It's not a really a need but having this really in a game engine does makes sense.
Design:
A Blank Object is just like a tiled background / sprite that isn't visible on export / preview but visible on edittime. It has no image or graphical content. You can change it's opacity / color / angle / and other basic properties. But again, it isn't really drawn on screen or anything. It is just there for behaviors.
Purpose / Use:
- Main Purpose : As a behavior box! For example:
- As a Camera Box
- As a Solid Box
- As a Jumpthru Box
- As a Platformer Box
- For Calculations from Point A to B without using any graphic memory.
- There are many more but you get the point.
This is just like a Rectangular Box Tool, Line Tool or Ellipse Tool but not necessarily a line tool or ellipse tool. A Rectangular alike Box Tool is fine.
Why need this:
Point 1:
It's really doesn't have any performance impact or anything but it just seems right having this. Especially for beginners.
I remember the time that I didn't use a Behavior Box on my first game, I was a fool. I used the Graphic Sprite for the behaviors and
i experience several glitches and at first I thought it was the code. So after 8 months developing my game, i realized my very big mistake.
I should have separated the behaviors from the graphic sprite. I actually knew about it, but I thought the glitch was just by chance and could only
happen on bad use of events.
My point is that if we have this kind of feature intended for this purpose. Then there will be less beginner mistakes.
Point 2:
It's kind of like a bad practice to use graphic memory for something that isn't even going to be shown like behavior boxes or solid grounds. And in some cases. there are beginners that can make a very inefficient mistake. How do I know? Well it's because I myself made the same mistake.
Some of the possible mistakes that can happen with beginners and can be avoided with this feature:
1) Making a solid ground . Some beginners make a mistake when making a solid ground. Some make a single black colored sprite that sizes (1000,8), (8,1000) or any size that covers the part that is intended to make solid. This makes a huge impact on performance. Imagine the size! But this is unlikely to happen though .
2)But making a sprite that has a size of (128x128) with a single black color for a behavior box. Now, this is likely to happen. There is now a little wasted graphic memory.
3)Adding the solid behavior to the ground using connected separate sprites that are adjacent to each other. Now this one has a bug with IntelXDK that produces seams with solid behavior sprites adjacent to each other. So if any beginner does this without testing on IntelXDK first. Then it's game over . Time to redesign the game.
4) Making a single black colored tiled background as a solid ground. Now there are cases when a beginner fills the default (250x250) tiled background with a black color without resizing it to (1x1) or (2x2) first. Then there will be a little bit wasted resource.
I'm not saying it is a need, responsibility or a negligence of construct 2. As a matter of fact it is only optional for Construct 2 considering it's design and it is the beginners fault that they didn't read the manual if those mentioned above happened to them considering all the tutorials and documentation provided. But having this feature will make adding behaviors more comfortable for the users.
But I got to admit though, this will make a huge change on Construct 2/3 tutorials about adding behaviors.
Ashley , I hope you consider this feature request . But it's also okay if you implement this later on C3.