Let's talk about workflow speed!

[hawken (Hawken King)]

Hello, I’m a seasoned Tiled user but have only just got in to using it in a more hardcore way.

So… improvements on workflow speed! Here’s my top 3 things I noticed would be nice to have:

1. Duplicate Object

• SHIFT-FUNCTION-D duplicates layer but how about FUNCTION-D for duplicate anything selected! I find myself having to hit the little “Duplicate Object” button a lot, would be very nice as a shortcut key, as with my Wacom this button often duplicates about 3 times!

2. ALT-DRAG

• Alt-drag to duplicate object! Again, flexing them muscle memories is fun, and healthy!

3. non-Contiguous!

• fill/wand ALL the tiles like this one. Would be nice as a checkbox and functionality to Photoshop / ASEprite.

Cheers!

[bjorn (Thorbjørn Lindeijer)]

1. Ctrl+D seems to be an alias for deleting currently (at least on Linux), but I totally agree it should be mapped to Duplicate for objects. I guess based on the focus it could be used for duplicating other things as well, like layers and tile stamps.

2. Here we get into the usual problem of already using modifiers for other things. The Alt modifier in particular is used for forcing a drag operation, even if you happen to hit an object not currently in your selection. This is the same behavior as seen in Inkscape. Then of course, we could consider Ctrl / Cmd - Drag to work for duplicating objects. Currently it temporarily toggles “Snap to Grid”, but there was a reason that we were already planning to remove that and put a shortcut on “Toggle Snap to Grid” instead (maybe to enable duplication, can’t remember now).

3. This functionality is already available as the “Select Same Tile” tool, based on the way it works in GIMP. It can be used in combination with the Fill tool by holding Shift to make the fill apply to the entire selection. Apparently Photoshop, Aseprite and recently also Game Maker Studio 2 are implementing this as a “Contiguous” checkbox. Something to consider changing when Tiled has a tool-specific tool bar I guess.

Thanks for your feedback!

[hawken (Hawken King)]

Wow thanks for the speedy reply!

@bjorn

Ctrl+D seems to be an alias for deleting currently (at least on Linux), but I totally agree it should be mapped to Duplicate for objects. I guess based on the focus it could be used for duplicating other things as well, like layers and tile stamps.

Would be nice to have a “duplicate this thing I’m selecting!” in a perfect world. I don’t envy that the keys need to work for 3 platforms at once, on the Mac Apple+D is de facto standard for duplication in Finder, Unity. It’s deselect in other software like Photoshop and Illustrator.

@bjorn

Here we get into the usual problem of already using modifiers for other things. The Alt modifier in particular is used for forcing a drag operation, even if you happen to hit an object not currently in your selection. This is the same behavior as seen in Inkscape. Then of course, we could consider Ctrl / Cmd - Drag to work for duplicating objects. Currently it temporarily toggles “Snap to Grid”, but there was a reason that we were already planning to remove that and put a shortcut on “Toggle Snap to Grid” instead (maybe to enable duplication, can’t remember now).

Ah, I’m checking this doc now: Keyboard Shortcuts · mapeditor/tiled Wiki · GitHub (probably should have given this the once over before posting!)

@bjorn

This functionality is already available as the “Select Same Tile” tool, based on the way it works in GIMP. It can be used in combination with the Fill tool by holding Shift to make the fill apply to the entire selection. Apparently Photoshop, Aseprite and recently also Game Maker Studio 2 are implementing this as a “Contiguous” checkbox. Something to consider changing when Tiled has a tool-specific tool bar I guess.

I guess it’s something to consider, personally I don’t like that there is no shortcut key in Photoshop for toggling contiguous, so I’d take a shortcut over that for this any day.

In general, it would be nice if the shortcuts were more harmonious to other applications that are used in conjunction to Tiled in the pro & indie environment (as a lot of these tools are now free or low cost, like Photoshop which is now $9 a month).

Things like G for fill, M for marquee etc. are muscle memory for their wide use in most apps, but need to be re-learned for Tiled in hardcore use. (not that I’m saying Tiled shouldn’t be it’s own beast! But GIMP is not widely known, so drawing from it’s own particular set of shortcuts might alienate a lot of users)

Maybe icon tooltips could show the shortcut keys to aid in learning? “D” for random mode for example.

Anyway thanks for the reply!

[bjorn (Thorbjørn Lindeijer)]

@hawken

Would be nice to have a “duplicate this thing I’m selecting!” in a perfect world. I don’t envy that the keys need to work for 3 platforms at once, on the Mac Apple+D is de facto standard for duplication in Finder, Unity. It’s deselect in other software like Photoshop and Illustrator.

Ctrl+D is now Duplicate in Tiled.

@hawken

Things like G for fill, M for marquee etc. are muscle memory for their wide use in most apps, but need to be re-learned for Tiled in hardcore use. (not that I’m saying Tiled shouldn’t be it’s own beast! But GIMP is not widely known, so drawing from it’s own particular set of shortcuts might alienate a lot of users)

I think I’d really need to implement configurable shortcuts first, and then we can start adding “themes”, where the current one would be kept as “Classic” or something and we could start some kind of collaboration on finding the best default one.

@hawken

Maybe icon tooltips could show the shortcut keys to aid in learning? “D” for random mode for example.

That’s a good idea (maybe you noticed the tools are already doing this), but it’s not a built-in behavior in Qt so some generic way of adding that should be implemented. The Qt Creator IDE has implemented their own solution for this.