Editors

Tide's language server, tidels, comes with tide. Open your game's folder, the one you run tide run in, and every .tide file in it is one game. Across all of them, editors get:

  • Completion, and errors as you type, with quick fixes: a name spelled wrong, a missing mut, an error nothing handles, a name from another namespace.
  • Hovers, go to definition or to a value's type, find usages, the uses of a name highlighted, and rename.
  • Go to implementation, from an event to its handlers and from the input to its Sample and Sanitize, and the call hierarchy: what calls a function, and what it calls.
  • Formatting, of a file or a selection, parameter hints and inlay hints.
  • The outline, symbols across the game, folding, growing a selection, and semantic highlighting.
  • Moving a declaration to a file of its own.
  • Each system's place in the schedule above it: its stage, and why it waits.

VS Code, Cursor, VSCodium and Windsurf

The installer adds Tide to the ones it finds, and tide upgrade keeps it up to date. Installed one later? Run:

sh
tide editors

The extension runs tidels from your PATH, or from where tide is installed; in a folder with a build/tools/tidels, like Tide's own repo once it's built, it runs that one. The tide.server.path setting runs another one: in it, ~ is your home folder, and ${workspaceFolder} and relative paths are the folder whose settings set it. After updating the server, run Tide: Restart Language Server. The tide.trace.server setting shows what the editor and the server say to each other, in the Tide Trace output.

In a folder you haven't trusted (VS Code's Restricted Mode), nothing from it runs: the server is the tidels that comes with tide, and games don't run, since running one runs its code. Trusting the folder restarts the server.

Running the game

The play button above a .tide file runs its game, which is the folder you opened:

  • Tide: Run plays it in a window of its own, as tide run does.
  • Tide: Run on the Web plays it in a browser tab beside your code: VS Code's integrated browser, or the Simple Browser in editors without it. A game only gets keys while its tab has focus, and the editor may pause it while its tab is hidden, so keep it in a group of its own.

Either runs tide in a terminal of its own, so saving a file reloads the game, and typing r and Enter in that terminal starts it over. Running it again starts the game over. The tide.path setting runs another tide.

On the web, each reload says what it did in the page's console: Tide: Game Developer Tools shows it.

JetBrains IDEs

CLion, Rider, IntelliJ and the others, 2024.2 or later: install the Tide plugin from Settings > Plugins > Marketplace. It brings the LSP4IJ plugin it needs.

The plugin runs the tidels chosen under Settings > Languages & Frameworks > Tide, if any; else the project's own build/tools/tidels, like Tide's repo once it's built, once you trust the project; else the one on your PATH, or where tide is installed. When there's none, .tide files say so above the code, with links to install tide, choose a tidels, or try again. The Language Servers tool window restarts the server, after an update, and shows what it and the IDE say to each other.

JetBrains' dark color schemes draw type names like plain text, so Tide's types stay uncolored until you pick colors. Each kind of type has its own color under Settings > Editor > Color Scheme > Language Server:

  • Struct type: components
  • Classes > Class reference and Class declaration: singletons
  • Interface: inputs
  • Type: built-in types such as Color, Entity and Devices

Running the game

Right-click a .tide file and pick Run, or press Ctrl+Shift+F10 in it (Ctrl+Shift+R on macOS), to run its game, which is the project's folder. The run is named after the folder, like mygame:

  • mygame plays it in a window of its own, as tide run does.
  • mygame (web) plays it on the web, in the Tide Game tool window. Its Open DevTools button shows the page's console, where each reload says what it did. The game only gets keys while the tool window has focus.

Both are Tide run configurations, which you can also make and edit under Run > Edit Configurations. tide's output is in the Run tool window, where an error's place links to the file: saving a file reloads the game, and typing r and Enter there starts it over. A run configuration can run another tide.

Other editors

tide's editors folder holds the TextMate grammar (tide-syntax), a VS Code-style bundle, for highlighting in editors that load those. Any editor with a language server client can run tidels, from tide's bin folder, for everything else. It talks over stdin and stdout.