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Robin-Yann Storm
@rystorm.com

It’s so nice to have another conference in Amsterdam! Though next year GodotCon may move to southern Europe instead. As Emi says: “To get some nicer weather.”

Robin-Yann Storm
@rystorm.com

I’ve already had some good discussions about editor design, as well as USD pipelines. For version control purposes it’s so much nicer to be able to diff ASCII files, which USD can easily convert to, from binary But remember: There is no such thing as a sensible default: gdcvault.com/play/1034261...

gdcvault.comImproving Your Tool UX Design by Removing the Faults ofWhen we make game development tools it is very easy to pick what we think is a 'sensible default', and have all users deal with it. We think those defaults makes sense, and work for most users. Howeve...
Robin-Yann Storm
@rystorm.com

Editors and tools need defaults, but never ever considering those defaults sensible. Whatever you are used to as a developer of tools will not be what your audience is used to, even if they are also developers of tools.

Clifton B
@cliftonb.bsky.social

I have an anecdote for this lesson. Google Chrome used to let you go back a page with Backspace, and when they scrapped that interaction, they encouraged users who wanted to keep it to find a third-party extension, rather than offer it as an option. The result? A bunch of malware-filled extensions!

Robin-Yann Storm
@rystorm.com

They mention it can be as easy as adding @export_tool_button to a script, which adds a button. They use this a lot for Hidden Folks. They make a function, display it as a tool in the editor, and now they can easily activate that function as a tool.

Robin-Yann Storm
@rystorm.com

Though watch out with exposing tools, as you have to understand you are affecting both the editor and the runtime of the game. So be careful and knowledgeable about when these functions run, so when strange things start happening you know where the issue comes from.

Robin-Yann Storm
@rystorm.com

They also found it easy to set up hotkeys to easily allow them to, for example, parent and reparent objects in a giant scene hierarchy. They then show the hotkeys in a little text tab so it’s easy to remember and use quickly. This sped up their workflows a lot!