Editor Complaints

[Aki1024]

1) Test -> Run
Testing something is for seeing if things are moving in the right direction. Is the scale of the map right? Am I perceiving the distance between two points correctly? Testing a map is just for the final finished product run.

Warning the user that the map isn't in an exportable for game state is fine. Let us into the damn map even if we don't have all the props for the game set. If there are no spawn locations, pick a random position inside the map that is safe for the plane to be and put the user there.

Having to place components for a map instance that may not get completed as I head back to photoshop to fix something is annoying.

[edit]Another option could be to spawn the basic equipment that the provided name causes. User names the level ball_anything and three powerup spawns and two goals are made in defaultish locations.[/edit]

2) Zoom
Put your curser in a corner or side and zoom out three times. Can you see your level? While zooming out, whatever is currently in the viewport should not be lost.

Put your curser just about anywhere and zoom in and out repeatedly. Does the image walk away from the view port?

Common zoom out is to use the curser's location as the static location (the point that doesn't change position) and increase what is seen. The editor throws the curser's location to the center.

3) Deselect Removed

4) Right click context menu
Right clicking causes the app to open dialog boxes. These can't be quickly clicked away from mis-clicks. Expected from right clicking on a item would be the option to view properties (in that dialog box), along with edit hull, delete, copy, cut. Right clicking in white space should give the options of Fit to screen (zoom out to fit entire level in view port), deselect,

5) Grid line request
Could the grid options gain a bold grid line every x lines? It would make counting by fives or tens easier.
[/Edit]

6) Quickly moving specials
After some editing, my map had shifted so that all my specials were offset to one direction. Not wanting to select each special item separately, and I couldn't drag select in Game layer as I would also grab my geometry, I figured I'd hide the geometry and drag select what remained.

I then re-showed the geometry layer so I could see where the specials needed to be moved to. Alas, this causes a deselect of my selection. I also tried moving all the special to its own layer, but layer show hide also causes deselection.

Solution: Find a layer that isn't used by anything else to move all of the offset items. Finding an empty layer can be done via Window -> Show Filter View, Filter View -> Edit Layer (ddl). Layers that have something on them have items that are not clouded over. Also, while holding left click, all items that could be selected get highlighted in white. Edit Layer also locks all other layers, allowing for easy editing of your selected layer.

7) Detect Hull
Is there a way to detect where Hull should be placed other then on importing of large png? I would like to just make visible what I want hull to be on, and ask the editor to automatically put hull on those items just like it does for imports.
[edit3]Wrong. See edit4 When using Map -> Import Large PNG, the game view needs selected (anything outside the game view doesn't effect players, so hull isn't needed on other views). Early attempts of mine also failed to get png transparency working >.>[/edit3]
[edit4] In order to detect hulls on the inside of an import, the outside walls must extend to the outside of the image. If any transparency is outside of the walls, the editor will not look at inside transparency for wall detection.[edit4]

Appreciation
From the other point of view, thank you for having an editor at all, saving files in XML providing a potential means of a user to create an editor of their own (no small task, I greatly understand), and the auto detect hulls of an imported image is awesome (if I could just figure out how to get that to work constantly >D See edit3 above).