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Settings and the toolchain

There are two kinds of settings:

The Settings dialog

Section titled “The Settings dialog”

Edit > Settings… (Ctrl+,) opens it, with five tabs: Appearance, Editor, Keyboard, Toolchain and Project. Hover over a setting’s name to see what it does.

The buttons at the bottom:

Button What it does
Reset to Defaults Puts the open tab’s settings back to how they came (not on the Project tab)
Cancel Closes, dropping your changes
Apply Uses the changes and saves them, keeping the dialog open
Save Uses the changes, saves them and closes

Appearance

Section titled “Appearance”

This tab is the editor’s theme editor: everything on it shows at once, while you change it, so you see the result before keeping it. Apply or Save keeps the look (in your editor.ini); Cancel puts the old one back.

Setting Default What it does
Preset Dark A ready-made look: Dark, Light, Midnight (deep blue), Graphite (gray with an orange accent), High Contrast, Paper (warm light). Choosing one replaces the colors; change any of them after (the dropdown then says Custom)
Theme Dark The base: Dark or Light. The colors you haven’t set are its
Text size 13 px The size of the editor’s text; headings and small text grow with it
Spacing 75% The room around and between controls (more for a roomy look, less to fit more)
Row height 26 px Rows in the project browser and the scene tree (this one shows when you press Apply or Save)
Corners 100% How round corners are: 0 square, 100 standard, more for rounder

Colors: every color of the theme has a row. Click its swatch to pick a new one (a color wheel, values, or a hex code like #E8833A); the ↶ beside a color you’ve set puts the base theme’s back.

Color Where it shows
Window background Behind every panel
Panels Panels, sidebars and buttons
Popups Menus, dropdowns, tooltips and dialogs
Borders The lines between panels and around fields
Main text, Muted text Most text; captions, hints and placeholders
Accent, Text on accent Selected and focused things, primary buttons; the text on them
Selection Behind selected text and rows (Selection opacity sets how see-through)
Success, Warning, Danger Things that worked, warnings, errors

The colors you set are saved in editor.ini’s [theme] section, one line each (bg = #1B1B1B, selection = #E8833A50), with corner_radius. The code editor has its own colors: see The code editor.

Editor

Section titled “Editor”

Undo:

Setting Default What it does
Merge edits within 500 ms Changes to the same thing closer together than this undo as one step (typing a name, dragging a number, nudging with the arrow keys)
Longest merged edit 3000 ms A long run of merged changes is still cut into steps this long (0: never cut)
Undo steps kept 200 How far back Undo goes; the oldest steps are dropped

Viewport: the grid belongs to the project (Project Settings > Grid). Wheel pans (off by default) makes the mouse wheel move the view and Ctrl + wheel zoom: nicer on a touchpad. Rotation snap (15°) and Scale snap (0.1) are the steps Rotate and Scale drags snap to, with snapping on or Shift held.

Scripts:

Setting Default What it does
Code editor On Use the built-in code editor (tabs next to the scenes). Off: scripts open in the external program
Auto-close On Close brackets and quotes as you type, in the code editor
Language server Found automatically The Odin language server (OLS) for completion and error checking: a path, or a name in your PATH. The line under it says which one is used
LDtk program ldtk The level editor that Open in LDtk starts
Aseprite program aseprite The pixel art editor that Open in Aseprite starts
External program zed The code editor scripts open in when the built-in one is off (Browse… picks it)
Arguments {folder} {file}:{line} What the external program is given
Optimized Play Off Builds the game for Play with optimizations: a faster game, but about 50 s per build instead of 4. Exports have their own Optimize setting
Hot reload On Saving a script while the game plays rebuilds it and restarts the game where it was
Audio device System default Where Play’s game and the editor’s sound previews play

More about these: The code editor (the code editor, the language server, the external program), Hot reload.

Keyboard: changing shortcuts

Section titled “Keyboard: changing shortcuts”

The Keyboard tab lists every action with up to two shortcuts each. Help > Keyboard Shortcuts opens it too.

  • Find one: type in Search actions and shortcuts, by the action’s name (“zoom”) or by its keys (“ctrl+shift”).
  • Change one: click the shortcut (or the - of an empty slot). It says “Press keys…”: press the new keys, with Ctrl, Shift, Alt or Super held as you want them. Escape cancels.
  • Remove one: click it, then Clear (beside the help text) while it waits for keys.
  • Put a row back: the ↶ button at the row’s end.

If a shortcut is also used by another action, a yellow line under it says so (“Ctrl+D is also Duplicate node”). That’s allowed, but only one of them works: the one higher in the list.

On a Mac, Cmd takes Ctrl’s place. Every shortcut written with Ctrl here and in the rest of this manual is Cmd on macOS (Save is Cmd+S, Undo Cmd+Z), and the editor shows it that way: in menus, tooltips and this tab, where Alt is called Option. Cmd+click selects several nodes, as Ctrl+click does elsewhere. The settings file stores shortcuts the same way on every computer (“Ctrl+S” means Cmd+S on a Mac), so one editor.ini works on all of them; a shortcut that should use the Mac’s Control key is written with Super.

Menus and tooltips always show your shortcuts. A few things to know:

  • Single keys (Q, W, G, Delete…) don’t work while you type in a text field, so you can type those letters.
  • While you type in the built-in code editor, only a few shortcuts reach the editor (save, play, build, export…): see The code editor. The code editor’s own shortcuts are changed in its Keymap Editor, not here.

Toolchain: what building games needs

Section titled “Toolchain: what building games needs”

Play and Export turn your project into a game program. The Toolchain tab lists every tool that takes part, with a green ✓ when it’s found (and where) or a red ✗ when it’s missing (and how to get it):

Row What it’s for
Odin compiler Builds games that have scripts. The engine uses Odin dev-2026-10
Engine sources The engine your games are built from. Released editors carry it (an engine/ folder beside the editor)
Linker (clang) or Linker (Visual Studio) Odin needs it to make programs: clang on Linux, Xcode’s command line tools on macOS (xcode-select --install), Visual Studio Build Tools with “Desktop development with C++” on Windows
Prebuilt player A ready-made game program: projects without scripts play and export with it, with nothing compiled
Static SDL SDL built into games, so they’re one file and need no libraries beside them
Emscripten Builds web exports
Git Optional: version control in the Git tab
Shader compiler For your own shaders (the built-in effects need nothing)
Font tool For fonts set to stay sharp at any size
Plugin API For the project’s editor plugins
ffmpeg Optional: converting sounds to Ogg Vorbis
Odin language server Optional: completion and error checking in the code editor

The rows read the dialog’s settings as you type, so a new Odin path shows its result before you press Apply.

A project without scripts plays and exports with the prebuilt player: a released editor needs nothing installed. A project with scripts needs the Odin compiler and the linker.

Below the list:

  • Odin program: the odin to use, a path or a name in your PATH. Empty: odin in your PATH, else the one the editor installed.
  • Install Odin dev-2026-10: downloads the Odin version the engine uses (about 70 MB, from GitHub) into the editor’s data folder (the path is shown under the button). It takes a few minutes. You still need the linker.
  • Install Emscripten: downloads Emscripten and the sound library’s sources for web exports (about 1 GB; it needs Python) into the same folder. The first web export does it too. See Exporting.

The editor’s data folder is ~/.local/share/crossfire-editor on Linux, %APPDATA%\crossfire-editor on Windows and ~/Library/Application Support/crossfire-editor on macOS.

Project

Section titled “Project”

The Project tab shows the open project’s Project Settings tabs, inside the Settings dialog, so you can change both in one place. Apply and Save apply the project’s changes too (as one step you can undo); Cancel drops them.

Where the settings are saved

Section titled “Where the settings are saved”

The editor’s settings are saved in editor.ini:

  • beside the editor’s program, when you run it from a folder you unpacked (a release archive);
  • in the editor’s data folder (above) when it’s installed: the macOS app, the Linux AppImage, the Windows installer, or any folder you can’t write to.

Beside editor.ini are recent_projects.txt (File > Open Recent) and a code_editor folder (the code editor’s own shortcuts and colors).

editor.ini is plain text, one name = value per line, but change settings in the dialog rather than by hand. Settings missing from it use their defaults; a line the editor doesn’t understand is reported in the Console and skipped. To start over, delete it (with the editor closed).

To use another settings file, start the editor with --settings path/to/file.ini.

Project Settings

Section titled “Project Settings”

File > Project Settings… (or the Settings dialog’s Project tab) holds the game’s settings. They’re saved with the project (in project.xml, and export.ini for exports). Press Apply to use the changes; they’re one step you can undo. Cancel drops them. Hover over a setting’s name to see what it does.

General

Section titled “General”
Setting What it does
Name The game’s name: the window’s title, and the exported program’s name unless you choose another
Resolution The game’s size in pixels (1280 x 720 for a new project): what the camera shows
Scaling How the game fills a window of another size: Letterbox (keeps its shape, black bars), Stretch (fills it, stretched), IntegerScale (whole multiples only, for crisp pixel art), Overscan (keeps its shape, cuts the edges off), None (no scaling)
Renderer What draws the game: Auto (the best one on each system) or one you choose (OpenGL, Vulkan, Direct3D, Metal…). Ones this computer doesn’t have are marked. Web exports always use WebGL
Image filtering Smooth (painted art) or Pixels (pixel art: hard square pixels), for every image that doesn’t choose its own. See Image filtering
Window Fullscreen, VSync (frames in step with the screen), High DPI (sharper on high-density screens): how the game’s window starts
Sound output The sample rate and channels the game asks its sound device for. Stereo at 48000 Hz works everywhere
Background The color behind everything
Start scene The scene the game starts in (Play and exports). Play Scene (Ctrl+F5) starts in the open scene instead
Icon The game window’s icon: one of the project’s images, or None for the Crossfire logo
Scene change, Change time, Change color, Loading scene How the game goes from one scene to another. See Scene changes
Language The language the game starts in, from its translation tables. Empty: the player’s system language
Pixels per meter, Gravity, Show shapes, Smooth motion Physics: the world’s scale and gravity, collision shapes drawn while you Play (never in exports; F9 shows and hides them in the game), and smooth drawing of moving bodies

The other tabs

Section titled “The other tabs”
Tab What it holds More
Input The game’s input actions (named inputs like jump or ui_accept) and the keys, mouse buttons and gamepad buttons and sticks that trigger them; Add the default ui_ actions; local players Local multiplayer, Touch controls
Globals Scripts that run for the whole game, whatever the scene (a score keeper, the music), in the order they start, and their fields
Export The export targets and their settings Exporting
Grid The viewport grid: cell width and height, major lines, how strong the lines are (View > Grid Settings… opens it)
Steam The Steam app ID, cloud saves, achievements Steam

Questions

Section titled “Questions”

My changes didn’t show. Press Apply or Save: the dialog works on a copy until then.

A shortcut stopped working. Another action may have the same keys (look for the yellow line in the Keyboard tab), or you’re typing in a text field or the code editor. The ↶ button puts a shortcut back.

Play says there’s no Odin compiler. The project has scripts. Use Install Odin in the Toolchain tab, or set Odin program to yours. The Linker row must be green too.

Settings > Toolchain says the linker is missing. Install it as the row says (clang, Xcode’s command line tools, or Visual Studio Build Tools). The editor can’t install it for you.

How do I put every setting back? Reset to Defaults on each tab, or close the editor and delete editor.ini.

Are Project Settings per computer? No: they’re part of the project, so they travel with it (and with Git). The editor’s settings are yours, on this computer.

Crossfire is MIT licensed. Found a mistake? Report it.