What types of plugins would you like to see?

Oh I see. I hadn't understood the request like that.

Just make it like a switch to prevent clustered screen filled with too much informations. ^^

Very nice thread, thanks a lot.

After 2 years, here are the only 4 features I miss compared to GameMaker or other engines. These are the only ones which make the C2 workflow slower, or less efficient than the GM one for specific tasks:

> Maximum size for exported textures. (<< the most important to me)

In GM, you can specify a maximum size for the sprite sheets.

It saved me a lot of time for the first version of Penelope when I was using GM.

Telling the software "convert all my 2048x2048 and 1024x1024 textures to 512x512 max and then scale them properly on rendering" is a superb feature for multiple platform exports.

Desktop version? Keep all in high quality for people playing in 4K

Web Demo or Mobile version? Yes, shrink down my HD backgrounds, the game as to be light to load faster or to run on low tech phones.

Having bad perfs on this system? Let's shrink everything to 256x256 max and see if this comes from the ressources.

Super useful. In the next months we'll see people playing in 720p AND people playing in more than 4K on the same kind of devices depending of how rich they are. Being able to make tests to find the best compromise seems very important to me.

> Automated spritefonts in C2.

The spritefont+ plug-in is very great.

But picking a font in GM and just say "yes, use this font" and let the software do its magic on the characters spaces etc... is so much faster.

> Paths

I'm using multiple Sine behaviors on the same object to achieve something ok-ish, or a waypoint system if I need something complicated, but most of the time, a simple Path system would be way, way more efficient and faster. The path editor in GM is pretty basic, but saves a lot of time for UI, cutscenes, flying enemies, visual effects like lullabies etc... With a tween param, It would also prevent the "let's use the lerp function even if I don't understand it that well" popular mistake.

> Oriented particles and particles preview without waiting for your full project to launch. I guess it would only be useful to graphic artists, but the particle system is close to great, but not there yet. At the end of the day, waiting one or two minutes for each small edit and the lack of oriented particles force most of us to use standard objects for visual effects, which I guess was not intended.

Thanks for reading!

There are a lot of good suggestions so far.

some issues i have to unfortunately point out are that a lot of editor/export/etc. functionality isn't exposed to 3rd party developers in C2, so this might be something Ashley should take into consideration for C3. I'd love to be able to make a "path editor" that opens up but it's just not possible with what C2's sdk gives me access to. however I am trying to think up some clever hack to work around this and potentially use global states in the editor and multiple plugins to define this type of information. A path plugin wouldn't be too much work to implement, and it seems sorely needed.

Image manipulator is a good idea too.

sprite fonts seem to be in great demand aswell.

Don't go away yet! From top of my head, here are mine!

Behaviours:

Solid Plus - switch on or off collisions only between selected objects. Also support for isometric objects.

RTS Plus - Moving objects can avoid each other, too not to bump or overlap each other.

Array Plus - you can name columns and rows for ease of requesting data.

Isometric Movement - For rts or iso kb/pad controlled games. Allows to set different speeds to different directions. Specifying at what angles those directions are. Also, eventually, allows for slightly bend turning if two directional buttons are held (for example: forward and right if controlling char trough kb or pad )

Ladder/Bridge - self explanatory

Plugins:

Easy Menu - a plugin that easily lets you create menu's. Whatever can be done in ide, the rest can be set by events.

Easy Inventory - grid based drag-n-drop inventory, set size and number of cells. Has it's own array for ease of access trough events.

Easy HUD - Allows for creating HUD from predefined options.

Minimap - self explanatory

Dialog Progression ( for text ) - a plugin that lets you easily display text in succession. Additional option to create choices that appear underneath the displayed txt. ( ref. rpg maker )

2d pathfinding - Pathfinding for 2d games, includes following other object.

Aurel Would be even better if texture plugin would support manually changing textures quality trough in-game options in menu.

2D vector shapes, such as lines, boxes, circles etc. That can be manipulated through control points. That would be a very nice addition I think.

+1 for nimos100

Just make sure they are webgl.

That would go along way to a gui plug menu, hud etc.

Would love to see a chromecast plugin.

Spine support

-A better lighting plugin system

-An advanced Sprite plugin that has slots for diffuse and normal maps and can take into account the lighting system mentioned above

-A path-finding behavior that work with the platform behavior (mainly for enemy AI)

-A timeline editor (I am way too deep in the magic forest from now on, I know)! Animate each object with keyframes and trigger those transitions with events!

-A true 2.5 camera system that offsets the layers in to z space, like the camera in After Effects, or Hitfilm, or Toon Boom products.

-A better audio system that doesn't loose sync, enables you to make buses and multiple sends, has fade in/out actions per individual sound or per bus.

-A rope behavior(!)

And some of the things that have already mentioned:

-Path creation system with bezier handles, easing in/out for each point, and access to all this with events!

-Better particles that support initial angle offset/rotation speed and per-particle collisions.

-Menu and Inventory plugins

-Text object that allows for multiple fonts/styles/sizes/colors per object

-A dialog plugin that advances the text based on user actions. Ideally it should support some basic "navigation" elements, like forward/back arrows, scroll bars, type writer option etc.

If not for C2 then for C3 Quazi...!

PS: I would very much like to see a well documented manual, with example (video) tutorials for Q3D first however

Elios

Certainly Q3D is going to be polished up before I start anything new, but i'm nearing the end stages of development with it now so it's mostly documentation left to do after the next big update. This is just a poll out of curiosity. In any case i'm more looking for potential weekend projects and the like, it's always good to have a lot on the back-burner so I never run dry on ideas.

As for the sprite + lighting, this might be something I integrate into Q3D.

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I probably wouldn't do spine, It's proprietary software and it's pretty redundant with spriter already being around and tightly integrated into C2. I also don't own it or desire to purchase it. There just isn't enough incentive to justify the work for me.

Path plugin is something i'm really starting to consider now.

FTP capabilities

Don't go away yet! From top of my head, here are mine!

Behaviours:

RTS Plus - Moving objects can avoid each other, too not to bump or overlap each other.

Array Plus - you can name columns and rows for ease of requesting data.

Plugins:

2d pathfinding - Pathfinding for 2d games, includes following other object.

these are already here - pathfinding can make sure you don't bump or overlay stuff depending on your grid size. if you use too small they will, bigger - they won't.

also following is simple - use "every x sec - > find path to (objectyouwantofollow.x, objectyouwanttofollow.y), move along path)" also set x to something like 0.2 sec or 1 sec. if you have a changeable space - use regenerate obstable map somewhere before also each 0.2 sec or 1 sec (it's good enough once for static objects)

array plus - not sure if it can be done. C# has datatable that has datarows that can use "COLUMN" names for getting data from a column, or cell, but i think JavaScript has nothing like this that would support it easily.

Spritefont that let's me make some words a different size or color. So I don't need to use 20 different objects in the same place.

an audio action/expression to fade in and out of a specific tagged audio file.

Ya, an enhanced audio object that requires less work to use would be good. Fading out a song then playing a different song or playlist.

ome6a1717

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I had made a plugin which could start with fade-in or fade-out then stop audio.

FTP capabilities

+100