Several Requests

[Ebriosus]

Hi again!

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I’ve actually been busy working (which is basically done now) on an Android game using GDevelop. The engine is pretty good, honestly, with the exception of a couple of bugs - in which one of them is actually preventing me from publishing the game - but if you’re able to implement the following features in upcoming updates, it would help out a lot with my workflow!

• The choice to set the animation speed of a multi-frame sprite to 0 (thus freezing it). This is useful for things like slideshows where pressing a button will change the sprite’s frame to the next.
• For text objects, I’d like text alignment options, such as Align Left/Right/Center/Top/Bottom/etc. I had to give up trying to center the text object that showed the player’s final score in an end Scene, because the text just wouldn’t align itself to the center (it’s always aligned left), and the misalignment is especially visible when the score is several digits long.
• The ability to right-click on ‘Scenes’ in the Project Manager and select ‘Order Scenes by name’ or something like that in the context/popup menu. Same thing for the Images Bank as well. Even if I can only order Scenes, images, etc by name only is already very good for me. I just need some sort of ability to organize all my assets in one click to save a lot of time.
• The commenting system for Events is pretty good, but it’d be nice if you can include the ability to changing the font size. I find it useful when I want to create headers and titles for External/Scene-attached Events.
• I saw a couple of people post about it already, but some sort of ‘Else’ function/condition will help me a bit. It’s actually not necessary, but it’s one of those ‘really nice to have’ things in many situations.
• Sorry if this one’s a big request, but I’d like some sort of basic image editor implemented, just for drawing basic shapes and collision masks for sprites. It just makes work easier and faster than having to open an external drawing program and import it into the game.
• Some sort of ‘if something is between value #1 and value #2’ function wound be AWESOME!
• I’m not exactly sure how to describe it, but I’d like a more ‘streamlined’ Save function. One of the reasons why I had to remove the high score feature in my game is because I couldn’t figure out how to save the high score data locally into the person’s device.
• Finally, I’d like to have a feature where I can choose between linear and point sampling for graphics. This comes from my experience with Construct. Whenever I used pixel art in a game, linear sampling would mess up the art (draws lines around the edges of the sprites and stuff), but when I switched to point sampling, it fixes everything. This is especially noticeable when you used tiled sprites. I noticed that GDevelop also suffers from this problem with pixel art, so I’m hoping that introducing a feature like this into the engine could fix the problem.

Sorry for the long and numerous requests, but I promise you that this is all I’ll every request from you guys (aside from bug fixes, of course ).

If you read all this, thanks! Keep up with your work on GDevelop!

[Lizard-13]

Is not a bad list, seems that you know what you are talking about

The choice to set the animation speed of a multi-frame sprite to 0 (thus freezing it). This is useful for things like slideshows where pressing a button will change the sprite’s frame to the next.

There is an action to pause the animation, also you can change the frames while the animation is paused

For text objects, I’d like text alignment options, such as Align Left/Right/Center/Top/Bottom/etc. I had to give up trying to center the text object that showed the player’s final score in an end Scene, because the text just wouldn’t align itself to the center (it’s always aligned left), and the misalignment is especially visible when the score is several digits long.

There will be an alignment (anchor) behavior for the next release, it will work for any kind of object, I think. You can read more about it here: [url]GDevelop's monthly recap − August 2016]

I saw a couple of people post about it already, but some sort of ‘Else’ function/condition will help me a bit. It’s actually not necessary, but it’s one of those ‘really nice to have’ things in many situations.

Yeah, there was an entire topic about it, specifically how to implement it over object lists (as you know, every condition removes objects from the list of objects taken into account for the actions listed in the event), the result was “undefined”…

Some sort of ‘if something is between value #1 and value #2’ function wound be AWESOME!

Maybe, of course you just need two conditions instead this one, and even high level programming languages doesn’t offer this option, for example in Python you can chain the conditions as you want:

if LowerLimit <= YourValue <= HigherLimit: Do something

While in C++ you have to do what everybody does in GD:

if LowerLimit <= YourValue AND YourValue <= HigherLimit: Do something

So it could be added, but not sure if it would be awesome

I’m not exactly sure how to describe it, but I’d like a more ‘streamlined’ Save function. One of the reasons why I had to remove the high score feature in my game is because I couldn’t figure out how to save the high score data locally into the person’s device.

Another user was having problem with storage actions, is it an Android device?

Finally, I’d like to have a feature where I can choose between linear and point sampling for graphics. This comes from my experience with Construct. Whenever I used pixel art in a game, linear sampling would mess up the art (draws lines around the edges of the sprites and stuff), but when I switched to point sampling, it fixes everything. This is especially noticeable when you used tiled sprites. I noticed that GDevelop also suffers from this problem with pixel art, so I’m hoping that introducing a feature like this into the engine could fix the problem.

Do you have such problems even with the smooth image option disabled?

[sleeper_service]

@Lizard-13

So it could be added, but not sure if it would be awesome

Yeah, I would like it too though, even though it’s purely a visual thing that makes conditions more neat. I did some animation changes based on rotation and that required checking angle for a range 16 times. Would have been faster with a range condition, but its not that of a big deal.

@Lizard-13

Do you have such problems even with the smooth image option disabled?

I can confirm that so far this has produced pixel perfect results so far across the board. I was surprised how easy it was to make everything pixel perfect in GD, in Unity we had to constantly add stuff to prevent the engine from messing up our art…

[Ebriosus]

@Lizard-13

Is not a bad list, seems that you know what you are talking about

The choice to set the animation speed of a multi-frame sprite to 0 (thus freezing it). This is useful for things like slideshows where pressing a button will change the sprite’s frame to the next.

There is an action to pause the animation, also you can change the frames while the animation is paused

For text objects, I’d like text alignment options, such as Align Left/Right/Center/Top/Bottom/etc. I had to give up trying to center the text object that showed the player’s final score in an end Scene, because the text just wouldn’t align itself to the center (it’s always aligned left), and the misalignment is especially visible when the score is several digits long.

There will be an alignment (anchor) behavior for the next release, it will work for any kind of object, I think. You can read more about it here: [url]GDevelop's monthly recap − August 2016]

I saw a couple of people post about it already, but some sort of ‘Else’ function/condition will help me a bit. It’s actually not necessary, but it’s one of those ‘really nice to have’ things in many situations.

Yeah, there was an entire topic about it, specifically how to implement it over object lists (as you know, every condition removes objects from the list of objects taken into account for the actions listed in the event), the result was “undefined”…

Some sort of ‘if something is between value #1 and value #2’ function wound be AWESOME!

Maybe, of course you just need two conditions instead this one, and even high level programming languages doesn’t offer this option, for example in Python you can chain the conditions as you want:

if LowerLimit <= YourValue <= HigherLimit: Do something

While in C++ you have to do what everybody does in GD:

if LowerLimit <= YourValue AND YourValue <= HigherLimit: Do something

So it could be added, but not sure if it would be awesome

I’m not exactly sure how to describe it, but I’d like a more ‘streamlined’ Save function. One of the reasons why I had to remove the high score feature in my game is because I couldn’t figure out how to save the high score data locally into the person’s device.

Another user was having problem with storage actions, is it an Android device?

Finally, I’d like to have a feature where I can choose between linear and point sampling for graphics. This comes from my experience with Construct. Whenever I used pixel art in a game, linear sampling would mess up the art (draws lines around the edges of the sprites and stuff), but when I switched to point sampling, it fixes everything. This is especially noticeable when you used tiled sprites. I noticed that GDevelop also suffers from this problem with pixel art, so I’m hoping that introducing a feature like this into the engine could fix the problem.

Do you have such problems even with the smooth image option disabled?

Hey Lizard-13, thanks for getting back to me!

Pausing an animation via Actions should work just fine, I think. Would it be possible to have this option in the sprite animation window in future updates, maybe? Something like a “Animation Speed: 0” would be really cool.

Alright! I can’t wait for the anchoring function! Haha, sorry, I didn’t know what to call those alignment options until you mentioned anchor.

For the ‘Else’ function, no need to sweat over it. It’s not a critical function for me (at the moment, lol). Besides, if implementing this function means that it will break many others, I can definitely live without it.

Hahaha, I guess I was exaggerating too much about the ‘between’ function. Doing it your way is definitely okay for me, I guess it just looks a little neater with a ‘between’ function, like sleeper_service said.

Lol, yes, my game is indeed for an Android device. If there was some sort of very simple Event function that at the very least saves a file, containing all of the developer’s global variables and their current values, into the player’s device, that would already be very good.

About the smooth image option, you’re right. I actually never realized there was an option like this until I messed around with the images resource window. It fixed the problem, hooray!

Again, thanks for getting back to me about these. I would like to just add another feature to my list of requests: some sort of Add-on/Expansion/Updates/DLC feature. That way, rather than reuploading an updated 1GB game to whatever distribution website, just upload the 20MB update and the game’s already built-in Add-on feature kicks in whenever it detects that an update file for the game exists.

I’ll stop here. I’m probably asking for too much already. lol