Idea for a future construct

Somebody

Ashley has always said this was an oversight and is on the todo list.

Last time he said this was here: https://www.scirra.com/forum/suggestion-allow-for-span-class-posthilit-boolean-span-span-class-p_p680516?#p680516

One can only assume it was pushed down the list, or it's just been forgotten about.

For 603 days at least?

Ribis

Ashley

I am not saying that Ashley should adopt Somebody 's node based idea. I find it to be a cool feature, after seeing R0J0's example even more, but I understand that not everybody think like this and if Ashley says that this is something that will take several months of work just for this a debatable issue, then I trust his know-how about it.

My point entering this conversation was this feel about stuff that have been mentioned-proposed by forum members and either were shot down or not even had addressed for. I can't be an intelligent arguer about the Timeline feature for example, since I don't know anything about the IDE and how software (C2) is developed. So if Ashley argues about the Timeline being a time consuming feature to implement, I can't say it isn't, I'll just be greatly disappointed, because I believe that it's something that should be a default feature-set within a game creation software. Same goes with all the things I mention in my previous post. Again, I don't know if these are feasible or not, the only thing I can argue about is their usefulness (imo) as workflow tools and game development features.

Also, not having an official todo list is causing an uncertainty about the future of C2 and what can we expect from it. There are many-many things that have been mentioned before and now they lay shattered around the forum, it's too hard to keep track for. The global Boolean is one thing, an other is the ability to choose between the two Shift keys on the keyboard etc... Add all those little things together and we have a huge list of potentially useful features. But now there is the talk about C3 which only implies that C2 has reached its development limit, at least feature-wise, and there are so many things that haven't been addressed or answered yet.

I wish the best for the development of C3 and when the time comes I will support it, I just wish that it will cover the ground on those areas that have been mentioned before. I strongly believe that the todo list should be made into an official forum topic and then a poll can be made in order to evaluate the top features that must be included in the next Construct version. This list should have filtered out things that are not feasible by design however, that way we'll keep the expectations within the realm of reality.

Anyway, sorry for this long post.

Also, not having an official todo list is causing an uncertainty about the future of C2 and what can we expect from it.

How about Scirra make a public todo where features can be upvoted or downvoted, but the votes have a "weight" based on the users rep, for example. Having a paid license doubles your rep. That may just be a way to avoid the sour MP experience and actually prioritise the features the real community (and not a single person - as talented that person may be) consider important/beneficial? And if a talented dev comes out of hiding and says "well, I feel gimped with this rep system" - if they have a project to show allot a certain rep for that as well - probably wouldn't be that much different from the daily mod activities.

I like your idea, Somebody. Also very nice clean "readable" Mock-Up of the UI suggestion. Top. About the Node-Sys. I also doing Games with Unity, and have PlayMaker. What i really like. BUT: there is this Spaghetti prob. If my Game gets to komplex, i don´t get the complete overview of my logics. For Construct: i like the brick / line system. But if you have lots of lines it gets long and you also lost your view of the whole picture. Plus you have a lot of sheets / Levels, you can also get lost. Therefore maybe a clever combination of these two systems can manage this. Have to say that a friendly UI is a hard task. If i want like to have instances of a logic a code, i can image the node-sys would fit these needs best.

Many coders say: Textbased is the best for the overview. But if you have 2000 lines of code, its not fun to search something specific. I don´t like to scrolling up n down. Anyway, as said in construct for the lines, i can image to integrate something like: "open / close" a topic of a logic consturction of maybe 20 lines. This would improve the overview, i guess.

Construct's evens can be very coherent if you use them in such a way. If you let your events get messy then that's down to you. I know it can be difficult as I have been frustrated over untidiness in event sheets so many times. However, with good usage of the Function object along with groups and multiple event sheets you can make your projects very neat indeed.

With all the talk about C3 coming some time in the future, I have been thinking about how this "visual" coding could be taken further. Here are some ideas (the visuals are just to illustrate the idea):

We could have much the same properties as now, but change the way they can be set - not with behaviours, but with modular "controllers" - since most behaviours can be sorted by either what they effect or what values they produce. Click the little plug and a panel opens...

You could pick a controller and link it to any property that accepts a value - perhaps even link several controllers to do what would take plenty of actions and variables in one click.

Here's an example - if you want a sprite to rotate, for example, add a cycle controller to it with a range of 0-360 and time. Link the same to opacity and the sprite will fade out and then jump back to full opacity.

Or you could use the usual control options and, for example, link it to size with a ratio - so the sprite kinda stretches a little while moving. Enable and disable them as usual behaviours.

Well, just my 2 cents and 4 images - perhaps something Ashley could consider.

the line system and behavior adding tells me you seen blender game engine in action