Add setting for initial scene position

[ghost]

As per http://forum.compilgames.net/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=11147, I have a large scene and I've had to change the zoomFactor setting in game.json so as to see it better without manually zooming out every time I open the editor. However there's no way to change the position - currently its centred on the top-left corner and I have to drag to see the full scene.

It'd be nice if there were a setting for this in game.json or even better in the editor UI.

[zatsme]

IMHO, Editor should open in the same state is was closed in, hopefully that's not too hard to achieve?

[blurymind]

So lets get this clear- you need the game project file to be able to store the camera position +zoom and to restore it when you open the project :)

I could look it into this, if it doesn't require recompiling gdevelop.js

[zatsme]

Yes, that's expected behavior from any program I believe. Same as grid settings, you expect the IDE to remember that too 😄

[blurymind]

Yes I agree :)

[4ian]

So both Layout (a scene) and ExternalLayout have a property called getAssociatedSettings, where they store a few options. These options are from this class: https://github.com/4ian/GDevelop/blob/master/Core/GDCore/IDE/Dialogs/LayoutEditorCanvas/LayoutEditorCanvasOptions.h#L41-L51

These options are read here (for the SceneEditor):

GDevelop/newIDE/app/src/MainFrame/Editors/SceneEditor.js

Line 60 in fb6b959

initialUiSettings={serializeToJSObject(layout.getAssociatedSettings())}

and here (for the ExternalLayoutEditor):

GDevelop/newIDE/app/src/MainFrame/Editors/ExternalLayoutEditor.js

Lines 110 to 112 in fb6b959

	initialUiSettings={serializeToJSObject(
	externalLayout.getAssociatedSettings()
	)}

(serializeToJSObject take the C++ object and "transform" it to a JS object, that is passed to the editor. So it contains gridWidth, gridHeight, etc... See here for the C++ code)

So these settings are read... but they are never written :) This is why you can edit them in the game json file, but the IDE was never modified to store the changes.

To actually write them, you can do the reverse operation:
unserializeFromJSObject(layout.getAssociatedSettings(), uiSettings).

Explanation: layout.getAssociatedSettings() will return the "pointer" to the C++ object in memory. uiSettings is your JavaScript object (containing gridWidth, gridHeight, etc...).
Finally unserializeFromJSObject do the reverse operation than before: it take the JS object and "feed" the C++ object with it.

Finally, after doing this, when your game is saved, the settings will be saved (nothing to do here).

So now that I've shown how to save these settings, three things:

• Decide when to store these settings. At every change? When the scene is closed? Every X seconds?
• Implement the call to unserializeFromJSObject when you find a good place.
• If you want to store more things than those which are currently supported by LayoutEditorCanvasOptions (like camera position), we'll need to add these members in LayoutEditorCanvasOptions.h, and write the lines to load/save them in LayoutEditorCanvasOptions.cpp and finally recompile GDevelop.js. But for now don't worry about this :)

[blurymind]

@4ian I can look into this in the weekend if nobody else is doing it :) 👍
Thank you for taking the time to explain

[4ian]

Sure, give it a try :)

[blurymind]

@4ian I got it to save the grid and the zoom level so far 👍
However uiSettings doesnt contain the viewport camera coordinates

[4ian]

Let's start without the viewport camera, I can add this later if we have something working for the rest

[blurymind]

will do a pull later today :)

[zatsme]

This will also cover..

#659

[blurymind]

it covers grid and zoom for now, but will hopefully also cover navigation camera placement

[jimil749]

@4ian I would like to try on this. Does this require adding the viewport camera co-ordinates to the uiSettings to save the last camera position?

[4ian]

Yes, though the changes need to define when do we save them and to do some changes in C++ to be able to persist them. See the steps I explained here: #876 (comment) :)

[jimil749]

Thank you! Will take a look :)

[Silver-Streak]

This appears to have been solved through other pull requests than those mentioned above. Scene viewport settings (zoom/location/etc) are saved when saving a project in b117 and newer at least.

Closing this out, but feel free to reopen this if it's not resolved.