Few days ago some user has left a message that really confused me
I do understand that we all have different needs, but calling such a feature (that would be used only by 0.01% of users) the last missing feature, is it a joke?
Firstly, let me praise the engine and the editor.
I started poking with the defold around a month ago. I have read/watched a few tutorials, read some parts of the manual, and made a few simple games (tetris clone and 1-level platformer). I pretty much liked the experience (except for a few technical issues from the Java side). The most likeable thing for me is the clean look and simplicity of the editor, which doesn’t hide some parts from the curious user. It’s UI is really snappy, and aside from some delay on loading stuff, it never feels slow for me. So props to the developers for such an amazing tool.
My needs are small; I can do some things with another dedicated tool and export them, so I’m not the one who would ask to add some extra things into the editor (of course there is benefit of having some tool built-in, but personally I don’t care much). But maybe because I’m a longtime Vim user, I really value comfort, and in my opinion, Defold lacks some essential productivity boosters. I have worked through my career and hobby time with a lot of visual editors (photo, video, 3D, etc.) and can’t remember the one that would miss any feature from the list below. And I would be glad to hear from the developers why such things are still not present in the editor, especially considering how little work it would require to implement them compared to some other things. Are they overlooked or not considered important?
Only 4 features are rated from time loss or the burden of moving your hand from the resting position (left hand on the left side of the keyboard, right hand on the mouse) to do the same thing without them:
- numeric fields increment/decrement (most visual editors implement it with something like ctrl+mouse wheel, shift+mouse wheel for bigger step (or better precision). This is really a productivity killer when you need to increment some number by 1-5 and you need to click with the mouse, then delete some number, then type what you need.
- Go back/forward with a shortcut through the recent files list. This is too time-consuming, so when you click on some game object in the collection, it will gain focus, and you just can’t go back to the parent collection that easily. You need to find collection in the assets pane, or find and click in the list of tabs. Though there is recent files pop-up window with Alt+R, which is something, and I use it, but it doesn’t allow one to move back and forward a few times.
- Some kind of snapping to the grid and borders of another object. This is a real time saver. Maybe the hardest to implement, but it would worth the majority of users 100x more than “zooming text of the editor". It’s in third place only because the first two you do much more times during the session, but when you are working on a scene or level, it is really invaluable.
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Collapse or expand all nested folders in the assets pane or objects in the properties pane. This is too time-consuming when you are trying to navigate some nested tree and need to click a lot of times instead of just scrolling with a mouse. Pretty much would like to have the middle mouse do that (because right now it behaves the same as just a left click).As pointed out by @AGulev, this feature is implemented with Alt-LeftClick.
There are of course, some more not-that-important things, like the right-click menu in the text editor, drag and drop, and a little bit better visual feedback (for tools like the tile editor and animation player), but personally, I can leave without them.
It turned out as some kind of criticizing post, but don’t get me wrong, if I wouldn’t care about Defold and its future, I would not spend time to write it. And I’m not asking to implement these features right now and right here; I’m asking more from the discussion point because I really don’t get why such important things for the visual editor are still not present.
