I recently bought a new iPad Pro, and was curious about the possibility of doing some semi-serious Construct 3 development on it. So far I've run into several quality of life issues that interrupt my development flow and prevent me from wanting to use it further.
I figured it would be productive to report these issues, and hopefully they can be ironed out in time. Some are touch-related, others are general usability issues. Not in any particular order.
I'm using Safari, and saw a few additional issues with Chrome and Firefox, so I just stuck with Safari for my testing.
- Expression suggestion list not scrollable using touch
- Current color not visible in sprite editor without opening panel
- Expression functions added using autocomplete do not have parentheses
- Reordering/reparenting events on touch screen is tedious. Revolves around longpressing & clipboard operations when it could be drag & drop.
- Creating instance of an object is a long-press option, could be drag & drop from project panel.
- Sprite editor brush hardness/opacity values < 1 create noticeable banding in the brush.
- Background color property of Project Properties panel does not appear to be editable.
- Lots of strange issues when attempting to scroll various panels, often selects items instead of scrolling, one time made the whole website zoom instead of the viewport.
- Having to swipe multiple times to expose the correct panel is tedious, especially since many panels are mostly empty space. Would much prefer dockable/tabbable panels or buttons.
- The "Add Condition" windows and related action/condition windows allow interacting with the dimmed events sheet behind it.
- Long pressing in side panels causes full-panel flashing & dimming
- Side panels can be grabbed when tapping near the edge, without actually dragging horizontally, so long-pressing to open context menu and dragging side panels is possible in the same action.
- The "Log In" window was not interactable when going from "Menu -> Login" or tapping on "Guest -> Login", had to click on "Guest -> View Details -> Log in to existing account"
- Using the "add to home screen" option, Construct 3 was reloaded fresh every time it is opened, even if only backgrounded for a moment. Had issues connecting to Google Drive from the home screen version.
I attempted to use the editor in the "Request Desktop version" in chrome, but soon found that the touch-scrolling of the website prevents proper drag & drop functionality in this mode, among other issues with touch input.
Overall I feel that the tablet version of Construct 3 should look and feel more like the desktop version than the mobile phone version, especially in landscape view. With a good pass of touch-control related fixes and UX design, I think the tablet could be a much more viable full-time platform for development.