I’m still digging the documentation and testing things in order to grasp all of Defold’s editor features.
I have questions about menu options. Can somebody explain to me or elaborate about those :
General menu
Track Active Tab in Asset Browser:
Grid: (Auto and manual)
Custom Editor:
Open File: ({file})
Open File at Line: ({file}:{line})
Build Server: (https://build.defold.com)
Edit menu
Move Whole Pixels
View menu
Toggle Component Guides
Project menu
Rebuild (compared to Build)
-Rebundle (compared to Bundle)
Live Update Settings
New Local Engine
Enter Target IP
Target Discovery Log
I’ll stop there for now. If there is specific documentation about a feature, I’ll gladly accept any link to dig up information.
You can specify an external editor for code (Atom, Sublime, VSCode etc). The Open File and Open File at Line fields specify how your external editor expects to get told which file to open and also which line to show.
This will toggle the outline in the scene editor around components such as sprites and particle fx. You can disable the toggle guides in a very cluttered scene to get a better understanding of how it will look when run.
This will build the entire project from scratch, as opposed to only changed files.
This will bundle your application using the same settings as the last time you bundled (saving you the trouble of clicking through a few dialogs)
This is for the hot reload and dev app feature where you can target a running Defold engine (on your local machine or a mobile phone) and push/update content:
New Local Engine means that a new engine will be started when you build and run. If there’s a running Defold engine on the network it will show up in the same list.
Awesome. Thank you for your responsiveness.
I don’ get the Open File / Open file at line section. Do you have examples when to use those options ? Are they something like command parameters that accompany the executable path command?
What options are available beyond {file} and {line}?
@vlaaad So, those options aren’t working. Will they be implemented one day or will the Scene tab is to be removed?
@selimanac Ouch! Irony detected!
Well, I think customization could be great. For example, being able to change the selection color against a background that hinders its viewing could be really useful.
But if there are features that don’t work, they should be removed to the editor. At least temporary.
There seems to be only one build server. Is there a reason we can specifiy another build server URL? Maybe you have other versions of it at King internally? I mean if there is only one build server available, why bother to make the option Build Server configurable?
No one has still answered my question about the Open File:and Open File at Line: options. What are the options beyond {file} and {line}?
The New Local Enginefeature is still cryptic for my understanding. The Target section lists the available devices right? So, the New Local Engine refers to some kind of virtual device on the computer? @britzl when you say :
a new engine will be started
Do you mean that there can be multiple instances of a game executing at the same time?
I still haven’t found out what the Target Discovery Log option is for. Any info?
I didn’t get any info about the Track Active Tab in Asset Browser: option. What does it do?
Same for Move Whole Pixels. Is this some kind of pixel snapping option?
I apologize if I may appear picky but I like to understand in depth all the features.
Yes, we plan to make the build server available to you guys so that you can deploy your own build server. This will be very helpful for users with limited or bad internet access from their location to our European AWS server.
These are the only two options and {file} will be replaced by the filename and {line} will be replaced by the line number. For Sublime the command line for opening a file at a specific line would be:
subl file.txt:345
This will open the file file.txt at line 345. So if you’re using Sublime you’d put subl in the Custom Editor field the Open File and Open File at Line are both already in the correct format.
If you don’t want your game to launch on a running version of the engine (device or local) and would prefer the engine to start a new local engine then you’d chose “New Local Engine”.
The editor will continuously search for running versions of Defold that you can target. This will show the log. Useful if you have problems discovering running Defold engines.
If you have two files open, for instance player.go and level.collection, these will be available as two tabs in the main area of the editor. When you select the player.go tab the corresponding file player.go will be selected in the Asset panel to the left.
Yes, I believe this will always put things you move in the scene on whole pixels.
Thank you again for the quick and precise answers.
@britzl I have trouble understanding that “engine” thing. Defold is what people normally call an engine but I infer from your answers that it is in fact an “editor”. So I assume that when I build a project, it somewhat launches the true engine that executes the game. Am I right?
By default the Project > Target setting is set to New Local Engine. So, whith this setting, I can only guess that Defold launches the local (on the computer that runs the editor) engine to execute the game. If I get other connected devices set, I assume they will appear as well in this section and I could choose them to make Defold launch the engine installed on those devices instead of the local one.
This, I don’t get. Would you explain the difference between a running version of the engine and a new one? Does it have something to do with hot reload feature? How come a running version of the engine would run if my game isn’t already launched? I’m confused.
When you build and run your project from the Editor it will launch an instance of the the Defold game Engine. While the game Engine is running on your machine it should be listed in the Project->Target menu in the Editor. The same goes for a Defold game Engine running on your phone (if the phone is on the same wifi or connected using USB).
