Scene Editor UI
seancooke
Member Posts: 9
My biggest time sink when working in gamesalad is, ironically, interacting with stage elements.
Now yes, I do come from a Flash programming background, but some of these I think would help everybody, and not just be a personal wish list.
1) Overall streamline of how instances are handled from a "panel" perspective.
Having to leave the stage completely to edit code attached to an actor instance tends to be a bit of a drag. Perhaps this wouldn't be the worse thing, if only there wasn't some sort of memory leak that forced a reboot to maintain program responsiveness. It seems the constant repopulation of rules really starts to grind the software to a halt after a moderate amount of time going back and forth into instances.
Obviously, the Flash environment keeps docked panels present at all times to reveal certain aspects of the currently selected instance actor. Perhaps it could be handled that way?
2) Instance Selection
Intuitive instance selection perhaps? Becomes increasingly hard to manually select smaller objects or objects deeper in the layer sort the minute HUD elements are in place. Again, a quick fix/help on this would be dockable/dedicated panels atleast as a work around so that the "layers tab" could always be open and helpful in selecting. But perhaps what would be a bigger help is...
3) Instance/Layer Locking or Instance/Layer Grouping
This feature would solve alot of problems. From a layout perspective, this would help using image templates to lay out your layers. From an organizational standpoint, a lock/hide/template/transparency toggle on each layer would speed up scene layout tremendously. From a sanity perspective, I wouldn't bang my head against the wall for accidentally selecting another instance OR having to make 5 clicks or so to go from inside one instance to stage alignment to layer panels to selecting to rules editing.
4) Instance Reshaping
I don't know about anybody else, but the current transform tool has given me it's fair share of headaches. By overlaying the transform controllers onto the object itself, it basically pins control to whatever size the instance actor is, but the interfaces(those circles) don't scale. So eventually at a small enough scale, you're left with ten overlapping circles to choose from, all inside a 32x32 actor, to hopefully make the correct adjustment. Have you ever tried to move a small actor without accidentally rescaling it instead? The current workaround again is to leave the scene and go into the instance to change the value manually, pop back, and see what you have. Not the most efficient.
5) Instance Positioning
Snap. To. Grid. (...and for that matter, having a grid) Really hope it isn't too hard to accommodate, as it would be effective in quickly laying out scenes.
6) Separated and Consistent Panels
To have dedicated, locked panels would negate the need to pop in/pop out of instances. It would be convenient, it would be efficient, it would be great. Again that would be a big UI design change, but it would go a looooong way to really making this software easy to use and understand.
7) Stage zoom
Please, please let me command + and command - in on the stage! It would help greatly with iPad development specifically as well as in any scene that is many, many times the size of the game camera.
Again, love the IDEA of the software and I want to see it succeed. Just need to raise the usability a bit more.
Now yes, I do come from a Flash programming background, but some of these I think would help everybody, and not just be a personal wish list.
1) Overall streamline of how instances are handled from a "panel" perspective.
Having to leave the stage completely to edit code attached to an actor instance tends to be a bit of a drag. Perhaps this wouldn't be the worse thing, if only there wasn't some sort of memory leak that forced a reboot to maintain program responsiveness. It seems the constant repopulation of rules really starts to grind the software to a halt after a moderate amount of time going back and forth into instances.
Obviously, the Flash environment keeps docked panels present at all times to reveal certain aspects of the currently selected instance actor. Perhaps it could be handled that way?
2) Instance Selection
Intuitive instance selection perhaps? Becomes increasingly hard to manually select smaller objects or objects deeper in the layer sort the minute HUD elements are in place. Again, a quick fix/help on this would be dockable/dedicated panels atleast as a work around so that the "layers tab" could always be open and helpful in selecting. But perhaps what would be a bigger help is...
3) Instance/Layer Locking or Instance/Layer Grouping
This feature would solve alot of problems. From a layout perspective, this would help using image templates to lay out your layers. From an organizational standpoint, a lock/hide/template/transparency toggle on each layer would speed up scene layout tremendously. From a sanity perspective, I wouldn't bang my head against the wall for accidentally selecting another instance OR having to make 5 clicks or so to go from inside one instance to stage alignment to layer panels to selecting to rules editing.
4) Instance Reshaping
I don't know about anybody else, but the current transform tool has given me it's fair share of headaches. By overlaying the transform controllers onto the object itself, it basically pins control to whatever size the instance actor is, but the interfaces(those circles) don't scale. So eventually at a small enough scale, you're left with ten overlapping circles to choose from, all inside a 32x32 actor, to hopefully make the correct adjustment. Have you ever tried to move a small actor without accidentally rescaling it instead? The current workaround again is to leave the scene and go into the instance to change the value manually, pop back, and see what you have. Not the most efficient.
5) Instance Positioning
Snap. To. Grid. (...and for that matter, having a grid) Really hope it isn't too hard to accommodate, as it would be effective in quickly laying out scenes.
6) Separated and Consistent Panels
To have dedicated, locked panels would negate the need to pop in/pop out of instances. It would be convenient, it would be efficient, it would be great. Again that would be a big UI design change, but it would go a looooong way to really making this software easy to use and understand.
7) Stage zoom
Please, please let me command + and command - in on the stage!
It would help greatly with iPad development specifically as well as in any scene that is many, many times the size of the game camera. Again, love the IDEA of the software and I want to see it succeed. Just need to raise the usability a bit more.
Comments
I was about to write a similar post, but I figured there were more people that was annoyed with some of the UI.
I think the overall UI would benefit if we were able to re-position, re-size and close some of the elements. The help is useful, but I imagine will become redundant as one becomes more familiar with the software. And sitting on a 13" MacBook Pro, the help box takes up precious screen space.
:-)
""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps
I'd like to add: being able to shift-click multiple instances to select a group. Also, to Alt-drag instances to copy them.