Explaining stuff is so hard! In fact, this entire article is just me trying to explain what this is in the shortest way possible.
Maybe the shortest version is: 90s.dev is an API around a 320x180 web canvas, designed specifically for making games and game maker tools, with sharing capabilities built-in, and an innovative GUI for making game maker tools quickly and easily.
No, that's still too vague. I give up.
90s.dev simplifies making games and tooling for game creators via:
- an expressive API around a 320×180 web canvas,
- built-in sharing capabilities,
- an innovative GUI.
Each bullet would link to a relevant part of the documentation. I think you also need a page with examples.
As someone who is not involved in game development I admit I didn't really understand your description about it being an API but not a game engine. But keep going, you're doing a great thing here.
You can click them on the desktop-thing when you open the app.
So far the only finished app is fontmaker: https://90s.dev/os/#sys/apps/fontmaker.app.js
Their source code for all built-in apps are in https://90s.dev/os/helloworld.zip (found on https://90s.dev/getting-started/download-sdk.html)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Well
(In fact I partly made this app so I could make an Animal Well clone.)
Would it technically be possible, without too much difficulty, to increase 320 x 180? Just wondering!
I didn't document this because I'm not sure it's the right decision. Allowing screen resize does make it more flexible, but also leads to decision paralysis for most users, who 320 x 180 is probably perfectly sufficient for.
That was one of the genius moves of pico8, which tic80 failed to capture: offering the perfect set of orthogonal parameters for you, so you can just make stuff.
Remember OG twitter and someone complained about the 140 character limit. Imagine the reply was "ok fine we'll let you use more than 128 characters, but you have to click an 'advanced' tab." instead of the "be clever" retort we really got from Jack Dorsey. Immediately there'd be no constraint at all, just an annoying step where you had to click an annoying checkbox.
Point being - if the design is intended to be constrained, then it's perfectly reasonable to own that.
Also he said "but also leads to decision paralysis for most users", but it does not have to be the case. Default can be whatever you want.