Better way to reorganize formations in the storyboard

[ntamas]

The current implementation of the storyboard allows shifting formations up or down, but it also makes adjustments to the start and end frames of the formations in a manner that's somewhat unpredictable, in an attempt to keep the storyboard consistent (i.e. storyboard entries should be ordered by start time ascending, and the end time of a formation should be no later than the start time of the next). This should be improved.

One idea that was thrown around on Discord is to provide an "unlock" button that temporarily suspends storyboard validation and lets the designer reorder the formations freely, without changing the start or end times. Transition recalculations (and in general, all operations that require a valid storyboard) would be disabled until the storyboard is locked again, at which point a validation is performed.

Another idea was to convert the start/end times of the storyboard entries into a simple tabular format (one line per formation, three columns: start time, duration, formation name) and showing it in Blender's Text Editor. The designer would then be able to edit the formation order in the Text Editor and commit it back to the "real" storyboard later, and a validation would be performed at the point where the changes are written back to the storyboard.

Feel free to vote for one idea or another, or to come up with alternative proposals in the comments below.