz or more, so without interpolation a moving body sits on each physics tick for several frames and you get judder that looks like two overlapping characters. physics_interpolation=true interpolates between the last two physics ticks on every render frame and removes that. physics_jitter_fix=0.0 turns off a correction that overlaps with interpolation — Godot 4 ignores jitter fix when interpolation is on, so the value itself does not change behavior. On teleports (zone changes, post-spawn placement) call reset_physics_interpolation() so a trail does not streak across the screen.

Repository layout

MoonlitBeacon/
  apps/
    game/            # Godot project (res://)
    docs/            # this site
  _downloads/        # original ZIP files     (gitignored)
  _asset_sources/    # unzipped originals     (gitignored)
  builds/            # build output           (gitignored)

Do not put original asset packs inside res://. The full Ninja Adventure pack is about 89MB, and Godot would import unused images and music too. The project gets heavy and the files you need get hard to find. Copy only the files you actually use into apps/game/assets/third_party/. The current game holds 75 selected third-party files plus original and derived work, 119 files in all (about 26.5MB). About 15MB of that is the Noto Sans CJK font that draws Korean, Chinese, and Japanese player names clearly. The .import files Godot makes automatically are not in that count.