Is there any way to locate an entity in the scene without having to locate it in the main window?

no not yet, this is being looked at.

I vote tree view although I don't think Lee likes them! I don't know why not, but I think it's the most efficient way of organizing things!

Yep. Lee is not a big fan of the tree view at all. To much screen resources. Dont know how he is planning on doing this yet, but he will figure it out.

I will admit, that hierarchical views can get hard to navigate when there are many entities, however, I think something needs to be put in place. Finding items in scenes manually is not streamlined.

Interesting enough, whenever you place an entity on your map a list of entities is generated on the left of the Game Guru screen. So essentially we are kind of close to an entity tree. Only difference is it just generates a list of what entity is used in your map. Would it be that much damage to go a bit further with it and make that list show whats actually in your map and have the ability to jump to each entity?

Some sort of "Select by name" is needed, working with db.
a- GG generate a data base (db) with all the entities properties (id, name, coordinates, etc).
b- A textbox where you writte the entity name you are looking for + search button.
c- GG trace entity using db query name based, and select it.

This way avoid the large treeview or Listview in menu.
Just my though.

3com

@ 3Com:
I also see a permanent display of such a tree in the main window as a waste of sceenspace,
BUT: entity names may be hard to remember exactly.
Thus, a search window, usually hidden and only displayed / overlaying the main windon on response to a key press or a Search Button, would be an ideal solution. This window would
* display the dreaded entity tree with all the information you mentioned (scrollable, of course),
* have the textfield to enter the search string for entity names in the menu line or the bottom line.
* Single left click on the respecitve entity of the tree should position the camera of the main window so that the visible area is centered around the respective entity,
*Double left click on an entity in the tree should do likewise AND end (=hide) the search window, returning us to the main window.

The search window could be fitted with a few more buttons or a menu, e.g. for
* positioning the main window back to where the position was when the search window was called
* positioning the main window back to the last position before the current position (plus a small radius around it to account for involuntary small mouse movements). This feature would come in very handy if one has to fine-tune views from and to a certain point ( e.g., from an elevated point for a sniper to his target area)
* if the database allowed for a "special name" attached to an object, it might be much easier to identify it and go to it (e.g., of the 386 trees distributed over the landscape, only one may be the "HangingTree" and only one other the "DruidTree").
Maybe, this feature could even double as a very fast way to move between imprtant points on large maps, especially, if a filter could be set to display only nodes with special entity names.

On the more technical side, we can have statistical information ("so and so many instances of entity 'xyz') - and even thumbnails of the entity displayed while the mouse cursor is hovering over the respective node in the tree, just to be sure)

I agree that this kind of entity search would be useful, and a search/replace feature has already been requested several times.

I'm moving this to feature creep as I feel it has more use there.

SC

It is certainly not wasted space. I see it as essential. But even in Unity, the scene hierarchy can be shown or hidden as needed so if you don't like it then you just don't have it visible. Or only make it visible when you need it.



Absolutely. The search bar should be right at the top or bottom of the hierarchy window. Type a name or partial name and it finds matches anywhere in the entity name.

One thing that would help all this is the ability to have dockable/sizable editor windows so you can put them where you want, even on another monitor.

If it helps those who don't like this sort of thing then you just make it default to not being visible and the advanced use can activate it. To not include it is just not good.