[SUGGESTION] Room Explorer: a tree-like control for navigating room contents.

[Crimson Wizard]

Many years ago, when the open source stage of AGS has just began, people were discussing means to improve it. Perhaps I was not the only one, but once I suggested to make a room contents explorer panel, similar to the Project Explorer, with a tree-like structure. I had Project Explorer as an example, but I recall that others also were suggesting art software as a reference (like Photoshop, with its groups and layers).

Unfortunately, tzachs, who was intending to work on this, had an opinion that another explorer-like panel would take too much extra space on screen. Somehow his idea was that the AGS UI is already too clogged. This is why he went the direction of Navigation bar, that we have today.

But this navigation bar turned to have a number of usability issues, and is difficult to customize too.

My suggestion is to revive the topic of a proper room explorer, and design one at least "on paper", defining which would be more convenient.

[Alan v.Drake]

I remember we ventured the idea some time ago. IMO, a tree panel akin to painting apps is the most convenient option for users.
Besides, if it were done as a dockpanel panel it could be positioned on the side of the room panel as click-to-expand, so it doesn't waste space.

I can't think of any other way to make it more intuitive.
As a tree panel it would be immediate to switch bewtween modes. Visibility and lock could be implemented by adding clickable icons.

There isn't much else to say, I think.
A tree view with the same node structure as the navigation bar is all one could need.


- Alan

[Snarky]

This sounds like a good idea to me. I've always found the editing tools in the room editor unintuitive and fiddly to use.

I'm not quite sure I understand or can envision exactly how it's meant to work. The analogy with painting apps is good (after all, a lot of it is essentially a painting app), but in the ones I'm familiar with, like Photoshop, there are two panels: a tool panel and a layer panel. But for the AGS editor, the relevant tools may very depending on the layer type (drawing tools aren't relevant for objects, for example), so the UI needs to be a bit different, no?

Also, there is a natural connection between the "layer" (e.g. a walkable area or an object) and the properties of that layer, so will the properties pane and the layer panel be linked somehow?

[Crimson Wizard]

The point of this suggestion is to have a tree-like object explorer, everything else stays the same.
But if you think the toolbar should be changed to something else, that would be a different task. I believe these two panels may be replaced separately and not depend on each others looks.

The properties pane is linked to the "selected" object. How the object is marked "selected" is a question of UI. Right now it's selected if it's clicked upon in a room with a selection tool, or selected in a navigation bar. If there's a tree explorer, then it will get selected by selecting an item in the tree. That's essentially same thing, except command comes from another kind of gui.