I used the AppGameKit Studio (2019.08.05 on Windows 10) scene stuff last night for the first time and here’s some feedback on things that I found troubling. I have just one texture that I made into a sprite sheet. I will refer to the sprites I placed in the scene as tiles, below.
Essential improvements (to me important usability improvements)
1. When I make a change to a media asset (my textures) outside of AppGameKit (re-export from GIMP), clicking refresh in media files will refresh the media file, but will not update the sprite-sheet (nor the image where I dragged the texture into the scene). For that, it seems, I have to quit AGKS and restart it, and only then everything is updated.
2. If I select a “tile” and then hold CTRL to select more tiles, it doesn’t multiple-select. I have to drag-select the 1st tile, and after that I can press CTRL and click on tiles to add them to the selection (Maybe this belongs in the bugs section below?).
3. Drag select should be possible, more than once (to add to the selection more multiple tiles). Maybe I just don’t know the key/mouse sequence. I was expecting to drag select and then press SHIFT or CTRL+SHIFT and drag-select more tiles. SHIFT, however, does something else (it pans the scene) in this editor so I can’t multiple-drag-select.
4. Snap to Grid should retain its state (checked or unchecked, even across saves).
5. The rotation value for a tile should not just be a slider. I should be able to type in a value as well (maybe have buttons for 90, 180 and 270 but the slider is a big hassle).
6. The properties should be editable with multiple tiles selected, i.e. I want to select some set of tiles and rotate all of them or scale them, etc., all at the same time using one control (so I want the sprite properties sheet to be accessible while I am in draw mode).
a. I think the whole concept of Draw Mode and Properties Mode is flawed (I know it’s necessary but it can be made way more seamless so it’s not thought of as 2 modes by the user – it’s just whether you are in select or edit – it all feels pretty clunky right now).
7. It would be nice to enter Draw Mode by choosing a tile in the scene, with the chosen tile (so not have to go back to the scene manager). Something like CTRL+RIGHT-CLICK or ALT-CLICK a tile selects the tile for draw mode and enters draw mode.
Nice to have improvements:
8. If I could set the offset for tiles in the editor, and then the code used SetSpritePositionByOffset on those tiles, that would be nice. I want to pulse a tile around its centre, but now I have to reposition all of those tiles in code so that the offset/pivot is in the centre of the tile before I can animate the size.
a. As an aside, there’s no Tween on the scale of a sprite which seems odd?
9. It would be nice if I could keep files in a hierarchy under the media folder and still access them, rather than having to have all textures be flattened to this one folder.
10. If I could select all of the tiles in an array-group (maybe a select button next to the Array Group entry field in the properties?) that would be nice.
11. The Scene Manager panel could get a redo. Scene Media and Scene Images bump the “Add Text“ and below way down (if you have a large sprite sheet – maybe 512x512 and you place a thousand sprites). It’s not terrible but if there were 3 tabbed dialogs maybe? Scene Media especially seems like it should have its own home.
Bugs
1. If you have a tile selected and you edit the tile (change the size, rotation, etc.) and then press CTRL-Z, the change will not undo.
2. My project / scene got into a state where pressing CTRL-S or using File->Save didn’t save the scene but also didn’t prompt me to save changed files when I quit. After I discovered the Save button on the scene, I had to use that to save the scene. The bug, in other words, persisted across killing AppGameKit Studio and restarting.
My desire was to make a pac man maze using only 2 tiles (vertical and a 90 degree corner tile – hence the need for bulk rotation to get horizontal and the other 3 corners). As the user interface/experience isn’t there, I had to add more tiles because doing the rotation thing on tiles is just not workable.
Thanks!
