Plugin: Paths

I had made a suggestion to the old platform before it got shut down for a data type plug to store xy information in an indexed list. Since then I have had a few more thoughts on consolidating other things that work essentially the same way. For example the Pathfinding plug creates a path that the user can use with Move To, then that same behavior can also use data from Timelines just as if it were a path. It also occurred to me that svg's are also paths, and it would be nice if we could import them, given they were parse-able as a single path.

So my question, before I go make another suggestion, is is this even doable?

Could a plug be made that could handle multiple paths from all the given sources?

Paths from Pathfinder, tagged timelines, svg paths, as well as allowing the user to create their own named path by adding points one at a time.

I’ve tried looking into svg files to get path data and didn’t find it useful. But if you have a program that lets you just draw paths and save it as svg then maybe.

You can make plugins and behaviors that share information. Shadow caster and light come to mind. But I can’t really think of other official ones. There’s the solid behavior and other motion behaviors but that’s mainly because solid is an engine feature.

I get the impression that they want most all plugins to be self contained and have all interaction between them to be done with events. Understandable from a maintenance perspective.

That said, being able to pass more around in events than booleans, numbers and text would be useful.

Or closer to what construct already does you could request those plugins to provide jsons of the list of points to save and load. At the very least one value at a time would let you do it manually.

The first part of moving between xy positions with lines and curves is probably the simplest.

Anyways, I’m not sure my input was super helpful. It’s probably doable but I never make requests so I’m not sure how interested they’d be in in doing it.

Thanks for the input.

I know svg is formatted just like xml, so I was hoping it wouldn't be that big a step to get the paths data, but yeah parsing it once you get it would be a pain.

Then as you say sharing between plugs is sort of an issue as there would have to be a format they recognize.

Obviously Json would work right now for making paths data, but, the caveat I did not mention is that I think a path plug should work just like how objects do. Like treating each node/point like a sprite, and allow the user to get the xy's just as easy, in expression form. Working with the Json plug is fairly complicated, and confusing for this.

Then again just like 99% of the rest of C3 we don't necessarily need to dig in to its data structures. So if the format needs to be json then so much the better.

The benefits of having paths are huge. In fact we have expressions that beg for them, lerp, cosp, qarp. We need splines, matched with Tween, this is splines. This is splines with ease's.

I haven't even started on containers yet...

I’d say just make the request and be descriptive of what it should do.

Like as a start:

A way to make paths in the editor as well as during runtime.

The paths are made up of line and curves connected by movable positions.

A way to save and load the paths during edittime and runtime would be useful too.

A way to move along the paths. Could existing behaviors be used with it.

Something like that at least. I don’t think I covered everything you’re after.

They can change anything they like since they control the engine.

Users and third party plugins are were things can be less feasible and require more optimal creativity to work around limits.