On the new (embedded) game bar

[theraot]

I feel I'm lacking the proper language to talk about this, sorry I'm not referring to stuff by its proper name. I'm talking about the bar on the game main screen, which also appears on the game window when running as embedded but not embedded in the editor main window... The one that was heavily demanded by the influx of engine refugees... And is a new feature for Godot 4.4... That one.

For all I read about the new embedded game mode, I was expecting it be... you know... embedded. So for me seeing a bar on the game when running it for debug, which is on a separate window, was a surprise. And my first instinct was to find a way to hide it... Without restarting the game.

Alas, I've been unable to find a way to toggle it during debug.

Basically I would want a way to change - on demand - its appearance to mimic the game not running embedded, so I can forget about it while testing, and bring it if I want. I imagine that could be accomplished with predefined key combination, but I don't see it in the editor shortcuts.

Perhaps there is a foolish side to that idea, as having the bar makes it evident in what mode the game is running. Although that could be alleviated by changing the title form having "(DEBUG)" appended to something else, for example "(DEBUG EMBEDDED)" (or a better name that does not trigger confusion on what embedded means).

Anyway, on one hand I want to see the game as close as possible to how it would appear when exported, and on the other I can see how this feature could be useful to tackle debug situations... But barring a way to serialize the game state and resume it from the embedded mode (which would also be fantastic to send it to a co-worker, but I digress), stumbling upon a bug, closing the game, and trying to reproduce the bug could be a lot of work. Yet, we managed with the debug tools we had before.

So, I'll probably stick to not running the game embedded (and instead running the game the old way, i.e. without the bar) for the time being. Which is a shame. While I do not like the game embedded in the editor window (I want to be able to resize it like the end user would, and I like the idea of moving it another monitor), by running the game embedded I gain the ease of selecting objects from the game (which can be accomplished from the embedded game, while not in the editor window... I mean running the game in a separate window with the bar)… But then I have the bar, resize options that do not reflect the end game, and visual changes for selection et.al.

I hope what I'm saying makes sense. I strongly believe that the big feature here is being able to select objects from the game window, and not having the game running inside the editor window. But I don't want to lose the look of the game being close to the exported game by having a bar and stuff all the time. And, as far as I can tell, that is not the popular opinion.

Aside from that, it looks like a great opportunity for plugins to attach UI to it. In fact, perhaps I can monkey my way into getting what I want with an addon, except that would be a fragile solution.

[Calinou]

I agree we should have a way to hide the embedded debug bar without restarting the game. It's especially important for fullscreen so the game viewport can be at the actual fullscreen resolution.

The main difficulty is to let the user restore the embedded bar without restarting the game. If you've ever pressed Tab in GIMP, you know what I'm talking about 🙂

We could display a notice of the form "Press Shortcut to toggle the embedded game bar" for a few seconds after hiding the embedded game bar, but it could be missed by the user.

I plan to do an extra usability pass on game embedding at some point (e.g. adding keyboard shortcuts, and perhaps also engine time scale control).

[theraot]

I have pressed anything on Blender I know what you are talking about o,.,o.

A couple not intrusive ideas come to mind:

• You could have the bar say the shortcut.
• Or there could be a button to bring it back in the editor.

[CarpenterBlue]

I wanna say, this is prime time to introduce some sort of debug console.
press the tilde key to open it up and show few buttons and such.

[theraot]

@CarpenterBlue Well, there is a new repl which is kind of confusing on when you can use it. For what I gather the game must be on break point, not just paused... And it is not on the game window, but as a bottom panel. Now thinking about it, I wonder if it can work when testing on mobile.

[Calinou]

@CarpenterBlue Well, there is a new repl which is kind of confusing on when you can use it. For what I gather the game must be on break point, not just paused... And it is not on the game window, but as a bottom panel. Now thinking about it, I wonder if it can work when testing on mobile.

It should work on mobile with remote deploy, but you can only use the expression evaluator during a breakpoint (or F7 pause). There's no way to evaluate expressions otherwise, as there is no defined environment to access local/member variables.

See discussion in godotengine/godot#103411 for details.

I wanna say, this is prime time to introduce some sort of debug console. press the tilde key to open it up and show few buttons and such.

This is being tracked in #7091.

[theraot]

@Calinou Check #11891 and Mate godotengine/godot#103457