I know a lot is being overhauled editor wise, but I thought, if you, Justin, are still in the early stages of that development, it be best to offer what I encountered to slow my development down while using the editor. Would I like to see some or even all of these features in RPGIAB V1? Sure! But, I know the focus is on 2.0 right now as well with just minor feature updates and bug fixes for the moment. So, while developing my games, I ran into these slow downs that I thought you might consider for the future. These are not feature requests in the same vane as adding new graphic capabilities or gameplay capabilities but rather strictly for the editor. At the end, I will include some scripting/visual scripting suggestions as well with that idea that those suggestions might wait until after 2.0's initial release, but I will include them anyway.
No doubt many of these have been suggested numerous times and you may even already have a plan to implement these. Perhaps there are even ways to do what I suggested without even knowing. If any of this is true Justin, I apologize in advance for the repetitiveness.
Main Editor Features:
*When exiting the editor or exiting to the game manager or even running quickplay... It would be nice if the editor asked us if we wanted to save the changes we made before doing so and then actually save anything that is pending instead of asking if we want to stop what we are doing to save those changes ourselves or continue without those changes. I am all for NOT saving the changes, but I would like to be given the option and then I would like the editor to automatically do so.
*The image editor should be standalone. Clearly you can create images in the image editor and use it for anything in the engine once saved and not just items. But for some reason, we have to go to the item editor to get to the editor. Having an editor from which to call it from anywhere would be sweet. Even right clicking on the images folder on the side should give us an option to create a new image.
*Every Folder option should have the following abilities: Create sub-folder, Import resource.
*Collapsable views. So I know in the map editor we have a full screen view option. But it would be nice if the whole editor offered us some way to collapse the side windows out of view alltogether.
*A help icon on each part of the editor that automatically takes you to the help page you need to be on. I thought there was a way to do this already...
Game Manager:
*Ability to choose a default folder location and all games created will automatically fill in the folder location to be a sub-folder in that location. Of course, we can also have the option to change this per game.
*Ability to save our games as our game templates so we have a base for recreating certain game types.
Help Screen:
*I think the help screen should be its own pop out help window so we can switch back and forth between the documentation and the editing or even put it side by side on the screen or put one window in one monitor screen and the help in the other, etc..
*Ability to highlight the text and copy and paste it in the help documentation. I know I can do this by just visiting the website. But sometimes my browser isn't opened and I click help and I Try to highlight a command to use or something and then I realize: "Right, I cant do that" and have to open a browser and navigate and search all over again. Would be nice to just have the full built in solution.
*Also.. What happened to the little Justin helper icon? I miss that guy. I dont see him anymore.
Map Editor:
*Hide Tiles, Hide Objects, Hide NPC's buttons - To hide any or all of these objects on the map editor. Allows us to also see how the background is fitting whether using a sky or a panorama image or just helps us see how things are on the map while making some aspects of it invisible.
*Preview Map Button - These removes the grid lines and allows us to preview the map with all it's animations and NPC movements, weather, particles, etc...
*CTRL A - Selects all objects on the map.
*Clear Map Button - to clear everything on the map. Saves with having to create a new map and then changing the script to load to the new map. I know I know.. Lazy. Still...
*Clear all(NPC's, Objects or tiles) - Individually just clear out either NPC's, Objects or Tiles that are on the map.
*Grid Height Number: Be able to type directly the grid height you want to go to.
*Grid Height hide: Hide the selected grid height and everything on it so that when we edit the map, we do not get confused as to where we are putting objects and NPC's etc..
*Right Click Copy/Paste on the map: When right click on an object, give us the option to copy, paste or even cut. Copying the properties is great and all... But copying the complete object, tile or npc would make it so much easier. Especially if we multi select. While we are at it, may as well add CTRL-C, X, V.
Image Editor:
*There really isn't much to say about the image editor. I mean for what it needs to do, it can do. I am not going to suggest recreating photoshop in RPGIAB. However a line, circle and square tool would be nice none the less.
*Noise generation
Asset Library:
*Add a Custom Scripts option - This way we can download custom global functions or even small scripts that users have written that can aid in our game creation.
*Add Custom Widgets as a downloadable option as well.
*Model Previews with all animations and textures - Would be nice if we can see a list of and preview all the textures and the animations of a model in the asset library.
Game Configuration: Global Functions:
*Ability to search using CTRL-F while in the function.
*A Drop down that allows us to select which Function we want to jump to.
*Instead of Validating each time before continuing... Could we make the following adjustments?
-When pressing OK, let the editor automatically perform the validation. Once Validated:
-Show us whatever error there is if any and then
-Offer us to save anyway or cancel the save.
Sometimes I write a whole lot of code and I want to come back to it instead of fixing the error right away and I dont want to copy and paste it into a different editor to do that. Plus, validating before pressing OK seems a little redundant when pressing OK should just do that for you. Just my opinion. Not the end of the world the way it works now.
Voxel Editor:
I know that the Voxel editor is by far less advanced that something like Magicavoxel or Qubicle, but I have no idea why I love RPGIAB's built in Voxel editor far better than any other Voxel editor on the market. With that said, there are still some tinkerings with this editor that would make editing and animating oh so much nicer.
*Gizmo for rotating selected voxels.
*Gizmo for moving selected voxels.
*Face Fill option. Right now if I want to make a box for example, I make one layer and then copy and paste and then move up a layer. It can be a bit tedious. Perhaps there is a different way to do this, but a face fill option would be great.
*Mirror Voxels - Ability to mirror on an X, Y, Z area what you are drawing in the voxel editor.
Widget UI Editor:
*The ability to add an outline to the widget tools that are on the widget. Some of them are invisible and when editing I sometimes can't find where I put the ones that are err.. invisible. So some sort of outline just for the editor that outlines the shape of the widget would be great.
*Scroll bars in the widget editor. Sometimes the widget grid is larger than the editor view and I can't scroll through to see the rest of the grid.
*Along with the last suggestion... hovering your mouse over it should also tell you what type of widget tool it is too.
SCRIPT EDITOR/VISUAL SCRIPT EDITOR:
Here are some suggestions I want to make on this which I am sure are harder to implement as creating a scripting language and then an editor to go with it are not exactly the easiest things in the world to achieve. Kudos Justin for being able to create Bauxite. It is a very effective, pretty intuitive, pretty easy and yet powerful scripting engine. What I like too is that the scripting editor even has some great error finding as well. It should have it's own wikipedia entry! But here are some thoughts on the script editor:
Multi Line commenting. I would love to see something like in Javascript or PHP where you can comment out multiple lines with a start and end comment string like / and *.
*Auto indentation.
*Ctrl-F Search
*Drop down for any functions created so we can jump right to them.
*Autocomplete for built-in functions and any new functions created within the script and within the global configuration.
*A goto Line number button.
*When it comes to the visual scripting part of RPGIAB... what can I say? It works how it is supposed to. But I wanted to suggest that when you create a function in a script or globally that it automatically gets added to the visual scripting component along with all the fields necessary for it instead of just a node that says "source code". This way it can be called and easily filled in on a whim. I would add the following scripting functions that work inside a function as well:
$variable.datatype - This would define the variable datatype as either a string, number, dropdown list or boolean. EG: $MsgText.datatype = "string"
$variable.name - defines the name of the variable as it will be displayed in the visual scripting component/Node.
$variable.helper - will add a help definition so when you hover over the field it will display the help string.
$variable.default - the default values in each field that will show up. If it is a dropdown, just make an array and the first option would be the default choice.
*When editing a line in the script editor, it would be nice as you are editing it that it takes you to that part of the visual scripting node related to that code.
That is my current editor wishlist for 2.0 Justin. I hope in some way this helps with preparation as you migrate over. Would love to hear too if others hate any of these suggestions or they wish to add to my list into this thread. Thanks for listening Justin. As you know... I am a true believe and lover of RPGIAB. It is my favorite game creation engine that I have ever EVER used.
