Godot Wishlist

[OverloadedOrama]

This is a list of features and fixes that Pixelorama would benefit from, and we are waiting from Godot.

Would be very helpful to have:

• Implement Drawable Textures godotengine/godot-proposals#7379. If I have understood correctly, this solution would be great for layer blending, layer FX and maybe even GPU-based brushes, without having to resort to compute shaders which are not available in the Compatibility renderer.
• Implement fallback to OpenGL 3 / Compatibility renderer when Vulkan is not supported godotengine/godot-proposals#8006. This would allow us to target Vulkan by default, in order to use features such as compute shaders if we need to, and devices that don't support Vulkan would just automatically fallback to OpenGL. It would be nice if Projects exported with the Compatibility renderer fail to run when using Vulkan godotengine/godot#80565 also gets fixed and made possible to target Vulkan, if the project is exported with OpenGL, in case OpenGL has better performance and we want it to be the default.
• A way to add maximum memory to the UndoRedo system.
• Any improvement to static typing is welcome. Currently very excited for statically typed dictionaries. Add static type hints for dictionary members godotengine/godot-proposals#56
• Structs would be nice so we can replace some dictionaries with something more statically typed. Add structs in GDScript godotengine/godot-proposals#7329
• Native file dialogs for the Android and Web platforms would be nice, if possible. Allow use of native system file picker dialog on iOS and web godotengine/godot-proposals#1123
• Improve the performance of the GDScript VM godotengine/godot-proposals#6031. This might be enough to prevent us from using GDExtension for better performance.
• Alternatively, C# support for all platforms and better integration in the engine (no external text editor needed, no dedicated mono version needed) would allow us to use C# for certain algorithms to make them run faster.
• Improved clipboard functionality with support for multiple formats godotengine/godot-proposals#7899. The new clipboard_has/get_image() methods are nice, but not much of a use to us without a way to set an image to the clipboard.
• Add support for particle recording and playback godotengine/godot-proposals#7085. I could be wrong, but this might allow us to have a particle system that is "frozen" in time, which would work with the cel-based nature of Pixelorama's timeline.
• GLES2's return, even as a basic form, would be nice so older hardware can run Pixelorama again. https://twitter.com/RamatakInc/status/1710331907395764283

ThorVG wishlist:
ThorVG is the library that Godot uses to render SVG images. We can utilize the power of it, along with Image.load_svg_from_string() to create vector layers, without us having to create any rendering code. We only need two things:

• Support shape-rendering="crispEdges" to disable anti-aliasing in shapes thorvg/thorvg#1869. This is necessary for pixel art, as most of the time anti-aliasing on shapes is not desired.
• Implement (partial) support for the SVG text element thorvg/thorvg#1897. Text rendering in SVGs can finally allow us to add a text tool without any kind of custom Viewport-based rendering code.

Would be nice to have but not so important (stuff that we can do ourselves easily):

• Export: Modify template without rcedit godotengine/godot#75950. Getting rid of WINE and rcedit from our CI workflows would be great, and a compilation speed boost.
• Add FoldableContainer Node godotengine/godot#87559. To get rid of our custom CollapsibleContainer node.
• Expose Geometry2D.bresenham_line() method godotengine/godot#74714. We have re-implemented Bresenham's line algorithm in GDScript since the early days of Pixelorama, but this exposed method would be running in native C++ code, which would result in a performance boost. And I'd never say no to reducing our lines of code even more!
• Add the ability to group input actions godotengine/godot-proposals#4910. Just to get rid of some code from Keychain, and to make the input map in the project settings look more organized.
• Implement a code formatter for GDScript in the script editor godotengine/godot-proposals#3630. Would help with ensuring good code quality without having to download the gdtoolkit.
• Can't sample two different textures with different repeat and filter settings in a custom shader function godotengine/godot#75935 to avoid duplicate function definition in the SmearRotxel shader.
• Linux: Tablet pen pressure randomly jumps to 1 godotengine/godot#53033 so we can remove the workaround in Tools.gd.
• Allow passing a custom epsilon to is_equal_approx() and is_zero_approx() godotengine/godot-proposals#4425. Should allow for configurable color comparison (similarity option) for the Bucket tool's "Similar area" fill option.
• I wouldn't complain if gif importing/exporting was added to Godot. 😅