First Week Beta Feedback

Hey guys wanted to give beta feedback, and post the notes i took for suggestions in ease of use. if any have already been brought up/worked out that's awesome. love the tool so far, and being able to get a playable game even running on an emulator knowing it could be a cart is awesome. the tutorials are informed and easy to understand, and the tool was rather easy to pickup/navigate overall. i'm sure it will get even better!

Tutorial videos:
--the youtube autoplay from the linked videos on the new8bit site don't always play in order. i was missing a huge part while building the beta asset game, and was like where did i miss that? later found autoplay skipped a video. happened to me twice till i searched youtube and found the playlist. possibly link directly to the playlist instead which will play in order automatically.
--in tutorial 14 (player win) @5:30 it would be helpful for some clarification this animation is particularly in "player death" and not in the regular 'hero" animations under game object. jumping between screens i mistook 'go down to that game object' then the graphic showing the player idle, i assumed to add the win animation to the game object/hero. after a test had to figure out where i went wrong, took a bit to realize it was game object/player death for that specific animation

Overworld screen editor:
--add a hotkey to automatically place the previously placed (or still selected tile) in a line starting with the tile immediately to the right of the last placed tile. (without having to click each tile when doing a line of the same tile)

Pixel editor:
--(when using a custom palette to draw/assign the image) add the functionality to click the color of the custom palette in the left palette list to change the RGB assignment (instead of having to click the one on top in the toolbar?) i keep going to the left palettes and trying to chose the color to draw with. with global selected i have had to restart a few times forgetting to have to click the color on top.
--pixel editor/line tool: if the line starts and stop on the same pixel, a 'unhandled exception has occured' in which if you accidentally hit quit, it closes the application completely without saving, and all progress is lost. could be devastating/severely demotivating for that to happen after working large win/start screens or after adding animations and functionality and not manually saving.
--preload a dummy palatte or always assume palette 0 in a premade default palette group upon starting a new project out of the box. i know it is good for the tutorial to force folks into making a group, but seemed palette 1 will always be your first, and no matter the game there is at least one palette involved. you have to add a palette group for the dungeon anyways so the first one can be already loaded in the game to rip right to assetts without setting up an always-necessary first step

Path info/path/edit:
--when saving edits seems to have a double pop up (one of them 9x), and then reload to continue editing. i feel the 'save successful' and 'would you like to reload' popups unnecessary. i can't think of a time when i would not want to reload an edited and saved tile or image, and if it automatically reloads the image, the edited image would be what you expect/is saved and displayed.
--if you draw outside the box it will draw in the middle of the tile, sure you can not be sloppy haha but it's annoying to fix if you accidentally go outside. having it not have an input outside the box would fix that.
--would like to use that editor without closing to continue editing other tiles. having to close and reopen the editor got to be an annoyance with so many tiles to edit.

Pop ups in general: if keeping any pop ups (they're typically annoying haha), is there a way to have enter = "ok" or enter as the default action for those? noted lots of back and forth with hands on the mouse due to pop ups that were typically unexpected, unnecessary or redundant, specifically with labeling and text entry confirmation pop ups.

Game objects/manage animations:
--found the add/rename cycle un-intuitive. functional of course, but hitting enter to confirm a rename, and if renaming a list, the next name automatically selected after hitting enter. was a lot of back and forth from the keyboard to the mouse. this would also apply to monsters/manage animation as well. add however many you need, click one to rename, start typing, hit enter to save the name and automatically start naming the next one.

wishlist:
-autosave feature
-8x8 or odd number tile metatile size (1 tile, 3 tiles, 5 tiles instead of just 4/metatiles) i understand the palettes are still the 16x16, and how as-is is an efficiency. resizing some things within the same palette selections would be fun, but may not be efficient.
-pixel editor zoom, show only selected, or show only ____ tiles
-autoupdate emulator address if the project file is moved within windows to a new folder or location

Thank you for this write-up! I'll see if I can address all these.
On the screen editor, can you explain that a little more? I'm not sure I understand the need to place an asset to the right of where it was previously placed?
On the pixel editor, I fixed the first 2 bullet points. On the third, by default it uses the first palette even if it isn't in a group. We recommend creating that group though as it tends to make what you are doing clearer.
On Path edits - I have fixed the tool so that when a tileset is changed you now only get 1 notification. No more clicking OK 50 times. Also, the quick edit for paths will be changed to feel much more like the pixel editor tool. If you are editing multiple tiles, your best bet right now is to just load it up in the pixel editor.
On pop-ups: I agree that there are too many! I have removed a lot of them, but i'll continue to clean those up.
On Manage Animations: That does feel a bit clunky. Great idea about using the enter key to move to the next entry!
On your wishlist: I'm nervous about autosaving... but as an option to turn on and off that could be helpful!
On pixel editor: you can zoom by using CTRL-mousewheel or by hitting the + and - keys.

Thanks for all of your feedback!

awesome, appreciate the update! hoping the feedback will help.

thanks for the tip on the pixel editor zoom! will definitely be helpful with two windows open or smaller tilesets. should have known that one. guess i was just expecting a button on the toolbar? or maybe add it in the tutorial would be good enough. +\- is pretty easy to remember!

overworld screen editor: re-reading that, i was suggesting to add a hotkey that would automatically move the placement box to the right of the most recent tile placed. this is while a specific asset is selected, and would be for laying multiples. would be handy for putting a line of things in. i should have written that one in the 'wishlist' instead of the feedback. really not necessary but would make some screen creation faster esp when doing borders. unless a line tool already exists that would place a line of a selected asset in multiple, that would probably be even better?

pop ups: for the ones you're keeping if the common entry could be set to be selected automatically, i keep looking for enter to close them and having to go for the mouse haha.

autosave: would have already helped haha, anything that would lose over an hour of work due to circumstances beyond your control might make some folks ragequit for a few days/weeks/lifetimes. also see having it do that for a 100 hour project may be overkill or just annoying for folks that dont want to. one that got me was the unexpected exception when editing, accidentially hit "quit" thinking it was going to quit the error, and it auto closed the program. also had a short power outage already during some heavy wind mess with progress.

@Josh - I think with the hotkey, he's suggesting placing objects like paths...where if you hold the key and drag across you don't have to click-click-click to add a row of tiles sort of thing. But Rob, this is trickier, because it has to evaluate the next available value both horizontally and vertically, when assets are varied sizes, where as paths are value by value in the underlying data. Not saying it can't be done, just...that's the reason it's not a negligible update! haha.

Hey Rob, I had a little time this morning while drinking coffee so I fixed up the manage animations dialog. It feels MUCH cleaner now. If you add a bunch of animation names, then start renaming them, the enter key will rename and auto advance to the next entry. It's much faster! Thanks for the suggestion!

awesome, thanks for considering that, and following through!

with the hotkey suggestion, i didn't realize paths could be solid and other types of tiles (walls, skyline etc.) that will probably cover it for now vs the line hotkey for overworld assets, probably even look better in a few cases. sounds like vs the work it would take to implement that i'll roll with paths and hunt and peck for now haha. the suggestion was in the overworld screen editor going from placing one asset at a time to a string of the same asset multiplied to fit within a selected range of tiles. just for making it faster, like say you want to do a similar skyline, forest, or horizon for multiple screens, or border a path with a string of the same assets. an auto fill of the selected range maybe? i can see how that could be more complex than the current hotkeys. appreciate the consideration there! i need to work on pathmaking skills anyways, good chance to practice with different types of path uses. maybe i hadn't considered it since i assumed 'paths' were all walkable, if just the name maybe 'edges' for the bank names might help folks wrap their heads around the many uses of that graphic bank. quick learn either way!

“Path” has to do with the way that these tiles use “autopathing”

For the autosaving, another possibility would be to autosave in a .bak~ file.
When the user clics on save button, or closes the software without saving, the bak file would be deleted. If the software crashs, the bak would be safe.
When you open the software / load the project, it would detect if a bak file existe, and would propose to load it instead.
(Something like LileOffice or Word does).

And could you add a Save and a Save as... functionality (save the current loaded project / save the current loaded project as another name).
But would means...
And I think you already know but, it would be great if all the project data were separated from the software files. Maybe make a folder with the same name than the project file name, and put in there all the files related to the project.
For a multi-projects organisation.