My suggestions related to the Editor (feature requests/possible improvements)

General Feedback & Requests
1

Hey Epic guys,

Since I got my hands on the UE4, I created a list of some of the things that need to change or be added in order to make the product more user-friendly or in some cases less frustrating. I thought most of it is already being looking into so I haven’t posted them before, until recently that I saw none of this were addressed in the changelist for the upcoming 4.1 version.

So here goes parts of my list, the following are the ones that are related to the main editor, some of them are relevant to other editors like blueprint editor or material editor as well, but the fact that they are somewhat more globally relevant, made me to add them to the editor items.

One last thing: I saw some of the Epic devs were requesting us to post these kind of items 1 per forum thread, so it can be more easily tracked by you guys, but my list is rather long, and if I choose to go that way, I’m gonna have to add about 20-25 threads to the feedback section. So I decided to post a thread only for each category of the items, which would be 3 maybe 4 threads in the end, but please DO let me now, if with all this, you still prefer them being separated and I’ll do so.

E1. Make the textboxes multi-line (needed mainly in details pages):

Right now having all the textboxes as single-line can be sometimes quite frustrating. Right now the only real way of editing a tooltip or a string for the value of a property, is to either make the panel as wide as half your screens width, or, copy and paste the text in some text editor, edit it and cope and pate it back to the editor, which are both really inconvenient.

Even if making the textbox itself multi-line isn’t feasible for you guys now, at least go the visual studio way, and add a multi-line box to the textboxes that are full, when they get the focus.


E2. Make the blueprint/class name in the details page more accessible:

Right now unless you’ve got a giant monitor, whenever you want to see the name of the blueprint/class that the actor is instanced from, the only way you got is to make the details panel quite wider and then make it slim again. You shouldn’t have to.


Either add that name, to the tooltip that we see when hovering the mouse over the name, or if that can’t happen because of the way tooltips are currently implemented, then at least make the width of the name filed at the top of the details panel adjustable, so we can make it small.

E3. Add scrollbar page navigation:

At the moment whenever you click on a empty space of a scrollbar, (in any window really but) let’s say the details page, it goes to that exact point, what it should do, is to move exactly 1 page up or down, depending on which side of the scrollbar you clicked.

That is more important that what you might think right now, because unfortunately, even the pageup/pagedown button don’t work in any page with scrollbars, which makes it virtually impossible to navigate one page at a time. besides if anyone really needs to immediately navigate to some arbitrary point in the page, then they can just drag the slider there, which makes the current clicking behavior redundant.

(continues in the next post to keep it readable enough)

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E4. Add time stamps to the output log:

I don’t think I have to say why that is important. Just like any log is meant to be, the output log should have a time stamp at the beginning of each line.


Even if you feel that would make the log seem too busy for some, then at least add the timestamps to the copied data, so whenever you use the copy command in the output log window, what you get is the actual logs including the timestamps.

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E5. Go to the last active tab after closing the current one:

[Editor should behave like almost any other tabbed environment, when it comes to the tab’s behavior. This item and the next couple of items are specifically about how tabs work in UE4’s interface]

The most important part that needs to change, is that whenever you close a tab, instead of going to the left-side tab, editor should go to the tab that was active before the current tab, it’s just what user expects. (It can be customizable in the preferences page if you don’t want to leave it as default, but I think most would expect that to be in fact the default behavior)

E6. Only dragging the empty space of the main tab bar should result in moving the whole window:

Right now that’s not the case. Open blueprint for instance, and open a couple tabs in the graph mode, now if you accidentally drag an empty space in that lower tab bar, it moves the whole window which is wrong. That should only happen for the main tab bar at top. (Unfortunately right now this happens for any tab bar, even the tab bar for the details page or source outliner inside the editor)

E7. Editor should remember the position of opened tabs (mainly required for the main tab bar at the top):

You might open the editor a few times a day, but right now, every single time you do that, you have to manually reposition any tabs you had open before (except the editor and output log tabs) to move them to the main tab bar again.

I think it’s not much to ask to let the editor remember that positioning, and everytime it wants to reload opened assets (as the editor calls it) just opens them where they were before the closing. Right now all you can do, is to drag them “one by one” to the tab bar that they are supposed to be in.

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E8. Make the editor aware of the changes you make via console commands:

At the moment, there is no link between the console commands you execute and the editors command. To understand the problem let me give you an example:

By default you can toggle the grid by selecting Grid checkbox from the viewport’s show menu, and it works as it should. Now at the top right of the editor we have a “enter console command” input, enter “ShowFlag.Grid 0” there and (after move the camera a bit) the grid hides, but now the problem is, that grid checkbox now has stopped working completely, no matter how many times you toggle the checkbox, it just doesn’t work anymore until you restart the whole editor.

Remember, the grid option was just an example, I haven’t tested this with ALL the options there, but at least some of them are the same if not most.

That’s it for now as far as the editor goes, I’ll add to the list later on as I find them and update this post. Thanks for reading and hopefully we’ll see some of these improvements alive soon.

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+1 for all.
Excellent suggestions.
Another suggestion is: (I do not know since there is an option as well), but it could be an option for all new “windows” automatically open as tabs in the main editor window.

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Thanks Weskey, though it seems Epic devs aren’t really interested in such suggestions, otherwise these are not my whole list, not even close.

As for the one you mentioned though, IF they implement item E7, what you mentioned would actually be the case, because right now the editor luckily remembers where the last open tab was and moves the new window next to it, its memory is just like a very old man now, and once you close the editor it looses it, lol.

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We certainly are interested in suggestions, that’s why we have this forum :slight_smile: Thank you for taking time to write this up, I think many of these make a lot of sense, I’ll make sure they get added to our task tracker.

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Thanks James, I meant maybe not interested in this specific kind of suggestions, but good to hear that is actually not the case.

Now that I hear some of them are actually helpful, I’ll make sure to post the rest of the list regarding tools like matinee, marketplace, launcher and so, sometime this week. Probably not as important as these 2 lists that are already posted, but hopefully still helpful. Thanks.