Samples gallery

Every sample is simultaneously a browser demo and a headless regression test, and each one is meant to be copied. Three ways in, none of which needs a clone of the engine repository:

• Play any sample in the browser at molen.dev/play.

• Copy a sample into your own npm project with --template. The templates ship inside @bendyline/molen-tooling, locked to the package versions released with that CLI, so they work offline:

  npx @bendyline/molen-tooling new my-game --template skybound
  cd my-game && npm install && npm run dev

  molen templates lists them. A copy keeps whatever the sample has (scene, scripts, commands, checks, replay fixture, headless tests), so npx molen sim run, npx molen replay and npm test work in it straight away.

• Read the source on GitHub.

Sample	Shows	Play	Template
Cubes	~50 spinning/drifting cubes; a spawn_cube command; determinism across runs	play	cubes
Data viz	data-driven entities (one per row) + a camera track	play	data-viz
Top-down arena	a complete small game as pure data: scene.json declares kinematics, the move command + WASD input, and four scripts (control/spawner/chaser/combat); no setup module	play	top-down-arena
Terrain flyover	chunked LOD terrain from a descriptor + deterministic 16-bit heightmap	play	terrain-flyover
Figures gallery	a lineup of every figure preset, a body-type sweep, a hat on a head socket and a rider on a horse; ?walk=1 (or the set_gait command) animates the gaits in place	play	figures-gallery
Earth view	the mountEarthView facade in one page: real Sammamish terrain, styled buildings, orbit / walk / drive with parked cars, a photo-pin marker and credits (?mode=walk, ?lat=&lon=&range=)	play	source
World explorer	streamed Web Mercator terrain with adaptive package LOD, bare / land-classification / human-feature modes, and styled buildings from the default worldgen pack (?style=, ?synthetic=1&lineup=1)	play	source

Playable game samples

Three complete games, one authoring path explains the shared infrastructure.

Game	Demonstrates	Play	Template
City Courier	Arcade driving, traffic, five deliveries, damage, a time limit and restart	play	city-courier
The Lantern Vault	First-person exploration, melee rolls, inventory, a locked gate and victory	play	source
Skybound	Side-scrolling jumps, one-way ledges, seeds, stomps, hazards and checkpoints	play	skybound

Each includes a command-only victory regression (test/playthrough.test.js) that proves the game is winnable without a browser.

World Explorer and The Lantern Vault are not templates. They carry content (terrain tiles and 28 GLB models), and npm packages never include content. Their scenes and code are still the best reference for streaming and for a glTF asset pipeline, so read them on GitHub.

Capability layers used

• Kinematics (@bendyline/molen-kernel/kinematics): 2.5D circle/AABB collision, raycast, overlapCircle (arena).
• Platformer (@bendyline/molen-kernel/platformer): swept XY box movement against static solids, jump buffering, coyote grace, and short hops (Skybound).
• Character controller (@bendyline/molen-kernel/character): gravity + jump + planar movement from a moveIntent component.
• Pathfinding (@bendyline/molen-pathfinding): flow-field navigation over a grid.
• Physics (Rapier) (@bendyline/molen-physics-rapier): opt-in rigid-body plugin (WASM). Colliders apply a positive uniform transform.scale, including offsets, asset geometry and heightfields, and a scale change rebuilds the collider while keeping the body and its velocity. Nonuniform, zero or negative scale on a physical entity fails with a diagnostic; bake it into the collision geometry. Purely visual entities keep per-axis scale.
• Terrain (@bendyline/molen-terrain): /kernel heightfield queries + /client LOD meshes.
• Worldgen (@bendyline/molen-worldgen): /kernel outline → styled building and labeled polygon → prop generation; /client buffer uploads and style packs.
• Worldgen Earth binding (@bendyline/molen-worldgen-earth): /kernel terrain-semantics adapter and region atlas; /client terrain tile renderers.
• Figures (@bendyline/molen-figures): /kernel descriptors, rigs, gaits, figureState, sockets and attachments; /client the figure renderable kind (procedural skinned bodies).
• Ambient life (@bendyline/molen-ambient): /kernel transport networks, the spawn ring and NPC cars, pedestrians, trains and aircraft; /client instanced vehicle proxies, pooled models and pedestrian figures. See ambient life.

Start from scratch

molen new <name> without --template scaffolds a minimal runnable experience (scene with camera/input/commands + scripts + setup + commands + checks + a Vite browser app) that already runs the agent loop and mounts in a page (browser-mount.md). Then iterate.