Snap to grid or holding command doesn't work

In the editor, I tried holding command/options while moving objects but it didn’t do anything. Is there any kind of “snap-to-grid” functionality?

Unfortunately snap is not working in the editor: https://github.com/defold/editor2-issues/issues/1477

This issue is one year old and nothing has been done about it. Nice :+1:

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You can probably find issues that are two years old as well. Maybe even three. And we have engine issues that are four years old. Everyone wants completely bug free software with all the features that you could ever imagine. Unfortunately that is not how it works. There will always be things that we do not have time to fix, and while it may be frustrating that there are issues that are several years old that is just the way it is. Take almost any large software project with a public issue tracker and I bet you can find really old issues that hasn’t been fixed yet.

With that said, we have been recruiting more developers so that we can ship more features and fix more bugs.

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While I completely agree with @britzl’s comments here, I also wish this would get fixed.

This issue surely affects many people almost every time they use Defold (myself included). I have wasted countless hours manually positioning objects and counting arrow key presses. Finding out I can type + / - etc into coordinate boxes has admittedly helped but no other issue in Defold has wasted so much of my time.

I think this is one of the absolute basics and can’t understand it’s still broke. Displaying cursor coords would also be a huge help, the small red lines on the axises are pretty much useless.

Sorry for the rant (but I just want snap and grid size more than any other feature!) :sob:

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You really didn’t have to get all defensive, you should own this shit.
Nobody is asking for “completely bug free software with all the features that you could ever imagine” Why are you trying to make it like I’m being unreasonable?!

Yes, I understand how software development work ( I don’t really need a lecture ) And yes, I’m aware that no software out there is perfect. Nobody is asking for some complex AI feature that would make the game for you while you are sitting there drinking coffee. The feature I’m asking for is the basic of basics of basics.
Basically, any kind of low life software with a visual editor has it, yet somehow it doesn’t exist here and it’s a major turn-off. Nobody is asking for every little problem to be fixed at once, but there is something called “priority and basic features” but I’m sure you guys already know what your priorities are.

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Yes I own this shit (I am the product owner at King for the Defold engine and editor).

I definitely feel the frustration as I see that we have plenty of issues, some which are pretty old, that we haven’t fixed yet. But we have limited resources (yes, despite Defold being a King product) and we try to use those resources as efficiently as possible. The new editor is still quite young and we have so far prioritised more severe bugs and issues. It sucks but that is how it is. We are recruiting editor developers to help us fix more bugs and ship more features, but the last six months or so we’ve only had two editor devs on the team.

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any news on this?

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Personally, I have not had a use for snap to grid yet? Generally I do not count key presses but just treat it like when designing a website and styling with CSS (except this is easier because you can just slap anything anywhere). If you really want something to be very grid-like in its layout and there are TONS of objects, maybe try programmatically placing them.

I have a massive use for snap to grid. And especially if i can set the grid size myself. programmatically placing everything is definitely an option, but I really think it’s a function that enough people would appreciate to be included in the editor.

so seriously… any ideas on if/when this might be possible?

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+1

…Okay I have been looking into programmatically placing objects. It has been a looooong lunch time. The problem I am currently having is detecting collisions between collections placed by a factory. They have to be collection factories because each element in the game has various sprites inside various GOs that I animate and scale independently, with animations. And i can’t create a GO inside a GO prototype, and can’t scale a sprite without putting it inside a GO.

So overall a hard day for me and defold:

  • Snap to grid doesn’t work
  • Collisisons between worlds don’t work, which is understandable (any work around?)
  • you can’t scale a sprite without putting it into a GO
  • you can’t scale a prototype of a GO
  • you can’t put a GO inside another GO in a prototype
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I think that snap to grid can be a useful feature in Defold (Along with drap and drop placement), especially when you’re dealing with sprites that you can’t use with a tilemap and have to place them manually.

I would have to understand what exactly you are doing. In my game, I use factories to generate blocks all the time. Placing blocks, generating chunks of the world, generating pickups when things break, which have their own dynamic and trigger collision objects. At that level, I know this kind of stuff can work, I am curious as to what makes yours different.

Do you use collection factories? or normal factories that create GOs? Documentation states that collisions don’t work between collision objects in different collections.

it’s not super interesting from a programming point of view, but you can play here if you want:

I made this a few years ago (damn, i am getting old, and weirdly obsessed with this game mechanic…) and I’m remaking it now that i know a lot more about Lua and how it all works.

okay i gotta swallow my pride on this one: I was scaling the collections and that included the collision objects, which stopped collisions from working. Ouch! But all is working now. And hey, as a bonus, I can now generate levels from tables!

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Nice! Yeah, I have not tried collection factories. Also, I have actually played Welcome to the Bikiniverse after wandering around the forums last night. I finished every level you had and really enjoyed it. :slight_smile:

thanks! there’s a game called link twin which is basically the same if you want to play more. mine came first, but theirs was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. Whose is better? that’s not for me to say.

Actually i just want to say that i do think my version is better.

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