Help with development

Hi Ashley,

i'm here to help you implement a feature that C2 has, but C3 doesn't and it's pretty the one reason why i'm still not using it.

The feature is pinnable autohide windows (for properties etc..).

Basically some guy made it in a few functions, so i'll just leave it here:

http://jsfiddle.net/HrSYH/25/

hope you can look into it and use it to implement the autohide faster now.

Thanks in advance, sai!

I'm afraid it's considerably more complex to implement such a feature in a real commercial piece of software with a whole existing library and framework to integrate with, so providing a basic implementation like this does not really make it any easier. (It also uses jQuery, which we specifically avoid these days.) As with many features, I'd do it if we had unlimited resources, but we have to balance this with hundreds of other requests, bug reports, projects etc., and it doesn't look like the posted feature request has many votes.

There are a lot of features with votes though and those don't seem to get any attention either. So it does not seem that you are taking amount of votes into consideration anyway, so why start now?

Ashley I wish you would post SOME sort of roadmap.

Short term: Get C3 runtime stable

Medium term: Add plugins A B X and Y since users need this to build great projects that can showcase Construct 3.

Long Term: Add pinnable autohide somehow

Just examples.

This way we can all get a sense of what Scirra is doing/going.

If you care at all and can see some of the debates going on off forum you would definitely be concerned. I mean this in the best of ways since i have a vested interest in C3 since I'm building projects in it and paid for it. I and many others feel very unsure about where we are heading and lately there are so many issues cropping up and the retort is always - Apple, Chrome, Google, Web builder, etc. It feels like you are buying time for other platforms to mature before you can move ahead. People are jumping ship and new users are being shown away, and they are finding homes in other software. Important members that did a lot for us and you frankly. If you are ok with this then I'm even more concerned.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but please consider some sort of roadmap. Read ROADMAP not TIMELINE.

The odd Blog posts is not roadmap.

I don't think we're anywhere near the kind of disaster that you seem to think is befalling us.

The flip side of making a roadmap is users who get upset if we promise something and then plans change and it's dropped or delayed. Besides, we have talked about our future plans already, such as our plan for further developing the C3 runtime, the new timeline feature that is in the works, and so on. I think that is the right balance.

I dont think its a disaster befalling you but I would have been concerned if just one potential of my user base left for another because of matters I could easily have prevented by implementing simple systems. 10-20 users is a potential other coder, PR person, etc. Not to mention ones that left that built features for me for free.

That's how I see it anyway.

Your reputation precedes you.

godspeed.

the only problem with this Ashley is that Construct 2 has that feature (auto hide and pin), while Construct 3 doesn't.

Wasn't C3 supposed to be everything like C2 and better? Also, I don't think people (after the initial hype) follow the ideas page a lot, therefore some ideas might not have been procured. Also, the AutoHide feature is pretty important if you ask me, since it can bring more view on the Layout Editor when you hide properties/objects/etc bar instead of turning it off or unplugging and moving somewhere behind. It improves workflow a lot, and that's one of the reasons i'm still with C2 for now. Also, the jQuery thing can be implemented in pure JS pretty simple, and auto hide aswell. I don't know how it ties into your C3 editor, or whatever have you done / libraries used, but even in pure JS it isn't hard to make. That's a feature that C2 has, and C3 doesn't.

Also, why not make like first 50 ideas/things that are of 1 weeks work to improve all the workflows and simple / small stuff from ideas, and then go to the big ones. People voted big ideas because they like them the best. But every small idea might be as good and giving faster workflow, which is also a thing that each user would appreciate.

(I work in business industry, C# dev, we had a request from our client to change full row selection copy paste to single cell copy paste, but with full row selection still). We did that like immidiately and gave them that. They're happy, we don't have work later to do. Why is that so hard with C2/C3 when users ask for something? (talking about the small changes).

This is a potentially big change. The docking bars code is very complicated, is recursive to allow arbitrary nested layouts, and already has a number of special cases for things like mobile support and popup windows. It is generally very difficult to make changes to. In order to expedite the release of C3 we deliberately dropped some features we believed were little-used (including others than this one, which so far we haven't heard complaints about). I haven't seen many other users asking for this, and this is backed up by the feature request not having many votes, and so given the complications around implementation, I'm afraid it's not a priority right now.

I see how things are.

can that be added for the desktop variant only? or at least on the few windows that matter (properties and objects/layers)?

Also, a thing I thought it would be nice to suggest:

• you focus on most wanted big ideas (i guess) and it takes you up to 3 weeks to pull a beta version with 1 feature and a few bug changes, while some features could be done pretty fast.
• I would at least use 1 week per month to develop small features and usability features that would help in a matter of ways, and use other 3 weeks for the "big" wanted features. I'm pretty sure with a good choice of features you can make around at least 5 small features per week.

it's just a suggestion, but think about it, you can satisfy then everyone

I would keep putting out RPG demos like demonoire. That was very smart considering all the trouble RPG maker is having with version 1.6. There are a million RPG maker MV users just waiting to jump ship. You are mostly short of free assets. Only 1% of game makers really care about hidden pinnable window type stuff because nobody every finishes or sells a game--but they will will pay to play their own stuff if only you had a few more trees, monster noises, and asteroid assets.

So keep doing what you are doing.

The only use something like the RPG project has is as a learning tool on how to maybe do some things.

I seriously hope Ashley and the devs didn’t spend time on that away from C3.

I’m not paying hard earned cash to play around with some other people’s assets and stuff.

Also if they want show pieces then give the devs more of what they ask for so they can complete games.

A lot of people has excellent work in progress stuff by the looks of it hampered by incompatible plugins. Straddling C2 and C3 , 3rd party wrappers and browsers

I’m glad we are now finally getting the new runtime so we are not in limbo w.r.t that anymore and hopefully more energy can be spent on C3 runtime and new features rather. Animation timeline hopefully is a C3 runtime thing for instance. Perhaps people waiting to move over from C2 will do so if they see C3 promise regardless of the subscription model that plagues some users. I find it justified though if we can at least get a sense of improvement from C2.