• Hey Guest! Ever feel like entering a Game Jam, but the time limit is always too much pressure? We get it... You lead a hectic life and dedicating 3 whole days to make a game just doesn't work for you! So, why not enter the GMC SLOW JAM? Take your time! Kick back and make your game over 4 months! Interested? Then just click here!
  • Hello [name]! Thanks for joining the GMC. Before making any posts in the Tech Support forum, can we suggest you read the forum rules? These are simple guidelines that we ask you to follow so that you can get the best help possible for your issue.

Question - IDE GM 2 horrible on a laptop with a trackpad

B

BlueSlime

Guest
Is there anyways to make GM2 act like GM 1 and just open the windows instead of the giant board view thing?

I don't have a middle click button to press to move the view over and it very unwieldy to try and type code in a window again and there are no scroll bars...?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
B

BlueSlime

Guest
Is there anyways to make GM2 act like GM 1 and just open the windows instead of the giant board view thing?

I don't have a middle click button to press to move the view over and it very unwieldy to try and type code in a window again and there are no scroll bars...?


Ok I just figured out I can ALT + click ... still I liked the old system better
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
I know it's not really a solution to your problem, but I highly recommend getting even a cheap usb mouse.
It'll save your hands a lot of pain in the long run.
 
B

BlueSlime

Guest
I know it's not really a solution to your problem, but I highly recommend getting even a cheap usb mouse.
It'll save your hands a lot of pain in the long run.
Ya, I have an extra mouse somewhere, but I just wanted to test something quickly on my laptop in gm2 while i'm on my desktop in gm1. Actually, maybe I should go look for my mouse :D good idea!
 

csanyk

Member
Currently there are a lot of band aids on top of (I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings by saying this) regrettable UI design choices in GMS2. These band aids work for a lot of people, but to me whenever you have to point out to someone that there's a manual, or that it's fine once you get used to it, or that you have to learn, then the UI design could be better.

My opinion is that YYG tried to innovate a bit too much in order to create something that they thought would be revolutionary. They had great intentions, but not enough UI tester feedback, and put too much trust in their design instincts and not enough listening to enough users who could have warned them that Workspaces have issues.

For most of the beta, they were in a mode of sticking to their guns and doubling down on it, and more recently we've seen them acquiesce a bit and admit that there are some things that they have heard us users on, that they agree need work, and it's just a matter of coming up with a better solution. In the meantime we have to make do and wait. Which, really, is how it has always been, with all software.

I want to like GMS2, and I do like a lot of it, but it does have a lot of rough edges still, and I'm not sure that YYG's vision for the product matches up well with what I consider good UX. I hope that it does, and I'll keep providing feedback when I can think of a suggestion that would improve the product, or when I hit a pain point, with the understanding that I'm just one voice in the crowd, and I don't have all the answers. I do think that they can make it better, and I do have faith that they'll never stop improving the product, but I don't know that we agree on what "better" means in every case.
 

Mike

nobody important
GMC Elder
They aren't "band aids" they are UI navigation tools. We have to point out it's in the manual because as a rule - no one reads the manual, and when it comes to shortcuts you'll likely never know about them unless you read the manual.

We are all for adding more navigation aids and short cuts to help users quickly move from one task to another - these are not "band aids".

A book mark is not a band aid because books "don't remember" what page I was on.
Cursor keys aren't a band aid because a "Mouse" is a pain to move a cursor around a text editor
A pencil sharpener isn't a band aid "because pencils don't work right and keep sharp".
A scroll bar isn't a band aid because "monitors are too small".
Page up and down isn't a band aid because cursor key movement was designed too slow to move through large documents quick enough.

These are all "tools". The more tools the better, and we will add more over time.

Just because you're not a fan doesn't mean others aren't. We have loads or messages from others who love the new workspaces. The number of users on here not liking them are tiny compared to the numbers who love it the way it is. Feedback is not constructive if you spend the whole post just complaining about something - as the post above does. It's just a rant, and all that does is annoys those who have spent years making the product.

We took lots of UI feedback before and during beta, and we weighed it according to how we felt about it, and how many users were telling us about it. We've said from Day 1 we are happy to add more tools, more options/preferences to help, but we're not ripping everything apart for a limited number of users who aren't making the transition. Lets remember such "helpful" suggestions of throw away the whole workspace and make every dialog a full screen tab, or make every window a "real" OS level window. These were never going to happen - and we explained our reasons at the time, and I also believe that doing this would have resulted in basically remaking 1.x, which would have been a pointless task.

So by all means suggest extra things we can do to aid in navigation, but please stop continually going on and on about something that isn't going to change. You are in a small minority, and while we will certainly do everything we can to help improve your user experience - including adding more bespoke tools, shortcuts and menus, we're not going to fundamentally change something that so many others are enjoying. Continuing to go on and on will simply result in YoYo staff just not taking part in these discussions, and you losing out on the ability to help shape the product.


So to "laptops". With the Mac version coming, we are expecting more and more users to work on laptops, so we will be doing more to try and help navigation with them. PC laptops are a pain because the touchpad is so limited on many of them - Mac is multi-touch so that givers us more options. There is a basic mode there just now, but it's not ideal. Issues like "palm protection" on PC devices stop common short cuts being which makes life even more complicated. But we'll keep at it.
 

RiK

Member
With the Mac version coming, we are expecting more and more users to work on laptops, so we will be doing more to try and help navigation with them. PC laptops are a pain because the touchpad is so limited on many of them - Mac is multi-touch so that givers us more options. There is a basic mode there just now, but it's not ideal.
Loong time Mac user, waiting patiently for the next round of beta invites... ;-) *cough*
 
G

Guest User

Guest
Sadly I've uninstalled GMS2 now as I loathe the new workspace and it's pretty much unworkable on my laptop, so I've binned GMS2 and gone back to 1.4
 

Hyomoto

Member
As for using a trackpad, well all I can say is I empathize because no, I would absolutely not want to use GM2 with one.
 

csanyk

Member
They aren't "band aids" they are UI navigation tools.
Band aids is my opinion. I've been using desktop computers since 1982, and I've had a lot of experience using different tools. Some are better, some are worse. Pretty much anything can be improved. Being improvable doesn't mean something isn't good. And GMS2 is overall good -- better than what came before, certainly. Speaking specifically to Workspaces, I find that they are good in concept, but need considerable improvement for me to find them pleasurable to use.

We have to point out it's in the manual because as a rule - no one reads the manual, and when it comes to shortcuts you'll likely never know about them unless you read the manual.
The better the UI, the less need for a manual, the fewer questions and complaints.

I read the manual all the time. It's good to have it, it's very well written, by and large.

Yet, there's still things that may be "addressed" by documentation, that are better resolved by design improvements.

We are all for adding more navigation aids and short cuts to help users quickly move from one task to another - these are not "band aids".
It's good that you want to make the product better; I don't know that I'd agree that the way to make the product better is to always add more to it. In a lot of cases, it's better to re-think and simplify. It's really sufficient to say that you're in favor of continually improving the UI. Everything else will follow naturally from there.

A book mark is not a band aid because books "don't remember" what page I was on.
Cursor keys aren't a band aid because a "Mouse" is a pain to move a cursor around a text editor
A pencil sharpener isn't a band aid "because pencils don't work right and keep sharp".
A scroll bar isn't a band aid because "monitors are too small".
Page up and down isn't a band aid because cursor key movement was designed too slow to move through large documents quick enough.
I'm not sure how these examples all relate to the specific issues that I and others have pointed out with the UX issues that they have with GMS2. I think these examples are a lot of false analogy, frankly. And you're describing things that don't have fundamental problems, rather than pointing out examples with the UX of GMS2.

The fact that you can read the manual to learn some advanced navigational tool overcome a fundamental problem with the surface presentation of the UI is a band aid. With better UX, the user would ask fewer questions, need to consult the manual less often, have less cognitive burden to carry in their heads just to do basic simple things, freeing their minds up to do more "real" work, and navigating the UI would be intuitive and easy.
I'm on a 4K display, which I have to downsample to 2560x1440 in order to be able to read fonts, and I find that the amount of scrolling I need to do to navigate a Workspace is not acceptable. My monitor resolution is not the problem. Regardless of monitor sizing, the design choices that went into creating Workspaces necessitate a lot of scrolling. The "fix" for this is a keyboard shortcut that is not common to other software, and thus is an oddball that you have to find by reading the manual, and then develop a habit to learn to use. This is painful. I could break 25+ years of habit and force myself to CTRL+T to get around, but it will NEVER feel intuitive and easy to me to do this. I will always have to stop and think and break my train of thought in order to to this. Every time I break my train of thought, I exit "The Zone" and therefore it will always irritate me. CTRL+T not bother all users; to me it will always be a band aid.

In other IDEs, rather than scrolling around an infinite, featureless space looking for maximized editors to work in, I can simply tab between one open file and another. You guys tried to innovate and it may look great in a screen shot, but the UX is not as good as it could be, not as good as other tools, and is a frequent source of irritation.

It pains me to say it. But it pains me to use it. So I gotta speak up. Like I say, I want to like GMS2, and I do like a lot of things about it, but these UX issues are causing me pain whenever I use the product.

These are all "tools". The more tools the better, and we will add more over time.
There's such a think as too many tools. You guys really need a good UX designer who can straighten things out for you, and simplify things, make things easier to do, etc.

Just because you're not a fan doesn't mean others aren't. We have loads or messages from others who love the new workspaces. The number of users on here not liking them are tiny compared to the numbers who love it the way it is. Feedback is not constructive if you spend the whole post just complaining about something - as the post above does. It's just a rant, and all that does is annoys those who have spent years making the product.
Oh, but I *am* a fan.

I happen to have criticisms, and problems. Obviously nothing will ever be perfect, and I don't expect it to be. I just hope that you hear me when I offer ideas for making things better. I get that you can't everything for everyone, and you can't do things right away.

If I wasn't a fan, I'd just walk away and use something else. I have a lot of time invested in learning the GML language and I'd rather not give it up. The product has a lot of promise, but it's not perfect. I understand no one wants to hear people think something you worked hard on isn't perfect. But you need to be willing to listen to feedback. I do think that generally you guys are great at receiving feedback -- I know of very few tools where you can interact with the developers on a forum, as we can with YYG. That's one of the main reasons I like GMS so much.

We took lots of UI feedback before and during beta, and we weighed it according to how we felt about it, and how many users were telling us about it. We've said from Day 1 we are happy to add more tools, more options/preferences to help, but we're not ripping everything apart for a limited number of users who aren't making the transition. Lets remember such "helpful" suggestions of throw away the whole workspace and make every dialog a full screen tab, or make every window a "real" OS level window. These were never going to happen - and we explained our reasons at the time, and I also believe that doing this would have resulted in basically remaking 1.x, which would have been a pointless task.
I can't speak to every suggestion offered. Obviously you have to weed through a lot of feedback and let that inform your design decisions. You can't just do everything everyone suggests. That would be disastrous. No one wants that.

So by all means suggest extra things we can do to aid in navigation, but please stop continually going on and on about something that isn't going to change. You are in a small minority, and while we will certainly do everything we can to help improve your user experience - including adding more bespoke tools, shortcuts and menus, we're not going to fundamentally change something that so many others are enjoying. Continuing to go on and on will simply result in YoYo staff just not taking part in these discussions, and you losing out on the ability to help shape the product.
I haven't been keeping score, nor do I have any means to, so I don't know that I'm in a minority.

Even if I am in a minority, we can't really know who's in the minority and who's in the majority unless everyone has their say.

I do know that if I never say anything, nothing will be done.

I do read a lot of people on this forum coming back with the same problems, over and over. Whether they all together constitute a minority or not, it nevertheless seems to be a rather common complaint about the product as-is. We don't complain because we hate you; we complain because we have problems with a product that we really want to get the most out of, and love.

Please try not to be defensive about the feedback.
 
Last edited:

Mike

nobody important
GMC Elder
okay, I'm not going to get into another endless debate. Aside from obviously disagreeing on the UI and repeating myself again and again, I'll simply say as I have done over and over in every other topic like this. It's a small number.

I understand that being on these forums leads you to a false impression that "this" is the whole of the GameMaker community, is really isn't. Not anywhere close. This is a small corner, and out of this small corner a handful of users don't like the new interface.

Urgh.... "Alt-Tabbing" between things is horrible. I don't use it in windows because I end up spending my life Alt-Tabbing between 30 different windows, each time of which I need to tab 20 places to pick then next one. How is that quicker? Bleh.
Multiple Desktops and multiple monitors fix the issue for me as I can spread everything out, and in only a couple of key presses I can swap several apps at once. Same with GMS2. For those that DO like tabbing - you can. There is an ALT-TAB tool that lets you do just that.
I think these examples are a lot of false analogy, frankly. And you're describing things that don't have fundamental problems, rather than pointing out examples with the UX of GMS2.
I find this a little funny, as bookmarks ARE a concept from GMS that are common to books. All these things are tools, that was my point. Everything in the program is a tool. Cursor keys are a tool, the mouse us a tool - we could have made it completely keyboard driven, but the mouse is a powerful tool. Menus, shortcuts - all these things allow fast navigation and are common. All are tools. New items like ALT-T are simply newer ones, where as menus have been around for a while.

I do know that if I never say anything, nothing will be done.
Please try not to be defensive about the feedback.
Lastly.... I understand this and agree. But it's hard to not be defensive when you do nothing but rant in a post. There were NO suggestions in your post - not one. Just a re-iteration of you not liking this that and the next thing, and that in your opinion we clearly suck at this. Why should we not be offended by this? If this isn't what you intended, then I suggest you word your posts better, and try to actually suggest solutions instead of just saying it - and we, suck.
 

csanyk

Member
okay, I'm not going to get into another endless debate. Aside from obviously disagreeing on the UI and repeating myself again and again, I'll simply say as I have done over and over in every other topic like this. It's a small number.

I understand that being on these forums leads you to a false impression that "this" is the whole of the GameMaker community, is really isn't. Not anywhere close. This is a small corner, and out of this small corner a handful of users don't like the new interface.

Urgh.... "Alt-Tabbing" between things is horrible. I don't use it in windows because I end up spending my life Alt-Tabbing between 30 different windows, each time of which I need to tab 20 places to pick then next one. How is that quicker? Bleh.
Multiple Desktops and multiple monitors fix the issue for me as I can spread everything out, and in only a couple of key presses I can swap several apps at once. Same with GMS2. For those that DO like tabbing - you can. There is an ALT-TAB tool that lets you do just that.

I find this a little funny, as bookmarks ARE a concept from GMS that are common to books. All these things are tools, that was my point. Everything in the program is a tool. Cursor keys are a tool, the mouse us a tool - we could have made it completely keyboard driven, but the mouse is a powerful tool. Menus, shortcuts - all these things allow fast navigation and are common. All are tools. New items like ALT-T are simply newer ones, where as menus have been around for a while.


Lastly.... I understand this and agree. But it's hard to not be defensive when you do nothing but rant in a post. There were NO suggestions in your post - not one. Just a re-iteration of you not liking this that and the next thing, and that in your opinion we clearly suck at this. Why should we not be offended by this? If this isn't what you intended, then I suggest you word your posts better, and try to actually suggest solutions instead of just saying it - and we, suck.
You guys don't suck! I've never said that, and I hope I don't come across that way.

I didn't offer any suggestions here simply because I've already offered them in other posts and saw no point in restating them here.

It's hard to properly draw up everything, type it up, and present it in a way that doesn't get overwhelming or sound like a rant. I've actually been wanting to do a video but have been too busy to produce one. A lot of this is best seen in action. If you lived closer to my part of the world I'd invite you out for a beer, bring my laptop, and then we could have a free exchange of ideas.

I truly do love GMS, whatever else I might have to say about it. I don't mean for it to get repetitive. Fix a few things so I can offer feedback on something else! :)
 
J

jva

Guest
I haven't used GMS2 all that much yet but I agree with csanyk that simplifying the UI would do good.
Especially with a big chunk (?) of the userbase or the market being game development beginners this would probably lead to more sales too.

For now though I hope focus is just on getting all the functions solid and existing bugs fixed and maybe after that there is time to rethink some parts of the UI.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
K

Kuro

Guest
Currently there are a lot of band aids on top of (I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings by saying this) regrettable UI design choices in GMS2.
I happen to like the new UI.

As for the trackpad usability issue raised elsewhere in this thread. I've noticed that most 3D courses I've ever taken start off with the instructor begging that 5% of stubborn laptop users to 'just for the love of all that is good and holy please... just... please buy a moouuse'.

If all you use is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
 
M

mdbussen

Guest
As somebody who has used both GMS1.4 and GMS2 on a laptop with a lower-resolution screen (1600 x 900) I can say that using GMS1.4 is unequivocally a better experience. The new workflow model seems to have been designed with giant displays in mind but in "laptop mode" GMS2 is constantly opening up code windows that are larger than the available workspace (like in OP's example). I generally maximize my code windows to try and prevent this behavior but the UI does not intelligently sort these code windows - every time you open up a new code window it just dumps it into a tab called "code" with all of the other windows, and leaves it to the user to sort them out. It would be nice to have the UI automatically open up the event code for the same objects in the same tab, and then open up any "unattached" scripts in a separate tab.

EDIT: I've just noticed in the new blog post that was posted on this thread (https://www.yoyogames.com/blog/416) that there are a fair number of options for opening scripts and events so this may be helpful for addressing my concerns.

EDIT2: Nevermind, I already had all of these options checked but they don't quite add up to the kind of operation I was hoping for. I really would like the ability for GMS2 to "intelligently" sort the code windows into different tabs - so that events from the same object open up in one tab while "unattached" scripts open in another, or even in a tab for each script/event. Currently I have to sort them myself all the time which is a bit of a drag.
 
Last edited:

csanyk

Member
I happen to like the new UI.
You're not wrong.

As for the trackpad usability issue raised elsewhere in this thread. I've noticed that most 3D courses I've ever taken start off with the instructor begging that 5% of stubborn laptop users to 'just for the love of all that is good and holy please... just... please buy a moouuse'.

If all you use is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
I'm not clear if you're responding to the OP or to me, here, but in my case the issues I have with the UI are not due to not using a mouse. I don't want to rehash what I've said elsewhere, but to summarize it has more to do with information density, screen real estate, and ease/speed of navigation in Workspaces. There's plenty of other, minor rough spots in the UI that have nothing to do with workspaces, but managing workspaces is probably my key pain point. I think the concept is good, but the execution has issues, and I have ideas for how to improve them, which I don't want to get into here because it's not the point of the thread. But I plan to talk about them elsewhere in the near future.
 
W

warmonk

Guest
Lets remember such "helpful" suggestions of throw away the whole workspace and make every dialog a full screen tab, or make every window a "real" OS level window. These were never going to happen - and we explained our reasons at the time...
Is there a blog or forum post for this? Just curious as to what your vision is for how the workspace should be used.
 
B

BlueSlime

Guest
mice are actually horrible...but now I have one next to my laptop just for GM2. -rant removed- :cool:
 
Last edited by a moderator:

salyossy

Member
Is there anyways to make GM2 act like GM 1 and just open the windows instead of the giant board view thing?

I don't have a middle click button to press to move the view over and it very unwieldy to try and type code in a window again and there are no scroll bars...?

Well, i found a small solution that works for me. I thought to share it with you, maybe you, or other users, find it usful...

i'm using a Lenovo laptop with a touchpad. I couldn't "move around" inside workspaces, because i'm used to scrolling with my fingers, and its very very sad for me that swiping two fingers doesn't work. Even in laptop mode. which is weird because if i put a mouse, then i can scroll with the wheel, so what's the difference??? I was looking for a solution for me over nights and days... until i ended up learning how to script a AutoHotKey file...

the code i use is:
Code:
+Down::
send {WheelDown 1}
return

+Up::
send {WheelUp 1}
return

+Left::
send {WheelLeft 1}
return

+Right::
send {WheelRight 1}
return
now, i can scroll with keyboard!!! for example, when i open an event and its code is hidden in the right side of the screen, i use shift+arrow right, and it just scrolls there. it works for me. better than nothing..

By the way, if someone knows how to enable "two fingers swipe" to work insind GMS2, i'll thank him to the rest of my life :D
 
Top