Scene management

A “scene” in jackdaw is one .bsn file. A “project” is a normal Bevy crate: a folder with a Cargo.toml, a jackdaw.toml, an assets/ directory, and a .jackdaw/project.json editor-settings file (legacy .jsn/project.jsn migrates on open). Scenes live under assets/.

Save and load

• Ctrl+S saves the current scene to its on-disk path. The first save prompts for a path; pick something under assets/.
• Ctrl+O opens a scene in a new tab. The picker starts in the current project’s assets/ folder.
• Ctrl+T creates a new empty scene tab; it is unsaved until you Ctrl+S it.

Scene files are human-readable, line-diffable, and designed to read in git diff without making you cry. Legacy .jsn scenes still open (import-only); see BSN Format.

Project select screen

The launcher (AppState::ProjectSelect) is the first thing you see when you run jackdaw with no arguments. It shows:

• Recent projects, with timestamp and last-opened scene.
• A New Project button: pick Game or Extension, instantiated from a template embedded in the editor.
• An Import action for opening an existing Bevy project; see Migrating an Existing Project.

Recent projects with missing folders are filtered out. Click a project to open it; the editor transitions into AppState::Editor and restores the scenes that were open last time.

What opens when you open a project

The editor restores the tabs you had open last time. Those live in .jackdaw/project.json as last_open_tabs, with last_active_tab picking which one is focused; entries whose files have gone missing are skipped.

If that leaves no tabs (a fresh project, or every remembered path is gone), the editor falls back to assets/scene.bsn, then to a legacy assets/scene.jsn if that is all there is, and finally to a new untitled scene. So you never land in the editor with nothing open.

Multi-scene projects

Nothing stops you from putting many .bsn files in assets/scenes/. The editor doesn’t currently have a “scene list” panel, so you switch between them via File > Open.

If you reference one scene from another (sub-scenes, prefabs), that pattern is not built yet. Today scenes are flat. See Open Challenges for what scene-as-asset would look like.

Project files outside assets/

The editor only watches assets/. Code lives next to it (src/), and Bevy’s runtime asset path points at assets/. If you put a scene file somewhere else, jackdaw can load it with File > Open, but the standalone binary won’t find it via Bevy’s asset server.

Common gotchas

• Scene loaded but the viewport is empty. Camera might be inside geometry. Press F with nothing selected (or with a known-visible entity selected) to reframe.
• File > Save greys out. No scene is open. Either File > New Scene or open one from the launcher.
• Saved file has a weird path. First save from a “New Scene” defaults to the project’s assets/scene.bsn. If you want a different path, use File > Save As.