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Feature Requests / Planned updates Sticky

A topic by baj created Sep 13, 2022 Views: 828 Replies: 34

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bajDeveloper1 year ago (12 edits) (+3)

Hello, this is a space where to leave feedback, feature requests, annoyances, UX, experiences, etc.

Check this for more details about the new Version: https://baj.itch.io/drafft/devlog/696851/the-future-of-drafft

Currently planned updates

Finish documentation / tutorial.
Command Line / Headless export / watch + export / API ?

Considering

AI based creative writing helper for gdd and potentially dialogues. Should be based on a self hosted, bring your own model and free solution (dalai + alpaca looks promising)
Customize Install location
Unified/combined GDD download
Alternative collaboration method with git or file based db + sync app like dropbox.
Make more videos

Done

Replace Markdown Editor for a more performant library.
TOML support.
Markdown based gdd documents: Each document should be able to be set as html (current) or markdown (new). We should have a preview as well.
Add Game Maker Scripting syntax highlighting
Resizable columns in Grids and persistent/saved sizes.
Add spellchecker language selector and disable options.
Download a single GDD as doc

Master Pose1 year ago

Have you thought about making the item database more UI oriented? Instead of just plain JSON, it would be cool to have a way to configure templates of properties so when you create an Item you can set that template and show a simple interface to fill the fields similarly of how GridlessDB does it

bajDeveloper1 year ago

Hello, yes I have, and decided against it for the time being and settled with the grid approach which seems like a ‘good enough’ middle ground, but open for discussion if there is enough interest. Thanks for commenting!

theSoloDevCave1 year ago

The tool is very useful and easy to use. In the future it would be good if the GDD could be exported in Word or similar format. Thanks!

bajDeveloper1 year ago(+2)

Do you mean, like the Whole GDD ? I guess I could crawl the hierarchy and combine it into a single document… now that I write this… I think this could be a nice feature to have, like a combined, single file PDF that gets created automatically and can be previewed in the app as well as download it… maybe each document represent a page break. Good idea!

theSoloDevCave1 year ago

Great! As an option I would also propose being able to export each GDD document separately. In my case, I have different documents created with Drafft, and each of them has a different topic, but all are related to the project. Eg: Pitch Document, Technical Document, Character Sheets, Description of scenarios or locations, etc.

Any of the options that allow you to export this information to a .docx or .pdf format would be great. In this way we can send the documentation to people who do not necessarily have or should access the project within Drafft.

bajDeveloper1 year ago

Yes!! that’s a really valid use case. Thanks for the feedback!

bajDeveloper1 year ago

This now is a feature in v1.1.6. Only each item separately for now, export to doc.

0xDragon1 year ago (1 edit)

The options to open a project probably should either be set to change their color based on the theme, or be shown under the project title on the left.

Also, multi-cursor/multi-line editing (example) in editors would be great…I copy-pasted a project I’d been working on from joplin (markdown) and now I have to go through 60+ MD list items (“- item”) to get the formatting to HTML list. :P

bajDeveloper1 year ago

Hmm, it should change according to the theme: What version are you in?

Multi cursor is a good Idea, but might be hard to implement with ACE editor which I’m currently using… I think adding markdown support, with a modern editor, is the most beneficial thing to do, for this and other usecases…

0xDragon1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

Yeah I had posted it before noticing there was already an update, I was still on 1.2.

[EDIT] Ah, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, using the Dark theme and a Dark accent was the real issue 😋

bajDeveloper289 days ago

Sorry for the necro, but I just remembered that we had multi cursor support since the beginning !

Designer Vale1 year ago(+2)

I would love to see the Game Maker syntax highlight added. I hope that it eventually makes it to a planned update.

bajDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

Hello, this is available now in v.1.2.2 Thanks for the suggestion!

Designer Vale1 year ago(+1)

You are awesome thank you!

MegaMasterX1 year ago (1 edit)

Hello there! Working on some external game editor tools and wondering if it'd be possible in the future to have Drafft perform a Game Data Export via a command line command?

bajDeveloper1 year ago

Hello! I think this is an interesting idea! Need to do some research and test but I think it can be done “easily”, another plus would be to use such feature to do “live updates” to the game… Just curious, can you share a little bit about your potential use case? Added to the list!

MegaMasterX1 year ago(+1)

Sure!

In the concept for our tool, we're planning to implement a dropdown in for Unity that just reaches out to Drafft, executes a CLI command to sync with the remote DB (If configured) and perhaps a separate command to export the game's content based on the current settings configuration to a JSON. That way, game designers can just quickly "sync" their local copy of game data from within the editor rather than mess with file versioning, etc.

bajDeveloper294 days ago

Hey, just to let you know that this on my radar, but I was thinking, instead of having a cli command (which may be really helpful with CI/CD and scripts, but may require extra work to run headless) What about having a very simple API that returns the JSON, (and maybe some endpoint to force a sync)

The caveat is that in it will require that the user have the app open. Also, this would mean that this API could be potentially hit from any computer (with network access) Also, this would mean that, it could be possible in theory, and some imagination… to hook up the game engine to use the API directly for some live preview goodness.

Is not a headless/“offline” solution but its definitely simpler to implement!

MegaMasterX293 days ago

That would actually work quite nicely! Anything that could cut down on the export time/process would help a lot.

bajDeveloper267 days ago

Hello! Some updates about this feature, which is available in v1.4.0

It’s not exactly what we had in mind at first but might be helpful. The problem of running headless is that the local pouchdb is stored in the browser. Also electron requires a display to run headless so it a bit tricky. So for now, we have a REST API that runs when a project is loaded (if enabled in the options) that can get you a game export and a database dump.

Docs: https://drafft.aboni.dev/en/docs/documentation/api_docs.html

Other thoughts:

I’m planning to make a little cli app does the fetching but any standard GET request method would work. This tool could probably have some mechanism to dump from a remote couchdb instance as well.

carousel363 days ago

Not sure if this is a bug or not, but once a choice has been made in the dialogue tester, there's no way to jump back (either to the choice, or before the choice). So, the only way to test the other choice is to exit and re-start the tester.

0xDragon326 days ago

Is it by design to not have the wrapper around the Grid stretch to the bottom of the UI? That’s a lot of empty space (and I know it’ll disappear when there is content, but…)

bajDeveloper321 days ago(+1)

No, and it’s not using the whole space either, and its really annoying!! Will fix in next release! Thanks!

bajDeveloper288 days ago

Fixed in v1.3.0 live next week. Only the max-size, getting it to use the whole space with empty rows is more challenging than expected!!. Thanks for reporting!

bojjenclon294 days ago(+1)

Hello, I personally use TOML in my projects so I was wondering if you could also add TOML support to the editors (e.g. in addition to hjson/json)? Not sure how you have everything set up but it seems to be a node/electron application under the hood so hopefully it wouldn’t be too much to add a TOML library in as well.

bajDeveloper294 days ago

Hi, thanks for the suggestion! Including TOML will be pretty easy as it is already a mode in ACE editor (which I’m using) I can add it in next release! Next release its taking some time though as I’m doing some refactoring (mainly trying to add a more performant MD editor)

bojjenclon293 days ago

Great, thank you for the quick reply! Enjoying using your app so far, I had been looking for a good way to manage multiple parts of my data in one place and this seems perfect. :)

0xDragon293 days ago

Dang, beat me to it.

bajDeveloper288 days ago(+1)

This is now a feature in v1.3.0

Thanks for the suggestion!

bojjenclon278 days ago(+2)

Hey thanks for adding support! Minor thing but it looks like you may have forgotten to include it in the list of defaults (e.g. Project Settings -> Scripting -> Default Properties Editor Language) so maybe you can throw that into a future version? :)

bajDeveloper277 days ago(+1)

whoops, fixed in 1.3.2, thanks!

kimbo12223 days ago

Hello, would it be possible to add Lists and check box lists to Kanaban cards similar to the GDD document? Also be able to add a picture or screenshot to a Kanban card. Finally don't know if this exists already, but a way to reference a timeline item on a Kanban card or GDD document.

bajDeveloper220 days ago

Hi! Actually I had a regression with that as I’m not very happy with the markdown editor and going back and forth with some tests. In essence I’m stuck now in deciding if the attachment should be serialized in base64 inside the doc as before, or do a proper attachment database, which will allow the users to sync any kind of binaries, even outside of the scope of the GDD text (a video file could be a GDD entry for example,,)

This however, brings the question if it is worth the effort, or the potential performance implications (using a db as a file repository ins not the best idea) and if it is, maybe it would make sense to migrate to a file based repository instead of the database approach…

With this idea, drafft could support any “file” and a simple file/folder hierarchy. Multi user sync would be done with third party apps like dropbox, git or similar… Integration with the game engine would be easier, even the game assets could be centralized and taken directly from the workspace…

Sorry for the brain dump!

As for reference, I have a version in dev which allow to reference any drafft object with a internal link (drafft://actor/actorname drafft://script/id_or_alias) etc, but I got a bit stuck with the previous topic that is related

ayehavgunne80 days ago

I know this is an old post but I like the idea of using git because that would also allow you to version control the whole project.