I'm a bit late, but really great to see a first-time user trying the editor. It's always insightful to see what should be made more obvious.
I wonder if it's worthwhile making a brief video tutorial at some point to show off the features, in lieu of everything being immediately super intuitive?
I thought I'd chime in by showing a video where I'm trying to recreate WillLem's level in the editor, to show my workflow:
https://youtu.be/vq1TKHLRWLcThis is at normal speed; I'm a bit clumsier with the mouse than usual because to record I had to run Lix on my other machine where the mouse acceleration is strange.
But once you're used to the interface and hotkeys (there are a few more I should get used to), it's very quick to design levels.
I've never used the NeoLemmix editor (I think), and I guess it has evolved a bit from old Lemmix. But the two things that bugged me back then in the Lemmix editor were that there was only a bar of terrain pieces to select, while Lix shows you a full screen full when you're inserting a new tile; and the second that the usefulness of the grid was quite limited, both due to the tile sets themselves and the editor. (I don't think there even was snap to grid when dragging with the mouse?)
The things bugging me in the Lix editor are the lack of paste in place, and that there's no great way of generating maps for different amounts of players from a template (I have to do math when resizing, so Simon's suggestions for the resize dialog sound pretty good; and then the hatch/exit assignments get shuffled around when changing the number of players).
If there's one thing I'm curious about, it would be what the influences and decisions behind a lot of the default keybindings were. I imagine there probably is a reason for them, but they're certainly unusual from an outsider perspective.
Because I use my mouse in the left hand, I remapped everything, but my layout basically mirrors the defaults. I find it very satisfying to do everything without moving either of my hands (one on the mouse, one on the home row of the keyboard). Once you get used to it, everything else that requires you to move you hands is frustrating. I use the same setup in other level, image and graph editors (Tiled, GIMP, ipe) and everything's so fast.
There's always the trade-off between being friendly to beginners and being friendly to power users. Power users can always remap their keys, but then I guess you want to encourage beginners to adopt efficient habits that pay off in the long run. I guess it's similar to text editors like vi/emacs: when you get thrown into the deep end you have no idea what's going on, but later people get carried away by how amazing their (respective) text editor is.
Nice idea, but is there any reason that paste-away and paste-in-place couldn't be 2 separate functions? Both can be useful for different things.
I don't see any value in having paste-away, really. The only instance where it's handy is if you want to build a staircase that goes diagonally down, and that's too specific to warrant a specific feature.
Maybe paste in-place could work with a brief flash around the object to indicate something is happening?
Maybe each step (2, 8, 16) could have its own hotkey for easy switching?
You'd also need one for no grid (=1) I guess. I like one button to cycle around the grid (4 keys would take up a lot of keyboard estate, and I don't want to move my hand), but I guess there's no reason in the settings to not allow setting a separate key for each, and if you set the same for each it replicates the current behavior (like when you overload a hotkey for two skills). I almost always have grid 16 enabled, as the Lix tile sets are designed with the grid in mind.
Either way, looking forward to your levels, maybe at the next multiplayer session?