Puzzle editor enhancement

This is a good thread to start sharing ideas for improving the puzzles editor. It is in all of our interests to make puzzles as enjoyable as possible to use.

Some of my thoughts.

1. (Shift+A) Add menu – Like in Blender’s node editor. Allows searching for a puzzle and selecting it from a list. Should include variables and procedures as well. Assigning quick favorites would be handy as well.

2. Multi-selection. This, together with multiple block changes like deleting, copying, moving would be so handy. Box select etc. Blockly plugin example: https://github.com/mit-cml/workspace-multiselect

3. Keyboard shortcuts. Currently, Puzzles is very mouse-heavy, and I find myself doing so many repetitive movements and clicks. Things like G to move and Shift+D to duplicate.

4. Math expression to puzzles. Write a math expression and it creates the necessary puzzles (including referencing variables) This could also be in the form of a more convenient puzzles editor for math related things.

5. Oh and I also really like the puzzles minimap idea that is shown here. https://google.github.io/blockly-samples/plugins/workspace-minimap/README

As you might notice I’m heavily inspired by Blender and its node editor. I am so used to it and love the workflow there.

Hi,
Thanks for the suggestions. We’ll discuss these internally and make a task in our TODO list.

Another huge one for me is that copying and pasting procedures between tabs is pretty much impossible. Since the procedure exists in the one tab it creates a new one like “procedure2”. Removing the old procedure removes all calls to it from the puzzles.

When doing larger projects it becomes vital to consider which tab you plan to have a procedure so you don’t have to rebuild your puzzles as you change your organization.

use a different way to call procedures. see screenshot.

Since its now known V3D has departed from Blockly…there is no reason that we cant expect the UI to become more professional in features, UX and UI. The larger our projects, the basic puzzle editing tools we have now are slowing us down and we need ways to speed up development and make things far less cumbersome than they are now. We all have our own workflows and “work arounds” to the shortcomings of developing with the system we have now. I think its a good time to rethink the overall interface and unleash the full ability of what Verge3d can be.

Perhaps versions of V3D, trial, lite and Pro. The current implementation is great for its intended user base. But for those on bigger projects… additional tools would be a welcome addition and possibly worth an addition price bump. Look forward to seeing the improvements.

So, maybe we can think about using some of the ready-made Blockly plugins or examples to implement some of the development features everyone wants.

Right now, @Adam has already come up with a few pretty good features, and there are some must-have blocks that I think should be prioritized.

For example, if we implement multi-select for blocks, wouldn’t that make it easier to achieve something like copying blocks across pages, which was mentioned earlier?

What would the purpose of the “content highlight” functionality be?

What I am most interested in is the multi-block selection and to box select multiple puzzles. Then enabling multi puzzle edits etc.