Next Widget Contest Idea

That last contest was a blast. I like having my MMF Widgets folder full of useful tools and look forward to seeing more come along.

As a personal request: it would be nice to see someone with good skills adopt my ActiveObject+ and expand on and improve its features. If you contact me about your intent to do so and follow through with something posted, perhaps you will get something special in return ;) I'll post if someone takes on the task.

Now, onto the new idea for a Widgets contest. I wanted to run this by the users before we decide on hosting it.

We have talked about multi-widgets as subapps. I personally would prefer to have any multi-widget types of tools as an easy to use subapp. Of course, we all know that currently, there are some limitations involved in that, but it is certainly more elegant to exploit the subapp for what we can right now.

Are users up to the challenge? You would have to come-up with useful ideas and work out the best ways to allow your end-user to EASILY work with the subapp in their application. That means finding the best way to set/get/transfer any data.

Your S-Widget, (what should we call them?) might just do calculations or manipulate data, or it could be visual and be based on a control or other extension. The idea is, as we know, to pre-program power, save time and effort, and even help users who don't have the inclination or skills to accomplish certain things. I see some potential here, just as was proven with ordinary Widgets.

Let's see if there is interest in this idea and maybe we can formulate a new competition starting in the near future with a decent amount of development time allowed before the deadline.

While we would like to know your ideas about what you might create, this could be a competition, so keep that in mind if you have a really innovative project idea.

The S-Widget idea is good for a new competition, I think.

I love the idea of Widgets.

To me it's exactly what MMF is supposed to be about.
It's about giving me tools to quickly and simply make games/programs.

I don't want to, nor can I, get into the nitty gritty technical stuff. I want something that I can piece together out of little modules of stuff.
e.g. drag and dorp in a level editor, a.i. behaviour, plaform movement character and bullet widgets.

I'm almost good to go then. then I can start spending the time on the stuff that I want to concentrate on for each project.

e.g. I may be wanting to make a game where the enemies can never die, they can only be slowed down enough to allow you to escape.
(now that idea may be rubbish, it may be fun, but with a really handy collection of widgets and tools at my disposal I can get a nice framework up quickly and then spend my time on the bits that matter.)

The only down-side is that some of them are very complex and have too few instructions/explanations/examples.

Anyway, Nice work on the previous Widget comp.

Thank you so much, BREK. I'm glad you like the competition we had. I was very pleased with it, too.

It is public feedback, support, and enthusiasm from users that motivates the idea and gives it a solid push forward. Without that ... well, we have seen how this idea is coming in so very late, really. Better late than never! ;)

I, and I think many other users, entirely agree with your well said points about how Widgets are great building blocks for all users that expand the easy-to-use paradigm of Multimedia Fusion.

We simply have to mature and materialize this and help to assure that this glaringly missing piece is underscored and developed for a more powerful experience in the future. Many of us see how great the potential is, so it is now on the agenda.

i like the idea!
i think they should be called...sub-wigets....no....sigets! no....hmmm

Swidgets!!! :grin: :grin:

Nice idea :D

Just wondering does anyone know if anything happening/planned on the main programs handling and extension of widget building features?

I think they have already shown how useful they can be with all the great things posted. What im hoping for most is a way to pack extensions into a active/widget like a container. This also makes things more clean in a project if it relys on things.

Then also a nicer way to design the graphics/gui and for things like the alterables have a drop list for choices and also presets. Then we could have widgets that make movement types and be able to save and share nice settings.

If those are there at some point they would be more powerful than extensions i think which would become the low level building blocks for them.

I like the idea of wrappers 'based on a control or other extension' and might be making some of those for the competition.

i vote swigets!!!!

Swidgets.
Yes.

Anyway, I like the idea.

We need more posts from other users who have some IDEAS for Swidgets.

You don't have to post your idea, just let us know you have something in mind and would participate. Keep voting! ;)

Thanks!