Saving and publishing

Saving

You can edit without signing in. Guest work stays in the tab, with a prominent warning; signing in preserves it. The first save creates a private project.

Ordinary Save is disabled when there are no project changes. For an opened public simulation, Fork & save also becomes available when the visible scene advances or is edited. It captures the currently displayed state—even a frame restored from the timeline—and opens a new private draft on your profile in another tab. The original tab and its recordings remain intact. The draft is saved privately, not published; further edits in its new tab need saving as usual.

Compile the current source before forking so it matches the captured cell fields. Wait for any computation or timeline seek to finish. Sign in before creating the draft; guests can still browse and record locally. If the browser blocks the new tab, allow popups for Studio and retry. Project settings → Fork from this state also works for your own simulation, including an unchanged initial state.

Published revisions and other users’ source are never overwritten. If a save fails, your working edits remain available; retry after resolving the problem.

Source saves send changed files and metadata rather than re-uploading all unchanged source. The project’s .hyleworld recipe defines its starting cells. Running or painting does not change that recipe. Forking the displayed state writes a captured.hyleworld into the new draft and selects it as the world entrypoint; other hand-written recipes remain in the project. Timeline bakes are downloaded separately and are not part of an ordinary source save.

Publishing

Save the revision you intend to share, then choose Publish. Publication validates the source, exact dependency closure and constructed starting world. Private drafts may remain unfinished. Published revisions and their media are immutable; later work uses a new revision or a fork. Publication cannot be withdrawn through the authoring API.

Publishing a simulation also publishes its named local models, properties, presets, behaviors and visuals—including definitions not used by its initial scene. Imported parts retain their original authors and exact revisions. Do not put private building blocks inside a simulation you intend to publish.

Preview and cover

For scenes within the recording budget, publishing prepares a visual preview:

1. Compile and prepare the scene, then open Publish.
2. Frame the camera and choose Record 100 ticks. Recording advances a separate copy built from the saved world recipe; the live editor scene is not advanced.
3. Scrub frames 0–100 to choose a cover. Changing the camera requires re-recording.
4. Save preview only keeps media private. Publish simulation publishes the exact saved revision and its preview.

Scenes above 50,000 starting cells may publish for direct Studio opening without a preview. The server builds the world recipe to count its cells. Smaller scenes normally require one.

Administrator-owned simulations with a world recipe can use automatic server preview generation. Their cards show pending, ready or failed status; opening the simulation remains available while generation runs. This is a specific account capability, not automatic preview generation for every author. An older published revision without a preview may receive its first preview once; an existing published preview cannot be replaced.

A visual preview stores appearance, not complete solver fields. Use a bake when you need full-state playback, inspection or a frame to fork into an experiment.