The Challenge
The game development team was using a fragmented set of shell scripts, Python tools, and manual Photoshop steps to prepare assets for production. The pipeline was brittle, poorly documented, and required terminal knowledge that designers did not have.
Solution
I built a cross-platform Electron desktop app that wraps the entire asset pipeline in a clean React UI. The app runs natively on Windows and macOS and requires zero command-line interaction.
Architecture
The app uses a strict main/renderer process separation:
- The renderer (React) handles all UI, state, and user interaction.
- The main process (Node.js) handles filesystem access, image processing, and child process spawning via IPC channels.
Communication between the two is managed through a typed ipcBridge API, ensuring that the renderer never has direct access to Node modules.
Key Features
Sprite Sheet Generator
The app uses Sharp for image processing. Users drag a folder of PNG sprites into the app, configure padding, max-size, and naming conventions, and the app outputs a packed sprite sheet and JSON atlas — identical output to TexturePacker, without a license fee.
Local Server Manager
The app can start, stop, and monitor local dev servers (Webpack, Vite, custom Node) via spawned child processes. Logs stream in real-time to a terminal panel inside the UI.
Asset Watcher
A file-system watcher built with chokidar monitors configured asset directories. When source files change, the relevant pipeline step re-runs automatically, keeping output assets in sync without manual triggers.
Packaging
The app is packaged with electron-builder for both Windows (NSIS installer) and macOS (DMG). Auto-update is handled via electron-updater with a private S3 bucket as the update server.
Result
Onboarding time for new artists dropped from 3 days (learning the CLI scripts) to under an hour. The entire team — including non-technical designers — now uses the tool daily.
Doodle concept visual
