tenrdrmerMember, Sous Chef, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 9,934
quantumsheep said: I guess my main fear is that it's a GS branded browser thingy - flying this update in under the radar, without us looking at it, just fuels my conspiracy theory excuse for a brain!
QS
No worries Mate. Its just a grey bar at the top with a close button
Worked really nicely with my preset twitter message. Now if we can just get a dynamic OpenURL we are to shabby workaround to twitter integration.
I think the change to the open-url behavior is a problem. The developer should be able to decide if the link is opened in a new url or if it stays inside the app.
of what I've tested so far ram has shot up to 100mb on iPad 2 originally was 65 to 70mb,still creeps up going from level to level but it does dump when pausing, I'm going to run my iPhone 4 now see what happens
took 10 mins to load a 33mb game onto my iPhone,originally took about 1m30s
no difference to loading times on either iPhone or iPad,increase ram on both devices.i don't see what you've actually done that make things work better,i give up
Thanks for the interest in the new build - we've been working pretty hard on this release while growing our team and improving our internal processes.
Asset Preloading - When your game switches scenes, GameSalad will load all the images used by actors in the new scene. If you have an actor with a changeScene behavior, or an animate behavior, those images will be loaded when the new scene loads. This can lead to long load times if your scene has actors that use a lot of images. If your actor has the "Preload Art" switch off, the scene will only load the images used by that actor when its image-dependent behaviors fire.
For example, lets say you have an actor with a behavior like this: Rule - activate when mouse is pressed Animate - (animates between several images)
If this actor has Preload Art - off, then the scene will only load the images used by the Animate behavior when the mouse button is pressed.
Asset Management - If your game has a scene that runs for a long time (Canabalt-style games, for example), your game can potentially run out of memory. This is because GameSalad was previously designed to unload unused art and sounds only when the game changes scenes. The new asset management changes occur on the backend - when your game is about to run out of memory due to images and sounds, GameSalad will now dump unused assets.
tenrdrmerMember, Sous Chef, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 9,934
It seems like we need a much better explanation of how to use this pre-load art business. cause as it is right now all my old project have it preselected in every actor. So is the game loading every single actor at the start of the game? how the heck does that help anything?
Zombie Addict. In the past its been my experience that when the creator is crashing consistently on the same scene there is some code being ran in that scene that is heavily conflicting with other code and behaviors. these types of things often show them selfs an updates because the creator may have had a change that no longer over looks the bad code. Good luck.
A bug I noticed: When using the change att. behavior to change an actors image, it won't show any of the images that have a dot anywhere in the image file name (excluding the dot in the .png extension).
Even after reading the 'best practice' , i still didn't fully understand it , do we need to uncheck preload art on all of our actors? even the backgrounds that you instantly see when the seen is loaded?
if we have an actor that is unmovable and has no rules , means it acts just as graphic actor , and you see it as soon as the scene start , do we need to use the 'null' and uncheck 'preload art' on it? will it make any load times difference in this case?
what if we have an actors with no image at all , like "manager" actors , does unchecking the preload art will improve performance? (i have about 100 instances actors like this)
took 10 mins to load a 33mb game onto my iPhone,originally took about 1m30s
no difference to loading times on either iPhone or iPad,increase ram on both devices.i don't see what you've actually done that makes things work better,i give up
30mb ram added to iPad about 15 to 20 iPhone you've made it worse but thanks for working really hard to do it
Zombie Addict. In the past its been my experience that when the creator is crashing consistently on the same scene there is some code being ran in that scene that is heavily conflicting with other code and behaviors. these types of things often show them selfs an updates because the creator may have had a change that no longer over looks the bad code. Good luck.
yea was thinking something like that. was going to attempt to try turning off things one by one until it decided to work but would probably take me days/weeks. will have to see what they can figure out from my project files when i send them in.
gamedivisionuk said: no difference to loading times on either iPhone or iPad,increase ram on both devices.i don't see what you've actually done that makes things work better
Unfortunately i have to agree with this , scenes in my game was loading at average of 2-3 sec , now its 4-6 , havnt gave up yet , but not a good start for me .
In response to OpenURL questions: We are sorry for any potential inconvenience this may have caused. When designing OpenURL we focused on customer facing platforms such as iOS and mac publishing.
tshirtbooth said: guys its not an instant fix, you need to go into each actor and tell it NOT to preload the images and animations in order to see the faster load times.
cheers
Hey TSB I was clever enough to figure this out on my own , done that , the bad load time result is after applying the uncheck "Preload art" to my HAVILY animated actors.
maybe i don't see much of a difference because most of my actors use the timer and change attribute image method for animations , but still , loading times got bigger , a result i did not expect from an update that is all about performance .
artonskyblue said: @Lauren, How is the preload art switch any different from using blank actors, and changing their self.image attribute when necessary?
Plus I haven't changed my game since the last build so I'm basing of that and as I've said no loading time difference and increased ram,
P-O-M said: Hey TSB I was clever enough to figure this out on my own , done that , the bad load time result is after applying the uncheck "Preload art" to my HAVILY animated actors.
maybe i don't see much of a difference because most of my actors use the timer and change attribute image method for animations , but still , loading times got bigger , a result i did not expect from an update that is all about performance .
Roy.
tenrdrmerMember, Sous Chef, Senior Sous-ChefPosts: 9,934
If im understanding right the Pre-Load art boolean if checked will load every image change and frame of an animation when the actor loads.
Now where is is a big help is if you uncheck it. then it will not pre-load the frames for every animation. in the past this has been an issue because every animation loads even if its some random crazy once in a while animation based on very specific conditions that may or may not be met. Now your scene will not have these pre-loaded thus improving your load times. In Theory that is.
tshirtbooth said: if you already use the change attribute trick then this will not help you other then animations. this new feature is basically the same as the change image trick. Just an easier way to do it.
cheers
Yup exactly what I was thinking.. Did a little test and you are right I only saw better load times in the projects where I didn't used the change image trick.
Opened up my 'Project Saber' file i've been working on, all worked great on Mac Phew Installed Viewer Tried the latest portion I'm working on (Not merged into overall file) - No significant performance, maybe a couple of mb off ram, didn't really need it on this one but hey No increase in FPS though, i've also took all the pre-load art off except on the 1st image. Then, i load up my overall project, test on the viewer. This was working great on my 3GS at around 50mb RAM (http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=31948&replies=1#post-235413) .. However now, within a couple of minutes of playing its at 55mb RAM and starting to struggle.
I haven't taken off pre-load yet but WHY if a file is unchanged is there an extra 5mb of RAM added in the 1st place? Was this not a build to address performance and RAM usage?
Im praying the overall RAM lowers when i take off all the pre-loads ... Fingers crossed.
Here are my findings so far. -note, have not played with any pre-loading checkboxes Checked a couple of my games so far
Stack Attack - Loading seems pretty much unchanged. Maybe the initial load is a second or so longer, in between scenes is around 1-2 secs as it always was. Performace seems slightly worse framerate-wise, but unchanged memory-wise.
Doodle Ski - loading is quicker especially between scenes, framerate is better by about 5fps, memory is roughly unchanged.
A platform game I have been working on - framerate is slightly worse, titled backgrounds are totally messed up in a weird way (when it gets to the tile point, the next repeat is stretched vertically somehow), memory roughly the same. loading times improved.
Doodle galaxies - better framerate, memory unchanged roughly, load times a fair bit faster.
Also in general, the viewer is getting stuff uploaded to it miiiiiiiiiiiles quicker than earlier versions.
stack attack used to sometimes take up to 4 or 5 mins to get uploaded. Just took 40 seconds when I uploaded it this time.
I don't think anyone has asked about instances of actors yet. I have one background image actor and I change the image every level by making it an instance. If I don't have pre-loaded checked in the prototype will it do that for all of the instances? My first inclination seems to be no, I'll have to go into every instance and uncheck it...
The section i just said that was 55mb now seems to peak at around 49.5mb. This looks like its just taken off what it added by default prior to removing preload. I stated here -http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=31948&replies=1#post-235413 that i was at around 50mb, since then i added a game over screen and couple of buttons which change image when touched so maybe it went up to around 51mb ish .. So its seems to have shaved off a bit but there was a significant improvement in load time ... I think. Im pretty sure the scene took a fair bit to load, it now does appear to load quicker than what i can remember anyway. ha.
floydianspiral said: I don't think anyone has asked about instances of actors yet. I have one background image actor and I change the image every level by making it an instance. If I don't have pre-loaded checked in the prototype will it do that for all of the instances? My first inclination seems to be no, I'll have to go into every instance and uncheck it...
I have some instances for mine and by removing the preload on the prototype it appears to have done my instances as well
Before I go on, I would like to thank the GS team for their hard work and it's great to see so much work going into the look and feel of creator as well as implementation of new features and reworking of backend coding. Your hard work truly is appreciated.
_Belial said: Is there a full change log somewhere? Did they fix the iPad splash screen bugs?
I've Ad Hoc tested this and can confirm that the iPad splash screen problem is still alive and well.
Honestly, this is unacceptable. This is arguably the most important Pro feature to many people and it was the main reason why I spent $500 to upgrade to Pro early this year. At the time I gave in to the idea that this issue wouldn't be around for very long, but he we are and here it is.
Far from helping our apps look more professional, this bug actually makes it look like we just programmed the loading screen wrong. On the iPad, because our splash screen only shows for less than a second and then turns completely white for the remainder of the load, we can't effectively implement promotional items. That means less ability for personal branding. That's the whole point of the splash screen as a pro feature.
This issue doesn't exist on the iPhone version, so it's not a universal issue. It's a highly specific bug which should hopefully make it easier to diagnose and fix.
Please fix this Pro feature bug. Many of us have spent a large amount of money for this feature and this is my public request that it be addressed and fixed.
Comments
FINALLY!
I'll go for risqué ones instead!
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Worked really nicely with my preset twitter message. Now if we can just get a dynamic OpenURL we are to shabby workaround to twitter integration.
took 10 mins to load a 33mb game onto my iPhone,originally took about 1m30s
no difference to loading times on either iPhone or iPad,increase ram on both devices.i don't see what you've actually done that make things work better,i give up
Asset Preloading - When your game switches scenes, GameSalad will load all the images used by actors in the new scene. If you have an actor with a changeScene behavior, or an animate behavior, those images will be loaded when the new scene loads. This can lead to long load times if your scene has actors that use a lot of images.
If your actor has the "Preload Art" switch off, the scene will only load the images used by that actor when its image-dependent behaviors fire.
For example, lets say you have an actor with a behavior like this:
Rule - activate when mouse is pressed
Animate - (animates between several images)
If this actor has Preload Art - off, then the scene will only load the images used by the Animate behavior when the mouse button is pressed.
Please refer to the best practices guide for a more in-depth explanation of how to use the Preload Art attribute.
http://gamesalad.com/blog/2011/10/05/gamesalad-best-practices-asset-pre-loader/
Asset Management - If your game has a scene that runs for a long time (Canabalt-style games, for example), your game can potentially run out of memory. This is because GameSalad was previously designed to unload unused art and sounds only when the game changes scenes. The new asset management changes occur on the backend - when your game is about to run out of memory due to images and sounds, GameSalad will now dump unused assets.
Please submit your issue with project file via the contact form so we can help you investigate it.
http://gamesalad.com/feedback
Thanks!
Zombie Addict. In the past its been my experience that when the creator is crashing consistently on the same scene there is some code being ran in that scene that is heavily conflicting with other code and behaviors. these types of things often show them selfs an updates because the creator may have had a change that no longer over looks the bad code. Good luck.
When using the change att. behavior to change an actors image, it won't show any of the images that have a dot anywhere in the image file name (excluding the dot in the .png extension).
The in app URL thingy looks cool too!
Thanks for trying to clarify things up.
Even after reading the 'best practice' , i still didn't fully understand it , do we need to uncheck preload art on all of our actors? even the backgrounds that you instantly see when the seen is loaded?
if we have an actor that is unmovable and has no rules , means it acts just as graphic actor ,
and you see it as soon as the scene start , do we need to use the 'null' and uncheck 'preload art' on it? will it make any load times difference in this case?
what if we have an actors with no image at all , like "manager" actors , does unchecking the preload art will improve performance? (i have about 100 instances actors like this)
Roy.
no difference to loading times on either iPhone or iPad,increase ram on both devices.i don't see what you've actually done that makes things work better,i give up
30mb ram added to iPad about 15 to 20 iPhone you've made it worse
but thanks for working really hard to do it
Roy.
We are sorry for any potential inconvenience this may have caused. When designing OpenURL we focused on customer facing platforms such as iOS and mac publishing.
maybe i don't see much of a difference because most of my actors use the timer and change attribute image method for animations , but still , loading times got bigger , a result i did not expect from an update that is all about performance .
Roy.
Now where is is a big help is if you uncheck it. then it will not pre-load the frames for every animation. in the past this has been an issue because every animation loads even if its some random crazy once in a while animation based on very specific conditions that may or may not be met. Now your scene will not have these pre-loaded thus improving your load times.
In Theory that is.
Opened up my 'Project Saber' file i've been working on, all worked great on Mac
Installed Viewer
Tried the latest portion I'm working on (Not merged into overall file) - No significant performance, maybe a couple of mb off ram, didn't really need it on this one but hey
Then, i load up my overall project, test on the viewer. This was working great on my 3GS at around 50mb RAM (http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=31948&replies=1#post-235413) .. However now, within a couple of minutes of playing its at 55mb RAM and starting to struggle.
I haven't taken off pre-load yet but WHY if a file is unchanged is there an extra 5mb of RAM added in the 1st place? Was this not a build to address performance and RAM usage?
Im praying the overall RAM lowers when i take off all the pre-loads ... Fingers crossed.
going to download right away!
I want to see if the bugs happens on me
Calvin
-note, have not played with any pre-loading checkboxes
Checked a couple of my games so far
Stack Attack - Loading seems pretty much unchanged. Maybe the initial load is a second or so longer, in between scenes is around 1-2 secs as it always was. Performace seems slightly worse framerate-wise, but unchanged memory-wise.
Doodle Ski - loading is quicker especially between scenes, framerate is better by about 5fps, memory is roughly unchanged.
A platform game I have been working on - framerate is slightly worse, titled backgrounds are totally messed up in a weird way (when it gets to the tile point, the next repeat is stretched vertically somehow), memory roughly the same. loading times improved.
Doodle galaxies - better framerate, memory unchanged roughly, load times a fair bit faster.
Also in general, the viewer is getting stuff uploaded to it miiiiiiiiiiiles quicker than earlier versions.
stack attack used to sometimes take up to 4 or 5 mins to get uploaded. Just took 40 seconds when I uploaded it this time.
The section i just said that was 55mb now seems to peak at around 49.5mb. This looks like its just taken off what it added by default prior to removing preload. I stated here -http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=31948&replies=1#post-235413 that i was at around 50mb, since then i added a game over screen and couple of buttons which change image when touched so maybe it went up to around 51mb ish .. So its seems to have shaved off a bit but there was a significant improvement in load time ... I think. Im pretty sure the scene took a fair bit to load, it now does appear to load quicker than what i can remember anyway. ha.
Honestly, this is unacceptable. This is arguably the most important Pro feature to many people and it was the main reason why I spent $500 to upgrade to Pro early this year. At the time I gave in to the idea that this issue wouldn't be around for very long, but he we are and here it is.
Far from helping our apps look more professional, this bug actually makes it look like we just programmed the loading screen wrong. On the iPad, because our splash screen only shows for less than a second and then turns completely white for the remainder of the load, we can't effectively implement promotional items. That means less ability for personal branding. That's the whole point of the splash screen as a pro feature.
This issue doesn't exist on the iPhone version, so it's not a universal issue. It's a highly specific bug which should hopefully make it easier to diagnose and fix.
Please fix this Pro feature bug. Many of us have spent a large amount of money for this feature and this is my public request that it be addressed and fixed.
I installed and will test it...
I'll feedback