Changes arent always bugs.....Be careful
JamesZeppelin
Member Posts: 1,927
Just because something changes doesn't mean it's a bug. Just my advice to he people trying to stick with v7. Careful because what you may be calling a bug may just be a change so when you do decide 8 is good enough for you you just may have alot of work again.
For example I was doing buttons wrong. 7 let me ge away with it. 8 does not. If I would have Stuck with 7 it wouldn't have helped. People still couldn't play it with the web plugin and I would still have to fix when I upgrade
For example I was doing buttons wrong. 7 let me ge away with it. 8 does not. If I would have Stuck with 7 it wouldn't have helped. People still couldn't play it with the web plugin and I would still have to fix when I upgrade
Comments
that's a good point to make TM. some people have less tolerable temperaments than others on the forum. but ultimately, this is BETA software. which means it is gamesalad's job to code and improve it., while it is our job to test it and report deficiencies or suggestions. test pilots always have the bumpiest ride, but they also get to fly the coolest newest stuff before anyone else. so we have to except the bumps as they come, and if you're good natured - help smooth them out. or, you can just wait until 1.0 before deciding to fly.
since there will always be skeptics and negative opinions i will qualify myself by simply stating that i have been a member since nearly the beginning, and i paid for a pro membership when they were still in early testing. the game i made 'grade invaderz' would not even work on the iphone because of the early memory problems and i have yet to be able to publish a game to the app store because of the problems i keep running into. but i understood what i was getting into from the beginning and i have the same hope as many of you - seeing your game in the app store. but i've always been willing to help others - i think tshirtbooth can attest to that. so i hope that we the 'community' can continue to help each other positively. i believe in criticism but it is only helpful when it is constructive.
slowly stepping down from shoddy soapbox and turning to run before being pelted with angry comments...lol
noodles...
To be honest, I have not come across any other product which charges for beta code. If it was free to publish to the iPhone then fair enough. If you pay for a product, it's reasonable to expect it to work.
If rule logic has changed in any new version then the product should have an analysis tool included which would read your actor rules and issue a warning report of potential issues.
you are correct. companies do not normally charge for beta code. but gs did. they didn't trick anyone. they were not underhanded in any way and all the software is free to post web games and now executables with.
they expressed their intent to work, tirelessly i might add, to fix and improve it. especially for paid customers, and they are living up to that. at least in my opinion.
you can pay up to $5k or more for software that still has bugs and is being actively worked on.
i'm not saying don't ask for help or fixes or clarification. i am constantly bothering them for help and fixes for my games. i'm saying some of us can curb the negativity with which we ask for help.
no update will ever be perfect. the wiki will never cover entirely everyone's individual needs unless we pitch in with requests and examples.
for those of us who paid, no one twisted our arms. and as the more experienced help the newcomers, they will realize that 'things not working' does not always equate to bugs. sometimes it's just a matter of searching for the fixes within the structure of the code. you know , that dreaded word...debugging, that so many people hate.
my noodlishish two cents...
I could struggle on with 0.8.1 and assume that the problems I am having are down to this new version actually being 'better' and not letting me 'get away with it' and do whatever it is that I need to do to get my game running properly again.
However, I do think that the way I had my game set up was perfectly logical, and I can't see any reason for it to behave any differently in a new version, especially seeing that the rules and attributes that I am using have not been mentioned in the update.
All the update says is that you can now output at new resolutions and you also have the portrait mode (BTW thanks for that Devs! A very welcome adition for many, I'm sure!)
What the update did NOT say is 'Oh, by the way, we've changed ALL the logic and the way that actors and attributes interact with eachother and everything that you've been working on so far will not working anymore, because you were probably doing it wrong in the first place!'
I am sure that this is not what the Devs intended either. I am sure that in their minds, as well as mine, an update should 1. Add new features 2. Fix old bugs 3. Improve workflow. I do not believe that any of the issues that I am experiencing fall into any of those 3. I do think that 0.8.0 has introduced a few gremlins into the works and that 0.8.1 has not fixed them all.
I fully expect there to be a 0.8.2 and even .3 over the coming weeks as these gremlins are hunted down and exterminated, which leads me back to TinyMonster's opening post....
So, what if I DO now begin working around the issues that 0.8.0 (and 0.8.1) are now presenting to me, only to find out that they WERE bugs after all, and all my work arounds are now useless!! ;]
Thanks for listening.
ps. If any Devs would like to contact me, to send examples of my game and further explain my issues, I would be happy to get involved - it would also be nice to establish wether these are bugs or not once and for all!
Before dropping a patch maybe have a few vets, or non vets give it a go first
Im sure there wold be plenty volunteers.
Then we can get a list of changes ahead of time.
What do you guys think?
i would definitely suggest finding out what exactly is going wrong in your game. that's what i did and it eventually lead me to the problem. which was literally me 'getting away with something' in the previous build which i had to correct for the future. it's not the case for everyone, but it is the case for some and you won't know until you investigate.
http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=3043
noodles...
Anyway, I'll get back to reading...off to the next tab for a bit....
for example.
I had an enemy spawner which spawned enemies every 5 seconds.. in 081, it stopped spawning anything. After faffing for a few hours, I decided to re-create the scene from scratch in a new scene, but without any logic/behaviour changes.
And I got it to work, but only if my "pause" button was not on screen.
So I then decided there must be some kind of issue with my pause code, so I made a new pause button, and made it as simple as I poss could (ish)..
Basically, it spauses my music, switches to a new scene (pause scene) and preserves the scene.
But now, when I return to the sceen (again using a new unpause actor with a simple ..resume music and change scene...rule) most (but not all) of my actor behaviours do not work...these include "detroy" rules, "change attribue" rules, but apparently not accelerate rules, or constrain rules.
@slowboy I am of the same frame of mind as you..i.e. Do I spend more time de-bugging my game in 081, only to find out it's a salad bug, and not a bug in my own logic?
All in all though, I'm happy with salad, it mainly does what I want it to do, the learning curve wasn't so steep, and I deffo wouldn't have gotten as far into I-Phone dev in this short a period of time without it. I also have every faith that there will be an 082 or 3 before too long.....but please don't take too long guys.
I just meant that instead of sticking to .7 it might be better to just role with the punches and bump up to whatever is current. Even if there are some issues.
I'd hate to keep working in 7 and then still have to change everything once the final 8.2 or 8.8 or whatever was done.
Working with 8.2 seems fine once you find your bugs.
I too had to spend a couple hours finding why my game was going crazy, but once i found the problem im good to go.
consequently learned a few other things while trouble shooting for all that time.
Plus its always best to work on what the public is viewing, For better or worse it aint 7.
So are you saying that your game had totally flipped in 8.1 but that you have managed to get it completely working again, in a way that you are happy with, and that you do understand why things work differently now, or something?!
The issue is even if you are on version .7 or in my case .6.2, there is only the latest compiler on the GS server. You may have to rework your code even on an older version if you submit a build now. A version of a game that is under review now - won't compile correctly now because of the .8 update.
This is a flaw with this business model imo- having to rely on the GS server for compiles. You can't isolate and protect yourself from these initial bugs. Perhaps they should continue to have multiple compilers on their side (based on the version of GS you are using)to mitigate this. Or move the compile process to your machine. (Either will do).
Beta or not - we should be able to control our own development cycle so that we aren't completely derailed by upgrades that affect our work whether we upgrade or not. Not intended to be negative (refer to first line)- but this is REALLY something GS needs to consider changing.
Although, I love the idea of the compiler being local because if they ever go under, we can still develop apps with the last version of their GS tool. This is my biggest fear, they go under, we lost the ability to publish.
jhaas/rebump: i agree, a choice of compilers might be a good fix if doable. maybe the chefs are listening.
sparky: this is only a suggestion but i think Jgary came up with the best implementation of game pausing that i have seen so far. i used to do it the way you are doing it now, with my 'grade invaderz' game. but when i read his take on it ...
http://gamesalad.com/wiki/how_tos:gsc_game_pause_tutorial?s[]=pause
and tried it, i found it to be the best possible way. at least so far. it gives you...
- in game pause, so you don't have to leave the scene
- control over exactly what is paused and what continues to function
- a clean easy to implement method that is easy to troubleshoot when/if you have problems
i used it in 'grade invaderz' to pause everything; player, enemies, bullets fired from either side, random scrollers at the top and all the music and sound effects. i think it would help you a great deal. although yes, it would involve recoding things so i would make a dupe of your project and work with the dupe.
slowboy: my game had not totally flipped, but it did stop working as it was in 0.7. and yes, when i found the problem it gave me a better understanding of why things were different.
noodles...
"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there."
Or, in other words, 'stuff I did before don't work no more'
I've had minimal issues thus far, which is good for me. However, it's obvious some people are having problems.
I think better communication and more detailed info as to how GS has changed in its latest version will help people adapt more easily. A feature list is great, but we need more info! Otherwise it just feels like the goalposts are moved every time there's an update.
This makes GS's greatest asset - the ability to *quickly* and *easily* make an iPhone app - one of its weaknesses. A lot of people have multiple apps up already - imagine having to adapt them all to fit in with the new version of GS if you want to do updates!
As to updates affecting your dev cycle, it seems obvious that the software's updated towards the end of each month (thanks! Love regular updates!). This means that you have an idea of when to submit a game.
You can submit *before* the end of the month, or a few days after.
If before, you'll probably want to do an update after the latest version of GS is released. Or you can wait a few days *after* and release then with any new features added to the software.
Hope that helps!
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
The plug-in binary needs to be tightly bound to your game code. Yes, it would increase the game download size, but only by a meg or two. The plus side is that if you get your game to work with version xyz, it will ALWAYS work on the web and you will never have to forward port any games to be compatible with future releases.
As it stands now, every game you create will eventually break as the technology moves forward.
That is why I proposed in another thread that the web player be replaced with SWF output. Think about it: If they are outputing ARM assembly for iPhone then how hard is it to just output AS3 (Flash9) bytecode? Or Java bytecode?
At the very least allow different versions of the web plug-in to exist side by side so that you can have version 070 and 081 running side by side. That way the content can select the appropriate plug-in version.
Just a suggestion...
I like GS a lot, but the maintenence nightmare scenario that this update has shown puts a big fat red question mark in my mind about whether or not I will be able to maintain all the games I plan on making if it means every time a new version comes out I'll have to go update all my games to make sure they are compatible. I don't have the resources to do that!
Think about what would happen if making a game takes a month, how terrible it would be in a year when GS 2.0 comes out all your 1.x games will break!
Bundle the content to the player version. It's that simple.
I was using the .7 viewer though. Once I'd installed the .82 viewer, everything went to hell.
I honesty don't think these are bugs on my side. Some of the stuff is very basic.
I think there's something up with the timers for sure. If I pause (by preserving screen and going to a new scene) and return, all timer stuff stops working.
I think we need another update, CodeMonkey!
Cheers,
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
But to edit the game, for updates say, requires you to go back into GS. So you have to deal with whatever the new GS update is.
Cheers,
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io