Sprite selection issues
by Tom Spilman · in Torque Game Builder · 06/05/2006 (7:31 pm) · 7 replies
I've found selecting sprites in my scene difficult in a few cases.
First i present this image:
The top image is my first click and the bottom image is the next click. You notice the plant thing is selected and the grey box is around the barrel. Then on the second click the barrel is selected. It seems the decision for what is the next selection involves overlapping bounding boxes of the item. This is non-intuitive, confusing, and leads to extra clicks trying to get what to what you really intended to select. IMO the selection process needs to be fixed to only look for items that are under your cursor.
This may be related:
My cursor is clearly outside the extents of the rock, yet the grey box hover highlight is enabled for it. This seems to work right in some cases and not in others. Can't tell why.
Final issue is with tilemaps. Frequently on working on our tile pack we have a bunch of sprites over several tilemap layers. I'm usually zoomed in trying to place a sprite in a particular location. Usually i have to click something 3-4 times before i get a grey or white box. This is because it's selecting the tile layers, but i cannot see that because all 4 edges of the tilemap are offscreen. This is again confusing... especially to newbies, and is most likely not what a user wants to do. I don't have a good solution for this one... but i thought i'd throw the scenario out there.
Also want to say that the TGB community rocks... every issue i've posted has been addressed and fixed. Can't wait to see the TGB launch and get the tile pack done.
First i present this image:
The top image is my first click and the bottom image is the next click. You notice the plant thing is selected and the grey box is around the barrel. Then on the second click the barrel is selected. It seems the decision for what is the next selection involves overlapping bounding boxes of the item. This is non-intuitive, confusing, and leads to extra clicks trying to get what to what you really intended to select. IMO the selection process needs to be fixed to only look for items that are under your cursor.
This may be related:
My cursor is clearly outside the extents of the rock, yet the grey box hover highlight is enabled for it. This seems to work right in some cases and not in others. Can't tell why.
Final issue is with tilemaps. Frequently on working on our tile pack we have a bunch of sprites over several tilemap layers. I'm usually zoomed in trying to place a sprite in a particular location. Usually i have to click something 3-4 times before i get a grey or white box. This is because it's selecting the tile layers, but i cannot see that because all 4 edges of the tilemap are offscreen. This is again confusing... especially to newbies, and is most likely not what a user wants to do. I don't have a good solution for this one... but i thought i'd throw the scenario out there.
Also want to say that the TGB community rocks... every issue i've posted has been addressed and fixed. Can't wait to see the TGB launch and get the tile pack done.
About the author
Tom is a programmer and co-owner of Sickhead Games, LLC.
#2
06/06/2006 (11:18 am)
It may be that i resized the window by dragging the window corner (which should be perfectly reasonable thing to do). I haven't tested it, but that sounds like a likely suspect. I'll do some investigation over here and see if i can nail down a specific test case for you. 
#3
06/06/2006 (1:40 pm)
Tom - I agree with you, I posted a similiar issue to this regarding selecting tile layers and having no idea that they're selected because I'm zoomed in. I suggested adding the ability to lock a layer or object so you can't accidentally select it, similiar to how Flash handles locking layers. It would make life in the level editor SO much better.
#4
06/07/2006 (2:45 am)
@Adam - I sent you a simple case that reproduces the selection issue. Let me know if you need more from me. Thanks!
#5
06/07/2006 (12:42 pm)
FYI. Adam sent me a fix and the selection issues with picking sprites are all working correctly now. 
#6
@Tom and Russell :) - Your sprites look seriously kick ass :-)
06/07/2006 (1:14 pm)
Cool I suspect they will be adding that to the polishing being done over the next week... Good Catch@Tom and Russell :) - Your sprites look seriously kick ass :-)
Torque Owner Adam Larson
It definitely seems like there is a problem, but I can't get it to happen, so any more information you can give would be very helpful.