User Guides

Overview

User guides are the end-to-end walkthroughs of the tasks people perform with The Test Cabinet. Each guide states the prerequisites, the exact commands, and the constraints that govern the task. The matching quickstart is the same task reduced to its steps.

Setup

• First Time Setup installs the toolchain, stands up a reachable backend, registers an account, and makes a first run.

Development

• Running the Local Service Stack stands up the backend, auth, dispatcher, driver, artifact, and arena services on local k3d, and drives runs the way a deployment does.
• Reviewing Test Run Results covers playing a finished run, reading its validation signals, and writing the required review.

Authoring end-to-end and full-stack cases

• Writing Case Specifications and Prompts states the editorial rules every playable case’s seeded specs and prompt follow.
• Writing Debug APIs and Validators states the design rules for a playable case’s debug API and its validator suites, engine by engine.
• Authoring a Case Showcase states what a variant’s showcase media must show and how to capture real gameplay from its reference implementation.
• Authoring an End-to-End Test Case covers writing a new playable-game case or version, with its specification, prompt, references, and manifest.
• Creating an End-to-End Variant adds a new playable mode to an existing end-to-end version.
• Authoring a Full-Stack Test Case covers writing a case whose run produces both the game and its own assets.

Authoring 2D asset-generation cases

• Authoring an Asset-Generation Test Case covers writing a new sprite (draw) or sprite-sheet (draw-sheet) case or version, with its brief, tool, output, and manifest.
• Creating a Single-Sprite Variant adds a brief variation to a single-sprite version (asset_kind = "sprite").
• Creating a Sprite-Sheet Variant adds a brief variation to a sprite-sheet version (asset_kind = "sprite-sheet").
• Authoring a UI Test Case covers a high-resolution interface asset (asset_kind = "ui"), either one image or a kit of named elements, painted with the paint and ui binaries.
• Authoring a Material Test Case covers a tileable PBR material (asset_kind = "material"), a set of maps painted with the texture and pbr binaries.

Authoring 3D asset-generation cases

• Authoring a Voxel Model Test Case sculpts a static cube-voxel model (asset_kind = "voxel-model") with the voxel binary.
• Creating a Voxel Model Variant adds a brief variation to a static voxel-model version.
• Authoring a Voxel Animation Test Case sculpts a rigged voxel model and authors its required animations (asset_kind = "voxel-animation").
• Creating a Voxel Animation Variant adds a brief variation to a rigged voxel version.
• Authoring a Mesh Model Test Case sculpts a static meshed signed-distance field (asset_kind = "mc-model"/"sn-model"/"dc-model").
• Creating a Mesh Model Variant adds a brief variation to a static meshed version.
• Authoring a Mesh Animation Test Case sculpts and rigs an animated meshed model (asset_kind = "mc-animation"/"sn-animation"/"dc-animation") with declared required animations.
• Creating a Mesh Animation Variant adds a brief variation to a rigged meshed version.
• Authoring a Skinned Character Test Case covers a single continuous deforming skin bound to a model-invented skeleton (asset_kind = "mc-skinned"/"sn-skinned"/"dc-skinned").
• Authoring a Blender Character Test Case builds a rigged, skinned character in headless Blender via build.py and tcab-blend (asset_kind = "blender-character").

Authoring effects and audio cases

• Authoring a Particle Test Case covers an emitter system simulated live (asset_kind = "particle-2d"/"particle-3d").
• Authoring an Audio Test Case covers a short rendered clip (asset_kind = "sfx-synth"/"sfx-sample"/"music").
• Publishing an Audio Sample Pack builds an sfx-sample/music pack from its manifest, publishes it to the private R2 bucket, and pins it into the run-container image.

DevOps

• Adding or Updating a Model curates a model in the app, and covers how derived models and price history appear.
• Authoring Errata records a known issue with a shipped test-case version without cutting a new version.
• Publishing a Test Run Result releases a reviewed run to public hosting and the gallery.
• Publishing a Reference Implementation deploys a case variant’s authored, correct static build out-of-band.
• Rolling Production Service Images promotes a CI-built service-image sha to the production cluster.
• Cutting a Release walks the whole vX.Y.Z sequence: prepare the release on nightly, rehearse it on staging, publish the artifacts from GitHub, then land the catalog and the services in production.

Component documentation

These guides describe how to use The Test Cabinet. The Components section describes how it works internally.