No getters for effect parameters?

I just noticed that there are no options/expressions for getting effect parameters. Is there a reason for that? In general I feel like effects are handled so... detached from everything else. The way you access the parameters and everything. One can work around this limitation with javascript, though it's kinda inconvenient. (The process is similar for layers/layout effects)

let sprite = runtime.objects.Sprite.getFirstInstance();

let effect = getEffect(sprite.effects, "AdjustHSL");

console.warn(effect[0].getParameter(2));

function getEffect(object, name) {
 return object.filter(
 function(object){ return object.name == name }
 );
}

Giving this a bump because I noticed the effects are also nowhere to be found in the debugger. Makes it not easier to debug something.

I've just been working around this and couldn't agree more.

Might help if you open a suggestion for it:

https://construct3-21h2.ideas.aha.io/

I mean sure, I did, but my points are currently invested in other ideas that I support so I can't even vote on my own idea :(

construct3-21h2.ideas.aha.io/ideas/C321H2-I-392

There you go, i took 3 off from my own ideas.

Thanks! I thought about deducting some points from other ideas but those are also really good ideas that I really wanna see and are harder to work around. Maybe I'll take a few points away still...

I think this is one of those things that actually shouldn't need an "idea suggestion" but rather more of a "hey, this is absolutely supposed to be there, why isn't it?" It feels like a no-brainer that we'd have read access to a value we can set. And it shouldn't have any unforseen downstream effects either and is probably fairly easy to implement.

And that's why I keep telling that the current votes system is stupid. I also need this feature, but I can't vote because I've ran out of votes a long time ago.

If you're able to word it in a way that sounds like a bug, perhaps you could submit them in that section instead, and the developers may take the suggestions more seriously then?

Yeah I don't visit the suggestions platform often, infact I more often visit the bug github just to see what things are getting reported and the little technical discussions that sometimes happen - It can be quite interesting!

On the suggestions platform, sorted by popular:

In 5th place, with 34 votes, existed for a year, no Scirra response, and it's not exactly a complicated idea (add BBoxMid), yet very handy (Not that I expect Scirra to add it, but it has existed for a year, it is one of the top 5 most voted, and no response?)

In 4th place, with 38 votes, 6 months old, this suggestion has been answered by Scirra back in February as "already implemented", yet it sits there high up on the list, not hidden, and the people that contributed to the 38 votes are not moving their votes elsewhere.

In 3rd place, with 40 votes, 10 months old, and this is about image points on 3d objects - Scirra isn't convinced by it (which is fair enough), but no discussion has happened on the comments there from the community, noone else chimed in to say "here's a good example of why this would be a good suggestion", yet its 3rd place of all popular suggestions. Why aren't the people that voted for this writing a quick comment like "I would use this feature to create blahblah effect in 3D" or something?

In 2nd place, 42 votes, a year old, no response from Scirra.

1st place has 54 votes but this is marked as "in development" so this is cool.

This makes me think even if I put effort into writing a detailed suggestion and getting many people to vote for it and made it to the top 5 most voted, it may still take a year or more to get a response, or maybe never get a response at all. I acknowledge Scirra is busy, small team, lots of work to do, but... Yeah I don't know.

Yeah, clearly there is something not working as well as I think it could/should with the suggestion platform. Either way this has already been discussed multiple times with no results so... I just want access to effect parameters not to take 2 years to be implemented ._.

Yeah sorry for rambling about the suggestions platform as it is offtopic - It's exciting to think about being able to influence the future of C3 a little bit, but like you say, it's been discussed over and over, with the same outcome usually.

Whilst I do agree with the idea and it is surprising that the effect parameters weren't exposed everywhere from the beginning, I wonder if this is one of those cases where Scirra will think "Well, it can be worked around, therefore should we focus our limited resources on this?". Again, I totally agree with the suggestion, but, well, small team, limited resources. I know we all know that.

Well, it can be worked around, therefore should we focus our limited resources on this?

I hope not. And I understand that they have limited resources, but in the end this doesn't actually matter to a customer. The bottom line is if I look at your product and deem it "not good enough" I can take my money somewhere else.

Anyway, the suggestion is out there, now we wait...