Copying data from other projects. We need to make this simpler.

I think there are some long term plans of adding the ability to kind of create your own custom plugins with events, in Ashleys latest blog post. A bit far off in the future though, but I completely agree with this.

I mostly focus on touch based games, and I have a set of events that handles my touch controller which I'm often reusing in many projects with some tweaks.

A pretty neat feature though is that if you copy a sprite object from a project you get this code:

{"is-c3-clipboard-data":true,"type":"world-instances","items":[{"type":"Sprite","properties":{"initially-visible":true,"initial-animation":"Animation 1","initial-frame":0,"enable-collisions":true,"live-preview":false},"instanceVariables":{},"behaviors":{},"world":{"x":339,"y":218,"width":59,"height":59,"originX":0.5,"originY":0.5,"color":[1,1,1,1],"angle":0,"zElevation":0}}],"object-types":[{"name":"Sprite","plugin-id":"Sprite","isGlobal":false,"instanceVariables":[],"behaviorTypes":[],"effectTypes":[],"animations":{"items":[{"frames":[{"width":59,"height":59,"originX":0.5,"originY":0.5,"originalSource":"","exportFormat":"png","exportQuality":0.8,"imageDataIndex":0,"duration":1}],"name":"Animation 1","isLooping":false,"isPingPong":false,"repeatCount":1,"repeatTo":0,"speed":5}],"subfolders":[]}}],"imageData":["data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADsAAAA7CAYAAADFJfKzAAABWUlEQVRoQ+2YQQ7CMAwE25fwBA6VOPB/ceMRvAQUiUocEnU3dtI4bM924vWsk8B63W7v5U++VWInJS2yk4JdRFZkJ+iAbDwBxKyEJmSfr8eyXe7D9ex0sT0bA4tlimoVa7WKu9gkNH2ojZnGSCzRgSZkUaqpzvBkJTZjN3a+Ccfa7lnEbmzxbHx4sYzlJZbogOtpjFh9r623hdO+EptzBkINifkl23NeabLIeKACmMYg+yIxbjZmZzC8WJRq72fiTt2VrMQWhkk2Rk4ZQ4xszN6z7ElsgGNKdSErsSYGbZLdyDLXThspx6tKbM0BJbIDPSjoXz0leuxriI0/nkYswjyzNdeOxGJwTFEw2dIuNZRqckwqv8mniPUovGYNiWW6dpYlmRrpfyo8Z7amUI8c2dijiyOuYSY7oqhSTRIbiRZTq8gy3YoUK7KRaDG1iizTrUixIhuJFlPrB+AqbBi/tecfAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC"]}

If you paste this in a brand new project you will get a sprite :D One idea would be some kind of ability to add an event sheet as part of a container to an object. Or some way to along with the sprite, also copy all events, and other dependacies included with the sprite.

{"is-c3-clipboard-data":true,"type":"events","items":[{"eventType":"variable","name":"bignumber","type":"number","initialValue":"2","comment":"","isStatic":false,"isConstant":false},{"eventType":"variable","name":"smallnumber","type":"number","initialValue":"-2","comment":"","isStatic":false,"isConstant":false},{"eventType":"block","conditions":[{"id":"compare-two-values","objectClass":"System","parameters":{"first-value":"bignumber","comparison":0,"second-value":"smallnumber"}}],"actions":[{"id":"create-object","objectClass":"System","parameters":{"object-to-create":"Sprite","layer":"0","x":"0","y":"0"}}]}]}

If you then take this and paste it to event sheet you will get some events for that object.

So the idea is that, when you copy over an object (maybe with a modifier key like "alt") It also includes all the events containing that object, and all the global variables and other things the events are depending on.

When you then paste in your other project (with modifier key) it would paste everything related to that object...

In theory the solution could work, but I don't know how hard it would be to paste both events and objects at once... :)

Even better would be if you could select an object, and choose in contect menu, Export "Sprite" with all dependencies, and it would bundle events and image data to a file for you which you could store somewhere and reuse in other projects.

You can already copy things around by their contents, with select all (Ctrl+A), copy, and paste somewhere else. Admittedly copying and pasting entire layouts or event sheets is something of an oversight (feel free to post to suggestions platform for that). But I must point out that moving events to other projects is extremely complicated. This comes up with pasting events. What if you paste events that refer to a number instance variable, but in the project you're pasting in, it's a string variable, making some of the expressions invalid? What if Sprite.Foo is a behavior in the copied events, but an instance variable in the project? The sheer number of difficult edge cases is itself a significant barrier - if you think Construct can "simply ask the user what to do" then that is a huge amount of work with potentially Construct asking you all sorts of complicated, difficult questions about how to tie together the pasted events and the project.