Composer GUI Beta Update

11 June 2014

Composer GUI Beta Update

walter
Composer, Corona SDK, Daily Build, News & Announcements

Today, we have a new update to our visual editor Composer GUI, available in daily build 2014.2332 (Mac only for now).

This update makes significant improvements over the previous beta. We’ve focused on polishing the existing feature set as well as improve your workflow. Several key features were missing like resizable windows, full-screen mode, zooming in/out, and multiple selection (marquee or shift-click). Plus, all Pro subscribers can start using the Composer GUI right away, no need to enable it in the terminal as required in the previous version.

We also focused on lots of small things that you don’t notice until they’re missing. For example, if you’re a long-time user of Adobe products, you’re used to quickly toggling the hand tool by holding down the spacebar. In the latest Composer GUI, you’ll be able to do the same thing.

Here’s a short preview of what you can do in the updated Composer GUI:

If you’re ready to play, here’s a sample you can use with the latest daily build, the same one we use in the video. And as always, more information is available in our docs.

Tags:

app design, beta, composer, GUI editor

walter

17 Comments

George
Posted at 23:13h, 11 June

Great updated, very cool new features!
Now you can almost completely work within Composer GUI.
Look forward to the next release.
Jonsi
Posted at 23:42h, 11 June

Wow. This is starting to look really cool!
Peter Dwyer
Posted at 02:33h, 12 June

Still needs some way to paint sprites to a grid. It’s just too damned tedious doing every block by hand individually. This screams out for a tile mapper.
- George
  Posted at 03:20h, 12 June
  
  Copy + Past features are very necessary. There is need to be a way to copy an existing object and past the copy somewhere. Plus, it needs alignment options as well.
Francisco
Posted at 05:01h, 12 June

Is there any ETA for a windows version of the GUI composer? I don’t own a Mac computer.
- Sid
  Posted at 13:21h, 12 June
  
  I use Level Director as it is way more advanced and works on Windows.
  LD allows you to manage assets which contain the physics so you don’t have to reapply them to each instance of the object, much easier.
Tom
Posted at 08:33h, 12 June

Would the Composer GUI be useful for Corona apps with physics that have already been coded? Or is the GUI only useful for projects that were created using the GUI? If the former, is there anything that needs to be done to import a pre-existing project into the GUI? Or will it just work?
J. A. Whye
Posted at 16:11h, 12 June

So getObjectByTag grabs the object with that Name, not tag. WTF?

If it’s going to be getObjectByTag, then in the Composer GUI make that label say Tag and not Name.But don’t do that, because…

…everywhere else in the known universe tags are NOT typically unique like an ID would be. So if I have 3 UFOs on the screen they may all have a “ufo” tag on them so I know to which group they belong. An ID on an object should be unique, and probably a Name, as well, so that method should be getObjectByName or getObjectByID.

If you want to grab by tag then it should be getObjectsByTag (plural) which returns a table with all objects that have that tag. Maybe 1, maybe 40.

Seriously, do not screw up stuff like that. It makes it look like 12-year olds are in charge.

Jay

PS – Can you tell I’m passionate about stuff like that? It *does* matter.
- alexf
  Posted at 00:23h, 13 June
  
  Jay,
  
  Wow you’re passionate about it 🙂
  
  We already plan for that change though. We just need some more work on the product to be able to do it correctly.
  
  getObjectByTag will become getObjectByName in one of the upcoming updates. Also, after we’ll implement object tags, getObjectsByTag will return a table with all the objects that have the passed in tag set.
  
  Regarding the 12-year olds being in charge, i would kindly ask you to revise your wording if possible in the future. We did, do and will accept feedback gladly and implement it when appropriate (like in this present case), and you know that. So yea…
  
  Thanks,
  alex
  - J. A. Whye
    Posted at 21:06h, 13 June
    
    Alex,
    
    I went back twice to see if I could change the wording of that, but once you post the comment apparently it can’t be edited. I *should* at least have replied to myself to point out I realized (too late) that I was being a dick (can I say that here?) — sorry about that.
    
    Jay
    
    PS – Yay for the upcoming change! 🙂
Steve
Posted at 15:00h, 13 June

How does it handle the scaling for different devices?

I just downloaded and played around. I created a blank project with the ultimate config from Rob (the new revised one) and added a few assets. In the GUI, I have it set for an iPhone 4 (480×320) and when I run it on an iPhone 5 it scales incorrectly. It adds the extra space all on one side, instead of adding equal amounts on both sides.
nick
Posted at 08:20h, 16 June

Cool update, still a long way to go before I use it. Level Director (win only) and Level Helper are the two best bets right now. I’m interested to see how this turns out though, just got to wait.

As for as “revise your wording” ya know we could have oh what’s that thing called? An edit button yes.

Then, people could edit the post like a normal person. 🙂

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Jay
Posted at 14:50h, 28 June

Can you also make menus with this ?
Athan
Posted at 09:28h, 15 July

When will the Composer GUI – even in Beta version – be available for Windows?

A.
Uli.S
Posted at 15:08h, 01 August

Is this still Mac only?
James
Posted at 08:16h, 20 November

It is rather unfortunate that this feature is only available for Mac users, I think that if there was a Windows version available you would have even more people being able to test it thus helping move it out of the Beta stages sooner.

Other than that t looks great, just we windows users would like to get our hands dirty too =)
Fabian
Posted at 03:54h, 06 March

Windows here too, hope that soon have a version to test it.