Event Editor ideas!

[Spiriax]

Yeah, I came up with some ideas about the Event Editor. I was thinking that in the evolution of the click programs, the Event Editor is probably one of the least improved features. (?)
Well, maybe it isn't in the biggest need of improvement, but I've come up with some tips that I'd like to bring forth. Maybe they're not too good or maybe they are but tell me whatcha' think, please.

1. Event Editor drag and drop-tools
As of now the only thing you can do when you want to move actions between events is to drag them one after another to a new position and then delete them. When you create a big list of events and then you want to copy the whole thing and move a really really long list of actions to another object, it gets very tiring. For example when I wanted to create a custom in-game control customize feature in my game I created exactly 467 events in a row, and that was Player 1. When I was gonna do Player 2 all I could do (almost) was dragging and dropping. I got very tired after doing that with 467 events. That's why there has to be some kind of "Select Actions tool", so that you can select a multiple amount of actions at the same time and drag and drop or delete all selected actions to another object.

In case that wasn't understandable I made an example illustration:



Not that it would be very sweaty to drag and drop 5 actions but you get the idea!

2. Spicing it up a little

Placing subgroups in groups was nice. Having every odd column a different colour was nice. And having a special colour for immediate conditions was nice.

How about being able to put images in your comments? Choosing images from your computer maybe? That would maybe make tutorial games and applications a little better. And it would be just overall fun.

Colorize your event Groups maybe? You can colorize your comments and wouldn't it be cool if you could colorize your Groups too?.. [confused]

3. Some minor stuff
- When you want to switch places between two objects, and you have a reaaally long list of objects, it takes a lot of time. It would be nice if the scrolling would be faster when moving the positions of the objects.
- I thought I had more...

Well, that was everything. Of all things I mentioned I think placing images in comments would be the coolest. And having some tools for making the Event Editor faster and better would be very handy too.
I hope you like the advices, otherwise sorry for stealing your time!

[Popcorn]

I agree, the event editor is probably the editor we spend the most time with so it should be as easy and fast to use as possible
I like all your ideas.

[Spiriax]

Post deleted by Spiriax

[Clicktastic]

I asked for images in comments not so long ago, it's a good idea.

[JasonDarby]

I like the idea of copying multiple actions from a group of conditions to other similar action boxes in other conditions.

My code usually has lots of groups with very similar code and the only thing that usually changes is the conditions. So this would help out alot.

Not sure how easy or feasible it is to do, but still a good suggestion

Jason

[DavidN]

What I've been thinking would be great for a while... and I hesitate to say it because it appears to go against everything that the Click series was designed for... is a text-based event editor.

Having the grid-based layout is good for many things, but there are many advantages to plaintext too - most notably, you could find/replace and copy/paste easily, allowing direct sharing of event code.

Of course, I'm not sure how feasible this would be to add (or whether anyone else wants it but me) - I'm assuming that events are stored as individual objects that have to be interpreted when they're displayed. Parsing user-written text could be problematic, especially trying to identify errors without going "There's an error somewhere, your events can't be read" - but then again, that's no worse than what SQL does.

[Spiriax]

(Haha, it was really meaningless to delete my last post because it didn't disappear because of that. [crazy])

I really like the fact that I'm not the only one who'd want these things. Thanks for all answers and new ideas. Both making the Event Editor quicker to use and making it a little more exciting.
Let's hope Clickteam takes a look at this (but they're probably pretty busy!) - but I think they will.

[RaiFox]

Thats a great idea DavidN, I don't care much for the text-based editing but being able to copy and paste events as text is a great idea, it would definitely help helping out people on the forums who have problems with their games.

[Maverick]

That would make things a bit faster for me as well.

Having the grid-based layout is good for many things, but there are many advantages to plaintext too - most notably, you could find/replace and copy/paste easily, allowing direct sharing of event code.

I would definitely love to see something like this! Or at least a way to Find / Replace certain events with another event / set of events (IE: Replace all "Upon Pressing Fire 1" events with a "Control X ___ is pressed"). That would really be awsome! (Of course, I only say this now, because I just recently had to recode the inputs on my engine ^_^; ). Though I'm sure that this function would have many other applications as well!