Feedback One thing I really hate about the new room editor

[zendorf]

Yes, the new room editor is a glorious thing indeed! The one thing that is killing it for me is the way instance code is handled.

In the old editor I could hover the cursor over an instance and instantly get feedback on wether there was instance code. You would get the "has code" displayed on the bottom of the room editor window, and if I waited another second I would get a floating window with the code displayed. A very nice system that worked well, all without a single mouseclick. The only flaw was that the floating window disappeared after 2 seconds, which was never enough time to read if you had many lines of code.

In contrast, in GMS2, to find out if you have any instance code you have to double click the instance, then click on the creation code button, the screen is then filled with a giant code window(that may or may not be blank) that makes you lose sight of which instance you have selected. If there is no code, then you have to close down 2 windows and pan the editor back to where you were. That is a lot of clicking and dragging just to see if you had any code on an instance and this workflow is very laborious.

Don't get me wrong, all the new linked windows popping out looks very fancy and sexy, but it gets old real fast in the room editor. It seems like there is a concerted effort to have no floating windows at all in the UI, but there is always a time a place for them.

Is there any chance that this old functionality will return? At the very least can we please get the "has code" popup back on a mouseover. I tend to use a lot of instance code (it is one of my favourite things about Gamemaker) and the new workflow will make it tedious to edit a complex level.

 

[Mike]

yeah, this has been brought up already, and I do agree, so something will be added for it at some point.

 

[renex]

Just imagine how useful if selecting an instance updated a panel with its instance code.

This would be extremely fast to work with.

 

[Mike]

Possibly..... I'm more interested in that panel for multi-select.

 

[NPT]

Possibly..... I'm more interested in that panel for multi-select.

Theres no reason why the panel can't serve both.

When a single object is selected, instance code could be displayed or atleast flagged as present with an edit button.
When multiple objects are selected, then it's nolonger important that instance code be flagged as it's no longer in context.

 

[Mike]

Theres no reason why the panel can't serve both.

That was kinda my point...that yes. it would be nice, but actually... for multi-select, it would be awesome.

 

[zendorf]

yeah, this has been brought up already, and I do agree, so something will be added for it at some point.

Thanks for the reply Mike, good to hear that it is on the radar!

In general I really like the new IDE, the exceptions being some of the window behaviours. The linked windows work well for objects, but not the room editor. Similarly to the instance code issue is the way room creation code is displayed. It would also be nicer in a floating window or side panel. (Or at the least, it should not pan the room editor out of the way and just overlay it). It feels very cramped squeezing it into the room editor itself, though I get the feeing that if I was using a large hi-res display that this new window paradigm would work better. Currently on a FHD 15" laptop, it can feel very cramped.

Can't help but think that the game options window would also work better as a floating window, as it is not something you would leave open for long. In particular, when in the game options window, picking the "Windows" suboption opens an extra window that seems very unnecessary, since you then have to close down 2 windows.