A bit About Construct and GDevelop

(This is a documentation of the thinking process and observation which I made to supplement the event sheet mock-up but I felt it to be too out of place to post it there and thus am Posting it here.)

Over the past four days while researching for a good mock up idea for Gdevelops event system, I for the first time realized how powerful the editor was. Not only efficient and fast but also highly use-able and feature packed. The developer have put great care into thinking of almost everything you need to create a good game/ prototype fast and easily.

GDevelop packs almost every important feature that you might need. You might not find it the first time but that probably might be because you are looking for it in the wrong place (or where your favorite softwares usually have that similar feature.) There is still a lot to work upon but now I see how good the editor is and the potential it has.

Personally I think construct 2 is a very good software and is worth the money it charges. The event system they have employed is very efficient system and very hard to surpass in the current variant. Their design choices are very logical in many respects.

While starting I felt a bit biased toward constructs way of doing certain things. As a long time user I’m used to it. There are some very wise design decisions on the developer’s part which has made construct such a usable and powerful software in the first place. Picking the best of those and adding to it the ease and advance features of Gdevelop here is the mockup of what I feel the event editor should look and act like.

It’s easy to feel, after only a glance, that Gdevelop is just a copy of construct. But once you scratch the surface you’ll find that is much more than that. The slight resemblance to construct is mostly due to the ribbon interface the editors share and to the lesser extent the way the events are presented.

Gdevelop might look somewhat like construct but upon using you’ll soon learn that merely builds upon it. It boasts of features that the other users have been requesting for a while but haven’t gotten around to being added yet (due to other features being priority which is not a bad thing).

Features like these which are usually a part of most good Game Dev IDE, so are expected by default and not even mentioned as a ‘Feature’ but I think it should be:

Features Like

-Spritesheet decomposer
From Animate gif
From Spritesheet
From RPG Maker Character

-Object editor (though should be correctly renamed as Hierarchy editor)

-Multiple collision masks

-Text editor/Composer

-Locking and unlocking objects in the scene view

-Paste special

-Including complete Event sheet or only a chunk of that sheet

-Infinite canvas

-Multiple camera from layers

Among other little things that you only notice when you find it there.

Things that bug (me).

-Grid on top of objects

-Grayed out automatisms (behavior) and dialog box when selected (unnecessary extra step)

-No option for resizing objects proportionally (a check box so if I enter one value the other change in proportion and/or scale properties)

-No easy way to access layout properties and project properties(ideally it should appear as soon as I click the project / layout objects in object editor, extra window bugs a lot)

-Accidentally turned off my menu bar. Cannot See any way to get it back (Resolved: had to delete a cfg file in user directory. Need to have a keyboard shortcut for Options).

-General properties and instance properties should be merged together for quicker interactions

-No Grey states for buttons when the function does not apply to a selected object.

-Layer don’t have parallax settings (Though it might and I’ve been looking in the wrong place)

Among others things.


Too long didn’t check for grammar. :slight_smile:

The Usability post is here:
posting.php?mode=reply&f=22&t=3842

Thanks! This is really interesting to get this kind of feedback :slight_smile: Maybe that could even be documented in the wiki in a page “Difference with Construct 2” or a page describing a list of features that are not visible on the presentation of the website.

I agree about the part where you should have a page dedicated for all these neat features listed. Some of them are one of the most requested features and is only expected in C3. You guys just need some good marketing that’s all. :slight_smile:

Would you be able to create a nice wiki page with these features and maybe a small explanation about each one? (The wiki can be edited by anyone, just create an account if you do not have one and create the page, I’ll move it after if necessary).
This could be really useful as you used C2 and so have a good view on what is different in GDevelop and should be highlighted. :slight_smile:

If you’re ok with it, I’ll probably put a link on the website to this wiki page (a button like “Learn more about other useful GDevelop features”) :smiley:
This should bring a better visibility of these features to new users. :slight_smile: