I love that Defold has it’s own built-in code editor, but with it being the place I spend the most time when making my game, I have some suggestions as to some quality-of-life improvements in the code editing experience.
My most dire suggestion is this:
In the original editor, holding Ctrl while pressing a left or right arrow key simply launches you to the beginning or end of the line.
Now in VS Code:
It selects the next whitespace delimited token.
Other suggestings I have include multi-cursor support and moving lines of code up and down by holding a key like Alt and using the up or down arrow key.
In general, I think VS Code is a pretty great reference for how good code editing feels, at least in my opinion. This is a pretty great resource for other functionality I would personally find helpful.
We do have some improvements planned for the code editor in coming sprints based on a workshop we had with developers in one of our studios. Some of the things you mentioned was brought up. @mats.gisselson and @vlaaad can tell you more.
Regarding Ctrl ← and Ctrl → that goes to beginning/end of line — this is a behavior from macOS, and I think we should respect current OS behavior in this regard and use it to jump by words. Jumping by words currently exists in code editor as Alt ← and Alt →, which is also macOS-specific.
Yes, I agree we should revise the default shortcuts to be more in line with OS expectations.
As for multiple cursor support, it is already implemented. You can place additional cursors by holding a modifier key, but the more common use case is to use the Split Selection Into Lines and Select Next Occurrence commands (keyboard shortcuts are in the Edit menu). Or you could Alt-drag a box selection to quickly extend a column of cursors.
Alt + drag does the same as Middle Button + drag does in PyCharm, although VSCode seems to have adapted the Middle Button drag too, so perhaps we should as well.
I would also like to encourage you to try using Ctrl + D (or Command + D on Mac) to select next occurrences. This is my favorite feature from Sublime Text, and is also implemented in VSCode and Atom. PyCharm does it too, but the default shortcut is different. Basically you’d select the ".DIR_" bit on the first line and just hold down Ctrl + D to select all of them without touching the mouse.
Pleeeeeaaaaase fix the Alt vs Ctrl thing for windows!!! Every. Single. Other. program on windows uses Control, including the other parts of the Defold editor, then suddenly it sends your cursor flying to the end or the start of the line when you try to select some code. #1 issue for me.
I thought you had to “cmd + click” them out (which is quite buggy and you can’t be too fast doing it).
