- Variants allows to restyle custom objects
- They can be customized with the graphical editor
- The asset store will progressively use them notably for UI elements (buttons, sliders)
* When an object is selected (or when "Edit object" button is clicked in the properties panel after choosing an instance), the properties panel will show the properties of the object.
* This allows for fast edition of most elements of an object: appearance, properties, but also behaviors, variables and effects. Most workflow and iterations on your game should be faster, from adapting the appearance of a text to tweaking behaviors and updating the preview to check the result in realtime.
* This allows playing around with instances directly on the canvas instead of relying on the actions to flip or change opacity and needing to start a preview
* Still to do:
* Properly handle effects (disable 3D effects) for layers
* Handle hot reloading properly
* Avoid duplicating the configuration of the custom object inside each object created from it. Instead, only store the modified values.
* Add a "Extract as a custom object ("prefab")" when selecting instances in a scene.
* Add a dialog to give choice between 2D or 3D object when creating one.
* Make sure "behavior shared data" are properly handled (physics, pathfinding...)
* Check if we need to give an expression to translate coordinates from the parent to the local custom object.
* Ensure a deleted custom object does not break the editor
Co-authored-by: Davy Hélard <davy.helard@gmail.com>
* This opens the path to multiple performance improvements (faster WebGL rendering, and then WebGPU rendering) as well as optimised resources loading in the future.
* Actions, conditions and expressions related to opacity, size (width/height), scale, animations and other common features are now visible only once when you search for them in actions/conditions (instead of being shown once for every type of object supporting them). This reduces the risk of confusion for new or existing users, notably when multiple versions of the same action were returned by the search and was making it difficult to choose the proper one.
* Internally, this works thanks to default, built-in behaviors that are supported by the objects.
* Buttons
* Toggles, Switches and Sliders
* Multitouch Joysticks
* Health and loading bars
* (Those objects were previously available through the asset store and are now visible when creating an object from scratch)
* This object displays a field where the player can type a text.
* The cursor can be moved and the text can be selected and entered like any other input field according to the platform. For example, you can use all the usual keyboard shortcuts or emoji pickers on desktop. On mobile, all the usual gestures are supported, emoji pickers, text selection, clipboard...
* You can choose between different input field types: text, text area, email, password, phone number... This allows the keyboards to be adapted on mobile devices. The password field will also hide what is entered by the user.
* Because the object is way more convenient to use (and actually works on mobile devices) than the Text Entry object, it is recommended you use it almost always instead of the Text Entry object.
* This object has 2 limitations, because it's using the native capabilities of the platform to display a "native" input field: the Z order can't be changed (the object is *always* displayed on top of the game) and no effects can be displayed. Because it's handled by the operating system, it may also slightly differ on each platform.
* It's recommended you avoid displaying the object outside of a menu or a static UI, as it may not always display exactly at a position synchronised with the rest of the rendering of the game, especially if used in a fast paced or moving scene.
* This allows to display texts on screen that use a "bitmap font", generated with softwares like [BMFont](https://www.angelcode.com/products/bmfont/) or [bmGlyph](http://www.bmglyph.com/).
* Bitmap fonts allow advanced effects and custom design of each character, with complete control over the appearance of the text. This is useful for making a custom score counter, titles, button labels...
* They also render very well in a pixel-perfect, pixel-art or retro-like game.
* Finally, these Bitmap Texts are fast and efficient to render on screen: useful for scores or texts that are updated frequently.
