[V2] Play, Test and Test and Debug? what are they doing?

[Nodragem]

Here is my experience:

• When I press "Play" the red ball is moving while the rain is already falling before I press "Play".
• When I press "Test", a new internal window "Game" appears with "record", "pause", "frame-by-frame" options, but the red ball is NOT moving, while the rain is falling.
• When I press "Test and Debug", a new external window is opened, which is exactly the same as the one when I pressed "Test".
• if I understand well, the "record" button in both "Test" and "Test and Debug" are opening SpectorJS

Here are my question:

• is it normal that the red ball moves only when I use the "Play" option?
• are these names well chosen? do we need so many options?

If I had to rename these options, I would suggest:

• Play in Preview
• Play Game/Project with Debug
• Play Game/Project with Debug in External Window

Now, if it is possible I would simplify things so that:

• Play Preview and Play Game would becomes only one thing that is "Play in Preview". You play your game in the Preview window.
• Play Game in External Window will be simply "Play in External".
• For each you can play with or without the Debugging Tools.

In other words, you could have the options:

• Play in Preview without Debug (only stop and reload buttons)
• Play in Preview with Debug (pause , frame-by-frame, SpectorJS, reload and stop buttons)
• Play in External without Debug
• Play in External with Debug

The UI to chose the Play Mode could still be compact:

• Dropdown menu to choose between Debug/No Debug
• A Play button that defaults to Preview, but you have a little downward arrow to choose to Play in External (because that is not going to be used often I think).

The UI for controlling the Play State would try to gather the pause, record, frame-by-frame, reload and stop buttons into one place: 1) When playing in Preview:

• it would be best to have all these buttons gathered in the Preview or Main toolbar, rather than having most of them in the current dark gray box inside the Preview.
• If not possible, maybe just move the reload button that is currently in the toolbar to the dark gray box, and add a stop button there too. 2) When playing in External Window, you don't have a toolbar anymore, so I guess you need to put everything in the black gray box.

Hope that helps.

[julien-moreau]

Just to be clear (I'm writing the documentation about these buttons but it is not online so I can understand that it's not clear) I'll explain the usage of these buttons and what are my technical limitations

For now, I'm not able to load and unload at runtime custom scripts (like Unity is able to do). So to ensure the editor will not crash, I have to load a new instance of BabylonJS etc. (typically an iFrame).

The "Test" button just creates a new panel and runs the same code as "Test and Debug" but in a iFrame directly in the editor. The button "Test And Debug" just launches the same but in a window. The advantage is that you can type "F12" to open the devtools and debug your custom scripts you wrote in the "Code Editor", "Post-Process Editor" etc. (In Electron, the debug F12 window is opened automatically)

[julien-moreau]

Anyway, I'll not be able to launch a game with custom code in the preview panel. I can at least run in a new panel with an isolated iFrame.

I can change the name of "Test" and name it "Play". And change "Test and Debug" and name it "Play And Debug"

For the "Play" button (on the left), I think I'm going to remove it as I'm not sure it would be useful in any case. Do you confirm ?

[Nodragem]

Yep, I was starting to think the same as I read your explanation: the current play button may not be useful if it show a preview that can't run the scripts...

I know understand what "Test" and "Test and Debug" are doing and I agree they could be rename to "Play" and "Play and Debug". However, just to make sure that the current "Play" is useless, can you explain what is "Play" doing at the moment?

Finally, I notices that when I press the current "Play" button, the red ball is moving, and when I press "Test" the red ball is not moving... I don't think that is normal, right?

[julien-moreau]

I think that the play button (I renamed "Play All Animations") is not necessary useless so I'll keep it. Anyway, if it looks like nobody uses I'll remove it.

That means, when you click "Play", all the animtable objects are played. It should be the same when you click "Play and Debug".

What I purpose:

• Having a tool to select all the objects to play
• All objects are played by default everytime, everywhere, which seams weird

I think adding a tool to select all the objects you would like to play once the scene is loaded can be a solution.

What do you think ?

[Nodragem]

I am not sure I understand ... so I will just try to tell what I think would make sense for me.

Play and Play and Debug should simply run the game as the game is; without or with the debug tools, within an iframe or a new window. I think we kind of agree on that?

Then the Play All Animations may not be necessary but if it is, it could be moved to the Animation Timeline window, which seems to be a more relevant place.

Maybe more useful than a button "Play All Animations" would be the ability to select multiple objects in the scenegraph (and so, possibily all of them) to be played and/or edited in the Animation Timeline window.

Does that sound like a good solution to you?

[julien-moreau]

For now, I removed the "Play Animations" button and kept "Play" and "Play and Debug" I'm adding the new feature you just explained in my todo list :)

[julien-moreau]

Related to this one: https://github.com/BabylonJS/Editor/issues/115 Closing this issue but still in my todolist