Ive been away from Defold for a while now building my own stuff, and recently I built a big chunk of my own editor based on another brilliant project. And while here, I thought I would provide the links and info in case it made sense/was useful for Defold or others:
The awesome open source editor Lite is worth looking into:
There is also the derivative Lite XL:
The amazing thing about these editors is that they are almost entirely built on lua (with rendering, systemio and input being pretty much the only backend stuff you need). I made my own version (that can do images and 3d) but I think in terms of a “nice alternative editor for Defold” this would be very easy to get going with bob. And because of the lua base, it would mean so much of what people build will automatically run in it.
I thought Id add a little screenie. This is one weeks (on and off) work getting 3D, 2D and other doc types into the editor. Many people have talked about alternate editors, well. honestly, I think this is really an opportunity for someone wanting to go that route.
Oh Soz. Not sure you know the conversations previously. This wasnt to replace current Defold editor. People were asking to make their own custom editors (for various dev purposes - myself and a few others had problems extending and expanding the editor to suit our needs).
As a community driven editor that has extremely high amounts of customization. This toolkit fits that kind of demand - soz if that was confusing.
Little update. Thanks to a suggestion there is another interesting (way more fully capable) editor for consideration as a community editor - it seems to be already as powerful as VSCode but its luajit driven (derived from Lite-XL). Check it out:
Even a Defold plugin would be trivial to add to this (since they already have a Lua IDE toolkit). Fascinating.
My concern with editors that look (good) like this, is that it could well be a rabbit hole of configuration settings. Where notionally it is amazing and you can do what ever you like, but end up spending all time setting up the editor and not actually using it. At some point I will try again with Neovim, but for now I will stick with Vim (I can’t be doing with anything that is not vi based in any case, far too slow and mousey!).
Imho. I never select on looks. I select on functionality and flexibility. For me, after some 35+ yrs in sw eng (in many industries) is number one. Looking good is a nice plus, but the viewdoc system Lite has (and pragtical) is extremely powerful and simple (its why it only took me a weekend to make a 3d gltf plugin for it).
Vim and all the other variants (I was using this on SGI back in 1990s) along with xemacs and friends are not broad scale development adoptable. If the Defold community wants masses to adopt their development process, then you need the appropriate high level editing tools to be usable - its why many ppl here use VSCode. What really counts (esp for Defold dev) is its alignment with luajit - since integration becomes much simpler.
As for ‘slow’ when I hear someone say that about an editor that has key marcos, its just funny. Keyboard input is a very non-process intensive if something is slow, its rarely the editor. This is what I often see Vim uses make claims about, and its just not true and its not a metric you should ever be selecting editors on. Same with the mousey comment - thats kinda the linux rhetoric which is just funny. Development processes need mouse input especially for things like 2D UI and 3D editors - a world editor without mouse controls? hehe. Funny.
This is why I refer to this editor. Ive put a 3D plugin into these systems. It was very easy. And it is a great framework that a broad audience of developers could potentially use. And the newer Pragtical has some deeper development community and broader use and appeal. Not saying people should stop using Vim editors or such, but I would recommend an open mind when examining potential editors that the community might invest their time and effort into.
You are right about everything you say. I get that most people don’t get/like vim. I see vim as been fast because mode switching means the whole keyboard can be used for what ever command is required; but then big deal, not really worth the complexity these days. And by saying that pragtical looks good, I mean a really good idea/thing, not just to look at. There used to be some rivalry between vim and emacs users which was quite funny. If I could find something less mousey to replace a mouse it would be good, I might try a leap-motion.
Hehe. You can have mine (leap motion) I have a littered room of tech stuff I really dont even look at anymore sadly (Occulus Pro sitting quietly still unopened ). I went thru the whole vim/vi/emacs wars back in the old sco/sun/sgi unix days. It was funny. Fundamentally.. ppl should use what makes themselves productive, and thats completely a personal thing. But for mass market editors (esp engine ones) the needs need to be much broader, than focused.
Every engine from Maratis (shout out to an old engine I did love ) to UnrealEngine.. has to cater to a broad developer segment, but where each developer often needs to tailor the editor to match their development needs - ie a focus on 2D shooter tools vs 3D RTS tools.. vs 3D FPS tools.. vs Casual Mobile tools.. this is a really hard thing to achieve with a non-flexible editing framework.
Unreal for example tries to be a “do everything” and so does Unity. Engines like Unigine are a little interesting, they have C++/C# for their UI/Editor and you can basically build your own (pretty awesome) and Godot is similar although somewhat restricted in places. Defold, is definitely more 2D / Mobile targeted with their editor, because thats their core market and this makes a great deal of sense to do so. What has been discussed in the past, has been a potential (since bob can literally build from anywhere) editor that fits more unique demands (esp for 3D, and 3D animation) so that Defold doesnt have to commit large resources to try to solve the “does everything” editor problem - for Defold dev this is a big investment, for potentially minimal returns so a community driven one, for bespoke targets is kinda a nice inbetween (imo).
Hope that clears up my thinking. Sometimes I forget all the junk I have spewed here has not been seen by all so this is a little summary of those thoughts and previous conversations
One little thing about Pragtical/Lite/LiteXL too - you might want to look at it. Its developed by Vim fans. And its base interface is keymaps not mouse. But adding the 3D tools to it, with the basic mouse support they had, was trivial. This is a big difference to many editors I have worked with and built over the years. Simple.. and flexible are really powerful features of any system.. hence why I’m still a huge advocate of luajit
I try to avoid buying tech because of unopened box syndrome. A big thing I like about Defold is the aim to avoid breaking changes, so how to do stuff does not change, so even if it limited and wacky at least it is consistent.
I have a littered room of tech stuff I really dont even look at anymore sadly (Occulus Pro sitting quietly still unopened