Well I have the demo, and I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on what I've seen so far. Keep in mind I am moving to MMF2 from MMFE and not MMF 1.5 so this is a bigger jump for me than most of you.
Layers: Obviously this is a great tool and I've already tried out adding some cool scrolling effects to my older projects. However, and I could be missing something, but the repeated looping seems to be useless? I thought I'd be able to make a small area (say 320x240) with some objects, and have it loop over and over again. Instead though, each layer has to be the same size as the actual frame, so I end up having to pattern the objects all the way down the frame, or at least as far as I can "guess" they'll be needed since they are moving slower than everything else. So what exactly is the point of repeating the background layers. It seems like that would only be useful if things in the background were moving FASTER than things in the foreground. . .(riding on top of a train for example? . . . which is something I plan to try, although the background would have to scroll automatically, haven't played with that yet)
Animation editor: I found this a bit frustrating. Maybe it's just because it's different. . . but it kind of seems like they added and changed stuff for the sake of it looking professional instead of being functional. I miss the boxes to the side where I could easily enter a new size, instead of having to go into the properties to change it. I miss being able to right click to pick up a color as well, and the fact that you have to click the dropper, pick the color, then go back and select your tool was kind of annoying as well. And it REALLY needs the row of frames at the bottom, as opposed to the little box that has them in rows and columns. I like being able to just double click a blank frame. I also wish I could drag the frames over as well. . .
I had remembered reading that you could customize everything to be like tgf and such. How? Did that go out the window. The customization seems limited to the toolbars and icons that show up in the main window. . .
Anyway, the layers are great, the scaling and such I can see as being useful, but I have a feeling I'll be creating my games in MMFE and porting them to MMF2 to add the extra little effects, which seems frustrating for a $120 product. . .In the end though, maybe it's just a lot of change at once, but I still wish I could customize everything just the way I like.
You can set the animation editor to pick up a colour with right-click - use the Properties icon at the top left. The default is shift-click to pick up a colour, which frees up the RMB for a secondary colour.
It's a bit difficult to get used to the new animation editor because so many things have been moved around, but I think it's worth it - at least the "crash every five minutes" feature has been removed. The jump from MMF1.5 to MMF2 is certainly nowhere near as hard as the TGF-MMF transition for me.
Wasn't there something Clickteam said a long time ago about multiple Action Points? That would have been cool.
Yeah, I agree; MMF2 is nice; even if it looks XP-ish. It's definately laid out much better. I still think there are a few things that should be improved, but that's mostly in the GFX editor department (Rotating is a damned nightmare sometimes). The new runtime is MUCH better; but sadly not as impressive as I was hoping for. Layers is kinda handy; but I've gotten so used to not having them that it's a null point at the moment, I'll probably end up using it more as I use Fusion2 more. I will be upgrading; but I can't say when it'll happen.
The only parts I seriously hate about the new animation editor is:
1, it doesnt have that "real time" view like in MMF 1.5. Where you could pause, stop, and play your animations right there in a little preview. You could also scroll back and forth between frames with the little slider.
2, the default animations are always there. You cant get rid of them. Not ALL my active objects are players or enemies, so why I need these default animations here is behond me. The only ones I want there by default is "Stopped". Then I can add in custom ones later, or if I decide... the default ones. This is VERY messy, and very unplanned out.
The only other thing I really dislike about the MMF interface itself is the fact that the object buttons arent there anymore.
I like the Back/Forward buttons though, they work with my keyboard too. So that was a pretty nice alternative to only having 1 editor window open at once.
I know that MMF2 has been reworked from the bottom, but did they get rid of the 10,000 event bug?
I lik it so far. Today I thought I'd run into a problem. But it was just my messing up the code ^^
Gonna go for Standard instead. I don't really need the Dev. features (well ok, logo & credit free EXE's sounds tempting) and the price difference is 200EU, and that's a hecka lot for features which of some I'm not even sure what they're good for. Plus, I get 13% off of Standard.
Well I've made my decision for now. I'll be sticking with old mmfe. The new features in mmf2 are nice, layers especially, but combined with all the little inconviences I've had so far, I don't think I can justify the money or the move. It just doesn't feel revolutionary. If it had added more than tweaks to existing things and a few additions it might be worth it.
In the end I'd feel like I was making the same games with some nice effects, which, while nice are hardly necessary. And it wouldn't justify the move from a product I've become so comfortable using.
THe only thing that really pisses me off is that you have to change the animation size in the properties. That also makes having different frames have different sizes a wee bit more difficult than I'd like. I think that in further updates you should be able to switch between TGF and MMF2 styled-animation editors. Perhaps I could make the main sprites in TGF then import them from the .gam file...
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