I realize that this kind of feature request doesn't have the glimmering sparkle of some more interesting graphic optimizations (which by the way, great job implementing SAO/etc!) .. however..

There's really a HEAVY need for better asset management within the game guru interface. That slidebar on the left becomes practically useless after 5-10 items and the add new items dialogue can get kind of insane if you have a ton of freebie/paid assets as I do.

Things I'd like to see:

1) A project/level based asset list which has a tree structure. Even something as simple as:
Wall/building components
Furniture/Scenery Items
Pickable items
Characters
Custom Asset Group Names

2) A find feature. As of current the best workaround is an explorer window and a bookmark which I then search. I'd still rather have a simple search integrated into GG so I could find instances of items more easily.

3) Meta tags - see feature 2. This would help with searching.

4) A way to DELETE items from the asset list. As of current the only method I know of to delete an item and it's subsequent related items inside of game guru (hey, sometimes things are just obsolete, a bad fit, or a bad choice) is to outright reload an earlier save or delete the whole level entirely. Otherwise you're wasting valuable real GUI estate (and possibly game resources, not sure how it handles that) on an object you may never use.

5) A way to select all items based off of the asset list. Example. You have 350 'Rock1' models in your level. However, you'd like to move them or get an idea of where they are. You Right click on the left side's Rock1 model and choose 'select all'. They all highlight, allowing you to clearly see where items are positioned.


I'm not asking for some crazy interface juju here. I like the essence of Game Guru's simple style. I just find that the asset management makes things crazy difficult to work with.

I agree, great suggestion. A must for any project that contains more than a few objects!

100% agree, we really need a way to organize our entities.

Even a a simple tag system, where the FPE's have a section where you can define a category tag, with the entities sidebar having a simple category tag filter that reads them, would make things a million times easier.

One of the biggest issues I have is that I have literally thousands of entities and they're all categorized under purchased -> authors name -> category, and although I probably have at least one model for 90% of the scenarios I can think of, most of the time I give up looking for them, which means ideas I have for projects stall.

Even if we could only filter simple categories such as buildings, scenery, fixture, foliage, characters and so forth, things would be so much easier.

maybe 'UI Overhaul' should be added to the voting board, I like the tag or category system, multiple tags per entity would be good for finding groups of items along a theme that reside in different folders but even just a basic category system would be a lot better than it is now, it does not need to be advanced just a filter drop down with a list of currently used categories and 'all' and the same in the entity browser but with a search field with filter to search tag/file/desc, a bit of backend logic to make it all happen and a sqlite db to speed things up a little.... its not a massive update, in fact I envision the longest task being tagging the 1000's of entities already present in GameGuru lol

I'd be happy to make it up to authors to tag their own, and for it to be left up to us to tag our own inventory of stock items, as long as the feature was there.

bump

Been requested and shown with screen shot ideas so many times I lost count and all hope of it happening with that count, searching back through the request board or even product chat would probably bring up a few threads, I believe (could be wrong going off memory) Lee actually replied to one and said doesn't want to do a tree type menu so as to keep it simple. I believe a tree system would make things far simpler than what we have now which quickly became frustrating and useless

Edit:
One from January 30th 2014
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/207693

And I know I added screenshots to others since then

And my reference image I had:

Maybe the solution then is a different direction; What if we petition lee to add plugin support for the IDE? Maybe that way we could add 'addons' or what not; unique customizations etc without actual access to the code base

I think something as simple as having a toggle switch to switch between what we have now and a tree menu would work wonders as well as a small search box at the top or bottom of that section

I've posted elsewhere about the need for better asset management, especially when it comes to finding the right item among thousands in your library, being able to right-click on an item in the left and being able to select all of that item in the map, etc. I love the idea of Plug-In support, so that Lee can let the community take care of some of these needs.

I emailed him about it - and he liked it too. But apparently it will take some time.
Imagine that.
Plus, it needs added to the voting board.

Agreed. I have about 26 gigs worth of models and their associated textures at the moment. That's more than a few items. I constantly forget which folders things are in. I'm currently cutting several files out and archiving them just to clean up my work space a bit. At the very least, a search function would be an amazing start.

That is excellent news, I didn't imagine Lee would go for it its encouraging to know it may come in the future.

Yeah totally agree with this guys can be a pain when your looking for a rogue model would be nice if you could maybe click the model in the left hand menu and the editor showed where they were at least that way you could see if one had been inadvertently gone off the map, but i also mentioned to Lee that the range of selecting models could do with a bit of a tweak as these rogue models are often caused by trying to select an entity and the editor selects one in the distance but he did say he would look into it at some point Ive also noticed that the editor loads up models that arnt even used in the game increasing game size which i think is a bit pointless e.g a total sci fi game loading up the ranger etc so again maybe could do with looking at whereas the editor can sort/organise only the models used, i do understand alot of issues can be caused buy duplicate folders etc as i did this a lot in the beginning and paid the price later and can only blame myself for that so would also be nice if that duplicate models were merged into 1 folder? maybe