TackerTacker's Forum Posts

  • Wow! That's amazing, great work 👍

  • The creator of Crocotile 3D was actually a Construct user.

  • Does encapsulation cause performance degradation?

    I've heard people say that, but I wonder if that is actually the case.

  • RIP to this thread being productive :/

  • Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think the current 3D implementation is a pretty good fit for C3.

    It's a bit heavy handed, but at the same time rather elegant how it makes 3D as easy as 2D, by introducing well thought out limitations.

    No other engine would have even thought of the idea to implement 3D objects with only 1 axes of rotation, but it makes working in 3D feel just as fast, and easy, as working in 2D in Construct.

    Even advanced developers still run into issues with 3D rotation sometimes, so taking that complexity out feels like a great fit for C3.

    Another area that is solved elegantly is texturing, another area that even advanced developers struggle with.

    Yes the 3D object selection is limited, but it also completely eliminates the need for UV mapping in C3, and making the default texture a 6 sided dice was also really smart. It's like a tutorial without any words.

    With that said, there are some things I think could be improved to make everything a bit more flexible and more useful.

    After using the 3D features for a while now, I do have to agree that a locked top down camera in the editor feels very limiting and awkward. If we could have a better 3D camera view in the editor that would make level design much easier.

    There should be a couple more 3D shapes, sphere is an obvious one, maybe the texturing for it could be done via triplanar mapping.

    There should also be a billboard 3D object, a 2D plane that's always facing the camera. With an option to only rotate on the 1 axes that C3 already supports, but also one where the plane is always facing the camera.

    The "Corner (in)" 3D shape is wrong IMO, the edge of the (in) part should be switched (since it should be a counterpart to corner (out)), so that the crease actually goes IN. Right now it makes a triangle on top and slopes down from there. (Might actually be a bug that slipped through)

    This is how it is currently

    This is how it should be

    Corner (in) and (out) shape should be rotated so that their highest point is in the top left corner. (so there doesn't need to be any extra conversion if you rotate it with an origin in the top left corner (to be consistent with other 0,0 origins))

    And I would also argue that the Wedge shape should be rotated 180° by default, since the default 0° direction is to the right in C3.

    There should be a triangle shape (if you look from top down).

    (The triangles Catheti should face up and left, so that the 90° angle is in the top left corner. (again so there doesn't need to be any extra conversion if you rotate it with an origin in the top left corner.))

    Something I kept making feature requests for is an expression to get the x,y,z coordinates of mesh points.

    And if we could switch the triangulation of individual grid cells in a mesh that would make modelling things with the mesh less problematic. (See the "Corner (in)" shape as an example of the problem.)

  • There are multiple people in the C3 community who have done extensive research in this area and developed their own solutions already, the thing that is lacking IMO is a seamless integration into the C3 editor.

    Maybe it is worth considering to make the C3 editor extendable by 3rd party developers instead.

    This would probably bring multiple 3D options to Construct and be useful for all future C3 addons, no matter if 2 or 3D.

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  • See and that's why I don't use 3rd party addons.

    Literally talked to you about this before buying, and you were 100% convinced you would support these addons forever, after all you are using them yourself, you said, and that you have so many legacy C3 things that you can't just bail on C3 in the future.

    And I was convinced... but now we are here again.

    It's always the same, no matter who's fault it is, the end result stays the same.

    [edit]

    I get why I'm downvoted, but I'm not blaming Overboy, this is just a statement on how things always work out in the end.

    At the time, I'm sure Overboy himself was convinced of the things he said. But I'm using Construct for a long time and this is always what happens one way or another. Besides effects, they seem to be save.

  • First let me say that I love the Instance Bar feature, and even if nothing changed it would already be a big help. That said, here are some things that would IMO help to improve it further.

    I like all the functionality but the UI/UX needs to be improved IMO. The view feels pretty cluttered with lots of repetitious information, and I think the switching between different "show more info modes" is unnecessary.

    Why write "Showing more information for: Something" at the bottom when that space could be used to actually show more information.

    Putting a general infobox at the bottom similar to how it already works in the Properties Bar would free up the clutter a lot. It's important to easily get to info quickly, but that doesn't mean it has to be everywhere all the time.

    Here is a mockup of my improved UI/UX suggestion:

    Every menu item is made up of 3 sections, furthest left are the layer icons ( Locked / Hidden / Global ), in the middle is the actual object with the icon and its name, and on the right are all the extra icons ( Hierarchy / Template / Timeline / Plugin / Mesh ). The extra icons on the right are always visible if they apply, so if the object is in a hierarchy the hierarchy icon is always visible, no switching between "info modes" needed, if there is a mesh on the object the mesh icon is visible (forgot to add the Mesh icon in the mockup), etc. All the other text for more info will be shown in the bottom infobox when an object is selected

    In addition to that icons are clickable too. It really speeds things up having the most used functionality just one double click away instead of having to right click and search through a long list of options (which is also great for more fine control).

    Double clicking on these icons would do:

    • Hierarchy icon = Select all children.
    • Template icon = Apply changes to all replicas ( Maybe a bit too dangerous? ).
    • Replica icon = Sync this replica with template.
    • Timeline icon = Open timeline.
    • Plugin icon = The same should happen as if you double click that object in the Project Bar.
    • Mesh icon = Toggle between edit/stop edit mesh.
    • Object name = Rename object.

    I'm sure I forgot something, but I think it gets the idea across.

    Show all relevant icons at the same time,

    split the icons between left and right side of the object,

    double click on icons has functionality,

    additional info text goes in the bottom infobox.

    • Post link icon

    I feel like the LTS versions address a lot of my concerns and are a good compromise, together with the ~1 year transition period to SDK v2 it should be enough time to reduce the damage to a minimum. 1 year is also a long time for Scirra to keep up their promise, if they take the time to add some of the addons officially

    the next release includes a 'Reset' action for event variables, so that it is no longer necessary to use an addon to do that.

    and add missing SDK features to fix others,

    Part of the project of the Addon SDK v2 is to increase the existing API surface to make sure it's more capable

    then I'm hopeful for a smooth transition.

    The only thing left that I feel is not addressed and where no compromise is found yet is that the addon devs will lose a lot of potential to deal with issues the community has, they lose a lot of access and power.

    I wish a compromise could be found for this too.

    I know Scirra wants to "increase the existing API surface", but that's obviously an ongoing process that is already happening for as long as C3 has an API. Which wasn't enough, and is the reason why addon devs had to use undocumented features in the first place.

    Just trying to lock them out doesn't seem like a great solution to me, especially when I already read that people seem to have a lock pick for it already.

    Maybe there is a way to still allow addon devs access to internals for them to tinker with, but they can't publish those addons for normal C3, instead it's a way for them to then ask Scirra to expose the needed functionality in SDK v2.

    This way the SDK could naturally grow in a way that is most useful to addon devs and at the same time reduces the load on Scirra because they don't have to just expose everything for SDK v2 to make it useful and addon devs wont have a reason to use the lock pick, because if that happens we are back to square one.

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    In my opinion that could be a good starting point for the API. On paper, I should be able to entirely re-build a build-in addon from scratch, only using the documented API. If something is missing, then it should be added.

    Wait? Shouldn't that be the minimum? How are you suppose to extend C3 in any meaningful way with an API that isn't even flexible enough to create its own existing features?

    I thought these discussions are about things like Skymen hacking in the ability to have different sampling modes on different layers. Things that currently aren't possible.

    • Post link icon

    github.com/Scirra/Construct-bugs/issues/7965

    OhhBaby This is my bug report and I actually think the answer is okay, it's honest and straight to the point. I agree that the suggested solution is not a great look though.

    I posted the solution R0J0hound came up with in the comments of the same bug report to keep it all in one place, the bug report was already closed though so I was aware that Scirra might miss it. My plan was to wait one update cycle and then open a new issue with the suggested fix while linking to the original report, I have not done that yet though.

    • Post link icon

    We have been through this process before, with all addons needing upgrading for moving from C2 to C3

    And by we ...you mean the addon devs, or did you port all the Rexrainbow addons?

    • Post link icon

    I'm not an addon dev so I can't speak on a technical level, but I still see something odd here...

    Ashley you've put so much work and effort into making C3 extensible, but then you completely disrespect addon devs time or concerns. Like... I do not understand who all this work you are doing is for?

    It can't be for the addon devs, because everyone that's still left is in this thread complaining about it, and not wanting this to happen.

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