Previewing windows without the game

The preview runs your plugin with the host's real plugin runtime and API, outside the game, and shows its windows and footer buttons in a browser. Use it to work on a plugin's UI: an edit to the plugin's files reloads it in about a second, and there is no game to start.

tools/preview.sh plugins/plugin-manager ../my-plugin

Then open http://localhost:8790. The footer is along the bottom, as in the game; click your plugin's footer button to open its windows. Clicks, typing, sliders, dropdowns, check boxes and keys (Escape, the arrows, letters) reach your plugin the way the game's would. text shows the windows as plain text, log the host log.

What the preview runs is real: settings are saved, the plugin browser installs and removes plugins (into the preview's own folder, build/preview), and the registry is the live one unless you pass --registry <file>. What it can't do is anything that needs the game: the race, the editor, the HUD, maps, the cursor, and windows docked into the game's panels. Game calls return nothing there, as they would before the game is ready.

It is close to the game, not identical: the page uses a stand-in for the game's font (put a copy of the font in tools/preview/fonts to use it; it is the game's, so it is never committed), and sizes are drawn the way the game's widgets are measured, at 1920 x 1080. Check the result in the game before you publish.

Tests

Steps run the preview without a browser and print the windows as text wherever a step says dump:

# plugins: plugins/plugin-manager plugins/hello-world
click plugins
dump
type rain
setting hello-world Every 120
press escape
dump

Steps: click <label> (label#2 for the second button with that label, window:<label> for a window's button when the footer has one too), type [@hint|]<text>, submit [@hint|]<text>, select <first option> <index>, slider <0..1>, press <key>, setting <plugin> <variable> <value>, wait <seconds> and dump.

tools/preview/test.sh runs every tools/preview/tests/*.steps against tools/preview/tests/registry.json and compares what it prints with the .txt beside it; --update writes the new text, to read in the diff before committing.