§ Navigating the Book

• Home: Basic information about how to use the Catspeak library.

• Library Reference: Documentation for the library functions.

• Dubiously Undocumented: Weird deprecated behaviour and compatibility documentation.

§ Features

If you run into any issues using this project, please create a GitHub issue or get in contact on Discord through the GameMaker Kitchen server.

📝 Minimal Setup Required

• Self-contained and ready to use after installation.

• No need to place a persistent God Object in the first room of your game!

☯ Seamless GML-Catspeak Interoperability

• Call GML code from Catspeak.

• Call Catspeak code from GML.

• Familiar syntax inspired by GML and JavaScript.

🏃‍♀️ Performant Runtime

• Optimising compiler generates performant code capable of competing with pure GML implementations.

• At best, Catspeak code will be just as fast as GML.

• On average, Catspeak code will be 5x slower than GML.

👽 Cross-platform

• Implemented in pure GML.

• No external dependencies or platform-specific DLLs.

• Mods should work on any target platform. (Tested on VM, YYC, HTML5, and others)

🔨 Customisable, Sandboxed Runtime Environment

• Modders cannot gain access to parts of your game you don't want them to.

• Expose only the functions and resources you feel comfortable with.

• Impossible for modders to execute malicious code by default.

• Detects infinite loops and recursion so the sly while true { } doesn't freeze your game, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

💪 Built for Power Users

• Full compiler back-end documented and available for experimentation.

• Pre-compile your scripts to JSON, and cache them for later. Skip straight to code generation.

• Parse your own domain-specific language into Catspeak IR, then let the code generator turn that into a GML compatibile representation:

  • A custom UI language which supports running user-defined functions as button events.

  • A custom data-specification language where certain keywords act as calls to GML functions.

  • A simple shell-script language for a developer console.

  • A custom scripting language for a programming game.

🙀 Cute Name and Mascot

§ Disclaimer

Catspeak is currently a solo project (by katsaii), and is being maintained in my free-time. However, if you want to make a suggestion or report a bug, please do report it on GitHub and I will try to review it as soon as possible!