Improving GDevelop usability

Concerning the temp folder, even if I agree that it could be convenient to have a fresh empty project at startup, using a temp folder could be very very very misleading: I’m sure that lots of users would come to the forum asking “Hey, where is my game?” or “OMG, my game was erased when I created a now one”.
I never saw this “temporary folder for a new project” in other softwares and I’m not sure that users are prepared to deal with this way of dealing with projects.

Maybe your real suggestion is “What’s about being able to drag’n’drop images in GD and if you do so, GD automatically create a Sprite object for it (or ask you which object you want to create with the image)”?
This suggestion makes senses. And maybe another suggestion that would be better than this temporary folder would be “What’s about being able to have a project without any folder associated to it”.

When I want to quickly create a new game to test something, the current existing dialog allow me to create it in two clicks: That’s pretty neat, and it make me feel free and agile. :slight_smile: (I do not even have to create the folder, GD does it for me).
When I start a “real” new game, the risk is that I could forgot, as you both said, to enter a folder. Luckily, it’s not a big deal because I can save the game into a new folder using “Save as” and resources are copied into this new folder.

Anyway, feel free to try to convince me that a dialog to choose the directory would be better, I could change my mind (but again, I like the fact that in the current version, I can create a new game in exactly two clicks: no directory to create, no folder to choose, I can start a new game to test something in less than 5 seconds, that’s awesome! :slight_smile: ).
Concerning the temporary directory, I’m not sure it would be a good idea (but feel free to let me know if you have more arguments). I think that this “solution” is in fact hiding better solutions: a default blank project without directory, and being able to drag’n’drop images. :slight_smile:

How about when new game is in temp folder, “save” button would work like Save As? This way we’ll avoid “Where is my game” questions.

Well, Construct 2 using something similar, maybe not a temp folder but an other technique,
In Cs2 I can start to work on a project exactly in 1 click, right after click new project you can start the development, you have to choose folder for your project (only) when you save your project for the very first time, you can choose custom folder at custom location or default at default location, simple as that, can be done with 2 clicks or 3 or even 4 and 5 depends on what you choose default or custom location, after that Cs2 store everything in that folder automatically but before that? maybe in a temp folder?
I don’t say that the way as GD do it is bad or something, but the way as Cs2 do it is very convenient for quick testing and for development in general…

I don’t have more arguments, if you feel that way, I’m fine with that but really, if anybody get confused because project need to be saved before close it, or need to create/choose/name a folder at least for the very first time and need to know where is that folder, oh well, what should I say…At least more life would crawling on the forum , make visitor statistics better :smiling_imp:

But how do you deal with relative paths if we don’t know the project folder first ?

Maybe the key is that, Cs2 has it own content management system. It can manage all the content of the project. All the images, sprite sheets, animations, sounds, folders and paths. The user don’t have to worry about anything if don’t want to. You just have to create the project, add the images, sounds, behaviours you going to use to make the game and everything is handled by Cs2. You can choose custom name, folders, paths, locations for your files if you want, but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to care about it, Cs2 handle it for you. And because of that, I can imagine a “temp folder” kind of thing behind Cs2 or some kind of encrypted project file as Cs2 can pack everything up in to one single project file too, not only the scenes and events and settings, Cs2 can store everything inside a single project file. But really, I don’t say that it more efficient or anything, all I say is that, I like it however it works in Cs2 because it simple, fast, convenient and I’m only suggesting to go this way if you can, if you want to and if it worth it.

And funnily enough it’d be easy to make system that stores data directly inside GD file even while keeping format XML. Music/sounds/etc. just need to be encoded into base64 strings.

from blenderartist forum
blenderartists.org/forum/showthr … ce!!/page3

When closing a project with unsaved changes, GD asks if you really want to close it and lose changes. Would make more sense if it’d ask if you want to save them instead, with Yes/No/Cancel dialog (cancel being “don’t close it yet” button).

That’s false, this behavior has changed since a lot of versions (December 2013 exactly!).
GD now warns only if there has been changes, using a Yes/No/Cancel dialog.

Please pay attention :neutral_face: I’m not against suggestions but please at least try to launch GD before making them :wink: Because people browsing the forum could believe that it is not implemented.

No, today I’ve closed project using right-click menu in project tree and it was dialog mentioned above.

//edit

Please don’t treat me like idiot because I’m not one :angry:.

Hey everyone let’s chill out. I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. From what I can read, I think 4ian thought that Darkhog was saying that GD ‘if you really want to close it and lose changes’ EVEN THOUGH NOTHING HAS CHANGED. But I think what Darkhog is suggesting is to change the question of the prompt from “Are you sure you want to close it?” to “Do you want to save?”

I hope that clears things up :slight_smile:

No, you missed the point, I’ve meant exactly what I’ve said. Worse yet, when I click X button in GD’s window, even after making changes, no prompt at all is showing up.

sounds more like a bug then?

I think that there was clearly a lack of information in our messages leading to confusion for both of us. Next time it would be better (again for both of us) to provide more information about what is working or not: I was talking about the X button, you were talking about the “Close project” menu item.

In any case, if GD do not warn the user when closing using the X button after changes have been made, there is a bug: you can greatly help me by identifying what changes are not triggering this dialog (any change in a game property? or in a scene? or in events? or in objects?) and then create a thread on the bug report forum :slight_smile:
If you’re a bit interested in programming, you can even open GitHub, and search into the files where I forgot to put the line “project.SetDirty();” :smiley:

I’ve just moved object in scene. And it triggers “Are you sure to close” dialog when closing project using project tree window, so… WTF?

That’s what it’s supposed to do. I don’t want for the project to close if I forget to save anything.

Well and I want it to ask kindly if you want to save changes so I won’t need to move mouse halfway across the screen and then close it again, because I was closing it anyway to work on something else.

Exactly what I said on my first reply which you claim was ‘missing the point’:

It would be good if recently used games would be moved into “Open” dropdown, like in this mockup:

It will make it more accessible to continue work on one of earlier games.

I did lots of thing to add custom collision mask of objects in Physics Automation but all failed
As there is only rectangle and circle collision mask i want triangle mask
Please Help me