Editor Navigation Buttons/Keyboard Shortcuts

[ryos]

Hey,

I know that Vern always says that the feature list of MM is more or less closed...and then he goes ahead and adds features anyway. I figure that as long as this forum is here, I may as well use it and hope for the best, right?

So, I'm tentatively dipping my toes in the waters of the editor, and I immediately noticed something that I want very badly: navigation buttons! It seems there is a lot of back and forth involved when tweaking the boundaries between rooms, and the

open room

dialog can get a bit cumbersome for this purpose. A

compass rose

of buttons that move to any of the eight adjacent rooms when clicked would be great for this.

Actually, the buttons themselves become superfluous if keyboard shortcuts are employed. I know GUI programming is usually the hardest part, so I would be quite happy if all that gets added are keyboard shortcuts. I'm thinking command-arrow keys here. You could also use the numpad for the diagonals, but it's harder to reach for and I'm betting that diagonal motion would be infrequently used anyway.

So, after a long and winding post, I come down to just requesting that command-arrow keys be made to move between adjacent rooms.

Thanks for noticing me. [/eyore]

[joeb]

Agree!

Joe B

[Semi-Native]

Maybe this is saying the same thing, I'm not sure, but if it was possible to have 2 rooms open at the same time, that would be great for copying and pasting.

[VernJensen]

That's a great suggestion. The thing is, you'd have to learn to his Command-S before hitting the navigation buttons/shortcuts, otherwise you'd be getting a

Save before closing?

message when you hit the shortcuts. But I think this should be very doable... at least the Command-arrow keyboard shortcuts. I'll consider it!

As for adding features... I've learned that releasing updates to the game is the best form of advertising... sales always increase after I do so! And sales have really dropped off to almost nothing lately, so I need to get another update out... So in a way, it actually pays to add a feature to the game, or fix a few bugs, every now and then. So while I want to spend most of my time on Insectoid work, I will occasionally take a day off and add a feature or fix a few bugs, so minor features (i.e. NOT anything new to the actual gameplay) actually have a small chance of being added.

[VernJensen]

Done! The feature is there now, so next update you'll have Command-arrow navigation of levels. It's really fun, and really makes it far quicker to move between rooms -- excellent suggestion!

[Wingy]

Hey, wouldn't this new feature conflict with the new app Spaces in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard with some people? :-? I use the Command+Arrow keys to move from my desktops. :o

I suppose you could just change this in the System Prefs for spaces to like Option+Arrows, so yeah. Oh well. Would be nice that you could change that in the Editor to Option+arrows or Ctrl+arrows, instead of just Command+Arrows...

^^ Just another suggestion lol

[VernJensen]

I don't have OS 10.5 (haven't bothered upgrading yet) so I was unaware there was a possible conflict.