[Features Request] Search - Navigation - Workflow

Hi everyone,

This post is dedicated to communicate to Ashley and Scirra team simple things that I would like to see in C2 or C3. No fancy stuff here, these are mostly workflow and interface related-stuff.

1) Search :

Search for at least 2 different keywords

At the moment we have only one search field, so we can search for “hero” or “set bullet enabled”, but up to my knowledge it is impossible to search for “hero” AND “set bullet enabled”. So my first search would give me all “hero” entries in my event sheet and the second all “set bullet enabled” for all objects. An advanced search would be really useful very often.

Highlight the searched terms in the event sheet

If you search for a keyword which appears in an event which has 100+ actions in it (typically long dialogs), you’re in for a long work to find the searched word. It would be really useful to have the searched term highlighted in the event sheet.

Less important would be an advanced feature “search in all event sheets” which would open every event sheet in which the searched term is found and apply the search in all of them.

2) Navigation

When panning an event sheet by holding the middle mouse button, the pan currently stops when your mouse hit the top or bottom of your screen, which makes just scrolling with the wheel faster. I really would like to have the pan continue as long as I’m moving my mouse, even if I reached the border of the screen. It would be much more effective to navigate large projects.

Alternatively, an option “number of lines scrolled with the mouse wheel” would be great. At the moment it’s about 1.5 lines. I really would like to be able to make the mouse scroll faster.

Page up / page down to move 1 screen up or down?

3) Workflow

"Create blank event above" shortcut

I already asked for this 1 or 2 years ago, and I'm still missing it. At the moment, if I want to create a blank event above the selection (in order to paste copied conditions/actions) the fastest ways are either

B (create blank subevent) --> drag and drop the blank event above the selection (this one only works if your heirarchy is simple enough)

or

right click --> Insert new event above --> EnterEnterEnterRightArrowDelete

None are really practical for such a basic feature, which you probably need 10 times a day. There are still plenty of unused keys on the keyboard for which we could have nice keyboard shortcuts.

Maybe some of these are already implemented in C2 but I’m not aware of them. Please let me know if it’s the case.

Thanks!

I agree with all of these. I want to make blank events frequently but have to keep switching between methods depending on the situation for the most optimal way to get one. Right-clicking the event above where I want it, adding else then deleting the else is another method I use a lot.

The mouse wheel scrolling speed setting could work similarly to my request for a setting for the scrolling speed when clicking the scroll bars. Currently it's inconsistent, and requires two clicks in the event editor and 3-4 clicks in the layout editor to scroll most of the screen whereas it's standard in the vast majority of applications that one click does the same, and even C2 itself behaves that way in other areas of the same program like the object properties and the list of instance variables. Having a setting would make it so we could tailor it however we want.

I hope the search feature sees some love in C3. It is still very good in C2 but leaves a bit to be desired.

The biggest thing that would improve my workflow would be - being able to select a place to set the event sheet when you clear the search or simply having a "go to" event number under the search box to quickly get where you want.

Thanks for the suggestions - several of these have been mentioned before, but right now our focus is on developing Construct 3, so we'll most likely be looking in to implementing any new features/requests for that.

I would also like to see the EXISTING shortcuts/hotkeys identified next to the function in all drop-down menus.

I currently use (R) for replace and (C) for add condition all the time. How many existing ones are there that I am unaware of?

I would also like to see the EXISTING shortcuts/hotkeys identified next to the function in all drop-down menus.

I currently use (R) for replace and (C) for add condition all the time. How many existing ones are there that I am unaware of?

Probably a lot.

You can find them all listed here : https://www.scirra.com/manual/64/keyboard-shortcuts

Something I like to see in C3 is the option to customize the shortcut keys.

Normally I do not like the default settings, I want to have all access without moving the hand position on the keyboard.

Something I like to see in C3 is the option to customize the shortcut keys.

Normally I do not like the default settings, I want to have all access without moving the hand position on the keyboard.

It would be a nice addition and should be easy to implement. So +1. Sometimes I also feel like I want to change some keys.

Work around tips:

Bookmark your search results.

Highlighting variables, temporarily rename them "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII" and you can spot them in the events easy.

Navigating, I find the spacebar & mousing the fastest. (I'm a big photoshop user)

I know a lot of the problems with these were C2's GUI, which is what brought about C3, so I understand it may not be worth fighting C2's. That being said, based on my workarounds...

New thought on "highlighting" backend, it may be easier to implement adding the flag to the name. Rename the variable with non-typeable character on the end when the user checks the box on that variable. Would save extra coding, just highlight everything with that character.

I picture people keeping 90% of the variables highlighted all the time.

Thinking back to old search posts, I think a lot of them were before the bookmark code was added. That would be a good solution, a second bookmark bar for search results. All search results get bookmarked there, and that bar opens. You could put a button in it to hide all non-bookmarked events, so people could still have the old look. (Arima) Actually, that might be a cool feature to have in the regular bookmark bar as well. (plus it adds to interface consistency, less to learn, blah blah)

I'm picturing un-marking irrelevant results and keeping the results around awhile.

The Navigation thing is "If scrolling" and the cursor hits the edge of the screen, subtract (or add) the screen width (or height) to the cursor location. E-on's Vue does this, you keep moving the mouse and the cursor will make several trips up the screen.