Devlog 6

This is probably going to be my last devlog before I work on scripting. I’ve put it off for too long, and right now, scripting is pretty limited (it has a start, end, input detection, movement, and console log function). I plan to add a LOT more to scripting, like changing sprites, changing opacity, rotation, cloning, deleting, audio, preview, and more. I also plan to open up the script in a window similar to the preview windows, because coding in the inspector sidebar is a bit constricting. Now, on to what I have been working on!

Audio preview

I can’t believe I put this off for so long, but it finally works. You can play audio from the preview window. Though, it’s a bit ugly right now so I plan on changing that later.

Value tags for opacity and volume

Before this, the two sliders were just sliders, and you couldn’t bring it to a specific value. However, there are now inputs on the right side of the sliders, allowing you to see what number the slider is at and allowing you to input your own values.

Unique names for nodes

I actually created two systems for this. So my idea for the node naming system is that unique names are kept separate across node types. That means that I can have an object called Thing and a group called Thing. My first idea of implementing this was to create a Set() for each node type. So I created group_names = new Set(), object_names = new Set(), sprite_names = new Set(), and so forth for each node type. Then we reuse the renaming function from script.js for the assets, but change it to have a switch statement based on the type. However, this was kind of hard, implementing a switch statement everywhere a rename or deletion or any sort of change happened. I replaced it by simpling using the hierarchy_nodes Map, which contains the names and types of each node. With this, we can just pull the type from the map to make sure that names are kept separate across types. It removes the big switch statements that were everywhere and overall keeps the code much cleaner.

Rearranging nodes

Previously, you could technically reorder things because I previously added reparenting, allowing you to move nodes from one parent to another, but it doesn’t allow you to rearrange nodes within a parent. Now, you can, and although its a bit clunky, it does work and I think it looks good.

Alright, thanks for coming to this TED talk. The next devlog will be about a lot of changes that I will make to scripting.