A few general usability suggestions

Since Families are done, I thought I could sneak in a few very simple suggestions to improve the usability of C2.

1. Boolean instance variable default default value (heh) should probably be 'False' instead of true. It just seems that most boolean instance variables need to have 'False' as default (Community, let me know if it's just me).

2. Default image resizing option should probably be stretch instead of 'align top left'. In my opinion, stretch is more multi-purpose, and forgetting to change to stretch one time causes me to have to re-load the image as there is no undo in the image editor.

3. I'm not sure if this is even feasible, but the new feature that allows rotating/resizing of multiple sprites at once is practically useless (moving them is fine however). This would be much, much more useful if the sprites all rotated/resized around a common point instead of their respective origins. I am sure that everyone would agree.

4. Whenever I turn 'snap to grid' on or off, the ribbon hides itself. I suppose this happens for every button, but I would much rather the ribbon only hide when I click something in the event sheet/layout editor.

Just my 2c, most of these are easy to implement ;)

1. Boolean instance variable default default value (heh) should probably be 'False'

Hmm - I guess you're right. Changed for next build.

. Default image resizing option should probably be stretch instead of 'align top left'

Not sure about this. Any thoughts from anyone else?

. I'm not sure if this is even feasible, but the new feature that allows rotating/resizing of multiple sprites at once is practically useless (moving them is fine however). This would be much, much more useful if the sprites all rotated/resized around a common point instead of their respective origins.

I think different people would have different preferences here... again, interested in any other thoughts. Also, how does resizing around a common point work?

. Whenever I turn 'snap to grid' on or off, the ribbon hides itself.

Click the 'pin' in the top right to keep the ribbon there.

I am of course interested in community opinion too, this is just what I think.

Resizing around a common point? I'm not sure how that would actualy work, but the general idea is to be able to resize the whole group, keeping the same relative positions. E.G. a resized group of objects should probably look like a larger group of objects, instead of a group of larger objects.

I am aware of pin, and I still want the ribbon to hide. Perhaps just not immediately after a button is pressed?

Thanks for your consideration. Don't change anything on my account without the community's go-ahead, of course ;)

I think different people would have different preferences here... again, interested in any other thoughts. Also, how does resizing around a common point work?

It would be cool to be able to toggle it, call it Object Axis/World Axis maybe? That's the language 3D programs generally use. Resizing around a common point, I believe, treats a selection of objects as one large object. So as you resize, all the objects move towards the averaged center.

I'm not sure what the resizing option from point 2 is.

It seems to me that sprites stretch by default the textures.

Point 3 I actualy disagree with sqiddster. To me, the multiple-rotate/scale/move option works as expected.

But rotation of multiple selected sprites around another point/axis for sure could be nice.

I like the idea of having one set of control handles be around the entire selection, encompassing all selected objects. The rotation point would be the center of that box. Resizing the selection would visually have the same effect as if all the selected objects were one object, if that makes sense.

Arima, those are my thoughts.

I just could not think of any way for rotation/resize of individual objects to be useful, whereas treating the group of objects as a whole seems more intuitive and useful.

Arima that seems to make more sense to me, though I haven't actually needed to do something like that yet.

This is one thing that I was looking for. It's kind of unfortunate that this feature wasn't the default. Basically this works like how every graphics editor works. You can rotate and scale all the highlighted components as one whole.

For example, in my O-Ring game I have tracks made but sometimes I want to move and resize a section of the track. Right now I have to resize/rotate each one individually and pixel push them back into position. It would be a great deal easier to be able to resize and rotate them all as a single unit. That way all the proportions and relative positions of each sprite is still in the same place.

I saw in a different post that there is a sprite linking/grouping feature on the todo list. I'm thinking that might provide this option. I still think it would be useful to have this as a default though. Then entire levels or sections of levels can be resized without having to reposition each individual sprite.