I think they are testing out the native features access they have built into the system. I imagine starting with simple things easy to check. I see this as an early indication of more stuff to follow. Once they get it sorted the will be able to easily add tons of features. I think the issue with creator is they seem to have only one engineer working on it. In fact it seems @blackcloakGS seems to do everything. I give him credit for what he is able to get done being it's all on him. They need to hire another engineer that can work with him. I couldn't tell you what the other engineers are doing as we never hear from them. It seems GS has really slimed down their workforce. Trying to live within their meager means. I think if their going to survive they need to reduce the free to play model to a trial version or limit new features to pro. The free ride has to end sooner or later for GS to survive.
I think they are testing out the native features access they have built into the system. I imagine starting with simple things easy to check. I see this as an early indication of more stuff to follow. Once they get it sorted the will be able to easily add tons of features. I think the issue with creator is they seem to have only one engineer working on it. In fact it seems @blackcloakGS seems to do everything. I give him credit for what he is able to get done being it's all on him. They need to hire another engineer that can work with him. I couldn't tell you what the other engineers are doing as we never hear from them. It seems GS has really slimed down their workforce. Trying to live within their meager means. I think if their going to survive they need to reduce the free to play model to a trial version or limit new features to pro. The free ride has to end sooner or later for GS to survive.
I have to agree with everything your saying here mate, credit where credit is due @blackcloakGS is doing an amazing job in creating a framework that can be built upon, I myself feel very positive in the direction things are going and I agree 100% with you when you say "The free ride has to end sooner or later for GS to survive."
Yes @CodeWizard I'm very confused about this. I thought previously ram was released at a scene change - I've just been updating some apps and when viewed through the viewer the ram just keeps on increasing with every scene change.
dgackeyAustin, TXInactive, PRO, Chef EmeritusPosts: 699
Folks, I know it's a good laugh to poke fun at some of the choices made, but @quantumsheep had it on the nose a few days ago: vibration was something that was requested by a fellow dev, it was a line of code, I asked @blackcloakGS to put it in.
Prior to that, adding FB sharing to the existing Twitter functionality was something that was long overdue and many of you asked for. We put it in.
Believe me, if things like snapping to grid and some of the other interface improvements were that trivial to implement, we'd have them in tomorrow.
Regarding the comments that there have been 2-year-old bugs that haven't been fixed yet, that's a statement that @codewizard and I take very seriously, and we sat down and went through the bug database for several hours on Friday.
Suffice it to say that there have been things that fell through the cracks during some of the personnel changes that have occurred in the past, but we have been doing our best to address bugs as quickly as possible, and grab whatever high-value/low-risk features we can along the way.
One thing I'll ask of everyone is to please make sure you're submitting tickets through the support page for any outstanding bugs that are plaguing you. We're working on a way to increase visibility of those acknowledged and outstanding defects so you'll know what we're aware of and what we aren't.
Thanks,
Dan
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
@dgackey thanks for the update and keep up the good work ... I have not been on here for long so can't comment on the past but from what I see you guys are doing a great job considering the lack of resources and things are looking better every day ... One request if the stretch feature could be implemented we would really appreciate it as it will make Android app support much easier and there will be no need to create multiple binaries to support different platforms ... Once again thank you ...
Believe me, if things like snapping to grid and some of the other interface improvements were that trivial to implement, we'd have them in tomorrow.
Are these improvements likely to happen eventually, and if so can you throw us a ball-park guess as to when this might be, even if it's very very approximate ?
Regarding the comments that there have been 2-year-old bugs that haven't been fixed yet, that's a statement that @codewizard and I take very seriously . . .
There are plenty of bugs even older than 2 years, they've been repeatedly reported and complained about in the forums for year after year after year, but they never get fixed, in fact the list seems to be slowly growing over time, so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to make the occasional joke at GameSalad's expense (poking fun at the 'vibrate function'), I suspect it's mostly longstanding frustration.
One thing I'll ask of everyone is to please make sure you're submitting tickets through the support page for any outstanding bugs that are plaguing you.
We've been doing that for years, shooting bug reports into the black void of the bug reporting system, with no feedback, no indication that anyone has read our reports - and crucially - the bugs we report resurface month after month, release after release, year after year. I doubt I'm the only one who has long given up reporting bugs, there doesn't seem to be much point.
We're working on a way to increase visibility of those acknowledged and outstanding defects so you'll know what we're aware of and what we aren't.
This was kicked around over a year ago, 8 months ago it was about to happen, 8 months later still no list of known bugs, as I've said elsewhere it comes to something when your users have lowered their expectations to the point where they are hoping and waiting (for over a year) for a list of known bugs to be put together, not for any of these bugs to actually be addressed, but just to see which bugs have registered on GameSalad's radar.
Can you not simply post a list of known bugs here on the forums ?
dgackeyAustin, TXInactive, PRO, Chef EmeritusPosts: 699
edited November 2013
Are these improvements likely to happen eventually, and if so can you throw us a ball-park guess as to when this might be, even if it's very very approximate ?
One of the central frustrations you're expressing throughout this post is that expectations are being set and then not being met. I'm going to decline to continue that pattern and tell you that I can't give you a ballpark on these other than to say we are working on the items in the roadmap as fast as we can with the resources we have.
There are plenty of bugs even older than 2 years, they've been repeatedly reported and complained about in the forums for year after year after year, but they never get fixed, in fact the list seems to be slowly growing over time, so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to make the occasional joke at GameSalad's expense (poking fun at the 'vibrate function'), I suspect it's mostly longstanding frustration.
That's certainly understandable, and I don't blame you for the frustration. I can't change what happened 2+ years ago and can't really even comment on anything that occurred earlier than 2 months ago; I'm just telling you what the focus is now and trying to be up front about how we are marshaling resources towards the issues users are reporting and features you're requesting.
We've been doing that for years, shooting bug reports into the black void of the bug reporting system, with no feedback, no indication that anyone has read our reports - and crucially - the bugs we report resurface month after month, release after release, year after year. I doubt I'm the only one who has long given up reporting bugs, there doesn't seem to be much point.
Again, fair enough, but what I have observed in my short time here is that when the devs are given a block of time to address bugs, they're hitting the database, grabbing the open items with the highest priority, and addressing as many as they can.
One-liners about bugs as old as the company, while an understandable stress relief, are unfortunately unlikely to help get an issue into that queue.
This was kicked around over a year ago, 8 months ago it was about to happen, 8 months later still no list of known bugs, as I've said elsewhere it comes to something when your users have lowered their expectations to the point where they are hoping and waiting (for over a year) for a list of known bugs to be put together, not for any of these bugs to actually be addressed, but just to see which bugs have registered on GameSalad's radar.
Can you not simply post a list of known bugs here on the forums ?
Again, I cannot address the statements made 8 months ago or a year ago. I was fairly surprised myself that this wasn't already public and I'm looking into it.
Regarding "simply post[ing] a list", of course I can copy-paste a JIRA page onto the forums, but it will be about as useful as any tabular data posted into a forum, which is to say, probably a jumbled mess of broken formatting and not-terribly useful summary data. This isn't rocket science, we should be able to post this stuff.
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
I am a bit amazed that there is no list of bugs and future features to be implemented in the order they will be addressed and showing what is currently being worked on. The road map is a step in that direction but is vague.
I have been involved with other software for my business and they all have a detailed bug reporting system and they respond to bug reports from users. Without this things will always fall through the cracks and like Socks said who would keep filling out bug reports if they get no response and don't see any change to the software.
Without a proper bug reporting system the quality of the software will suffer needlessly. It will be much easier for the GS team to fix bugs in an orderly fashion and get input from their beta testers. We all know how bad software can get when bugs aren't addressed and you keep building on top of it and how much time is wasted chasing your tail trying to fix and patch it. It compounds until eventually you have to stop rip the whole thing apart and just about start from scratch. I am not saying GS is anywhere near that point but you get my drift.
We all want a good quality product and it is achieved with good staff and efficient processes. From what I have read here it sounds like you have good staff so what about an efficient bug reporting system and process to deal with them.
dgackeyAustin, TXInactive, PRO, Chef EmeritusPosts: 699
edited November 2013
I am a bit amazed that there is no list of bugs and future features to be implemented in the order they will be addressed and showing what is currently being worked on. The road map is a step in that direction but is vague.
I have been involved with other software for my business and they all have a detailed bug reporting system and they respond to bug reports from users. Without this things will always fall through the cracks and like Socks said who would keep filling out bug reports if they get no response and don't see any change to the software.
Without a proper bug reporting system the quality of the software will suffer needlessly. It will be much easier for the GS team to fix bugs in an orderly fashion and get input from their beta testers. We all know how bad software can get when bugs aren't addressed and you keep building on top of it and how much time is wasted chasing your tail trying to fix and patch it. It compounds until eventually you have to stop rip the whole thing apart and just about start from scratch. I am not saying GS is anywhere near that point but you get my drift.
We all want a good quality product and it is achieved with good staff and efficient processes. From what I have read here it sounds like you have good staff so what about an efficient bug reporting system and process to deal with them.
The problem is not that these things don't exist. They do! There are multiple bug databases, a sophisticated CS ticket-tracking system linked to said database (at least one of them), and a number of other systems in place. There are folks responsible and assigned to deal with these issues who do so on a daily basis.
We do respond to every bug report that is received by our ticket system. I don't know the complete chronology of when that was implemented, but I know how it works right now, and can see the hundreds of tickets we have resolved, how many we get every day, etc.
As for what happened to bugs and feature requests from 2+ years ago, I couldn't hazard a guess, but decisions made in the past to restrict transparency probably didn't help the matter.
As I said, looking into it.
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
One of the central frustrations you're expressing throughout this post is that expectations are being set and then not being met. I'm going to decline to continue that pattern and tell you that I can't give you a ballpark on these other than to say we are working on the items in the roadmap as fast as we can with the resources we have.
I wouldn't say a very very approximate ball-park guess is really going to pin anyone into a corner, I was thinking 'sometime late next year' or 'possibly early 2015' rather than 'in around X months' or anything like that, throw in as many caveats as you like, it's certainly going to be preferable to being left in the dark.
It's not like people are demanding joints and polygonal collisions and custom fonts before another year has come and gone, just a vague idea of when some of the basic features and bug fixes might start to appear ?
And without wanting to sound rude (and admittedly having zero experience of running a software development company), I'd be tempted to say if "one of the central frustrations you're expressing is that expectations are being set and then not being met" the answer might be to set more reasonable expectations that can be met, rather than leaving your users in the dark ?
One-liners about bugs as old as the company, while an understandable stress relief, are unfortunately unlikely to help get an issue into that queue.
I doubt anyone thinks they will, after a couple of years of firing off futile reports through the official channels I really think you can excuse people for the occasional (good natured) joke.
(P.S. It wasn't me doing the one liners, it was another user).
I was fairly surprised myself that this wasn't already public and I'm looking into it. [....] This isn't rocket science, we should be able to post this stuff.
That would be very welcome ! >-
dgackeyAustin, TXInactive, PRO, Chef EmeritusPosts: 699
I wouldn't say a very very approximate ball-park guess is really going to pin anyone into a corner, I was thinking 'sometime late next year' or 'possibly early 2015' rather than 'in around X months' or anything like that, throw in as many caveats as you like, it's certainly going to be preferable to being left in the dark.
No, of course, and I get that. What I'm saying is that any statement from me on these matters beyond 'if I could get them implemented tomorrow, I would' would be pure conjecture. @codewizard has a roadmap of what he and his team are committing to, and I respect that.
It's not like people are demanding joints and polygonal collisions and custom fonts before another year has come and gone, just a vague idea of when some of the basic features and bug fixes might start to appear ?
And without wanting to sound rude (and admittedly having zero experience of running a software development company), I'd be tempted to say (perhaps glibly) if "one of the central frustrations [we're] expressing is that expectations are being set and then not being met" the answer might be to set more reasonable expectations that can be met, rather than leaving your users in the dark ?
I can certainly understand your feelings here, but again, @codewizard has made his team's roadmap public and I'm stating my intention to get the public-facing defect database visible, and both of us are being as transparent as we can here on the forums (while acknowledging that we can't share everything we're working on at all times for obvious reasons).
So, with respect, I don't think anything about the way the two of us are operating here is leaving customers in the dark. I recognize we have a lot of work to do to earn back goodwill that was spent prior to our arrival, and we're going to work hard to do that, but one thing I won't do is make promises we aren't sure we can keep.
I doubt anyone thinks they will, after a couple of years of firing off futile reports through the official channels I really think you can excuse people for the occasional (good natured) joke.
(P.S. It wasn't me doing the one liners, it was another user).
Yep, I know, and I wasn't really directing that at you (or even at him), just trying to illustrate that the most reliable way to ensure your big ticket issues are addressed is to get them into the database. I understand the cynicism, but cynicism doesn't solve problems.
I just want you guys to get the features you need to make great games.
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
I'm stating my intention to get the public-facing defect database visible . . .
Looking forward to that, it certainly would feel like a breakthrough on the bug front (from the user's end at least), so like I say that would be very welcome.
So, with respect, I don't think anything about the way the two of us are operating here is leaving customers in the dark.
I just mean with regards to knowing when things might happen, when longstanding bugs might start to be addressed, when improvements to Creator's workflow might start to appear and so on, and like I say a vague idea would be better than nothing.
Example, I have a game I started back in 2011 (possibly the best game in the world, very likely to singlehandedly drag the world out of recession), it ran aground when I discovered that the animation behaviour (specifically the frame rates) were completely screwed up, the game relied heavily on the animation behaviour so was put on hold, of course bug reports were sent in, numerous times, extensive and in exacting detail with example projects and illustrations . . . . we are now 7 weeks off 2014 and I am none the wiser as to knowing whether this bug will ever be ironed out, it's worth repeating an earlier point, I'm not saying that after 2 years I am still waiting for the bug to be addressed, I am saying that after 2 years I am still waiting for news as to whether the bug is even on GameSalad's radar, let alone resolving it.
Add to this the idea that, at this stage, you feel that giving users a vague idea (even a very vague ballpark guess) as to when things might progress would leave you open to criticism (if delivery dates were missed) so would rather not comment on timescale . . . it's in this context that I'm using "left in the dark", which I don't think is an unreasonable use of the phrase.
I understand the cynicism, but cynicism doesn't solve problems.
Sure cynicism doesn't solve problems, agreed, that's not it's function. I personally wouldn't label one of your paying users a cynic for expressing his entirely reasonable frustrations through a good natured joke.
Anyhow, I think I'll leave it there, I'm mostly just moaning now, but thanks for the reply, it's genuinely appreciated, and I hope you (and Codewizard) get the chance to work your magic and get things moving in the right direction.
>-
dgackeyAustin, TXInactive, PRO, Chef EmeritusPosts: 699
Sure cynicism doesn't solve problems, agreed, that's not it's function. I personally wouldn't label one of your paying users a cynic for expressing his entirely reasonable frustrations through a good natured joke.
Not at all what I was referring to. Paying customers don't need anyone's permission to joke, rant or otherwise sound off.
What I was referring to there was the comment that there wasn't any point in reporting bugs because they were ignored for X number of years and therefore, the entire system is a black hole.
At any rate, I appreciate the feedback and we'll continue to update the forums on progress -- good, bad, and ugly.
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
What I was referring to there was the comment that there wasn't any point in reporting bugs because they were ignored for X number of years and therefore, the entire system is a black hole.
Ah! It was me you were calling a cynic ! Lol )
Fair enough, but I'd only make the same point, I don't think voicing an entirely reasonable (and demonstrably true) frustration necessarily marks you out as a cynic.
Those bugs really were reported, many many times, there really was zero feedback, the bugs really do keep appearing release after release, year after year, so if expressing a genuinely held frustration about something that is demonstrably true makes me a cynic, then I'm a cynic.
dgackeyAustin, TXInactive, PRO, Chef EmeritusPosts: 699
I didn't say you weren't right! Just that said statement is, as of this writing, no longer accurate!
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
I didn't say you weren't right! Just that said statement is, as of this writing, no longer accurate!
I wait, in hope, for proof that this is true, not seen any yet, but like I say I gave up reporting bugs a long time ago, not out of cynicism but simple logic (Einstein's definition of Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results).
One quick question, would we have to resubmit bug reports from prior to the implementation of the new bug reporting regime, or are all the old longstanding bugs still on record somewhere . . . ?
EDIT, I suppose the list of known bugs would answer this question, so I'm happy to wait until that turns up.
Yeah def some outstanding issues that need to be resolved. Seeing new behaviors when old and widely used ones are not working the way they should is frustrating for us.
It's kind of like developing a game that has 100 systems in it, but a 50% portion of them have no polish and are largely uneeded. (Not being literal here, just an example).
I can think of a few major bugs off the top of my head that have been around for awhile, and i'm probably missing some:
Animations are inaccurate and play at variable rates. Using interpolate or a timer animation system is much smoother and more accurate... with a higher fps cap. Which brings me to the next issue.
Interpolate tends to skip a bit on the last portion of a long interpolation.
Timers are also prone to getting off sync, not such a big issue though.
Duplicating actors gives them some weird twin power thing where sometimes making changes to ones attributes cause the others to become broken.
Sometimes dragging an attribute to a rule makes it so the rule has no options (true/false, expression field, etc) unless you go back and then re-enter the actor.
Sometimes attributes will change back to an old attribute or behave oddly.
Off center dragging of rulesets so the mouse has to be way out of position to the the scrolling boundry.
Tables can seriously slow down the creator sometimes, other times they are just fine.
All of these have been around for awhile and persist through the versions, none of them are issues I experience in a single project/situation/computer. Completely across the board issues.
So yeah, these would be nice to address, especially the behavior issues. When you get a chance of course... I know that banging your head against a bug that makes no sense is torture and often unproductive vs creating something new that takes a few hrs. But sometimes it has to be done.
Ok rant ended for now. These never seem to break much new ground anyway ( or in this case fill in the old cracks!). Oh well, such is the life of a GS developer.
Thanks for the work you have done GS team. GS is really a great tool as-is. I just want to see all the potential in it come to fruition.
dgackeyAustin, TXInactive, PRO, Chef EmeritusPosts: 699
@dgackey can you shed any light on my question up the page regarding GS not releasing ram when changing scenes?
Not at 1:03 AM to be sure!
I am really not the best person to reel off specifics on any individual bug, but I'll ask @BlackCloakGS in the morning.
/off to bed...
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
first off Yes I know my grammar sucks but I will get my point across.
Is there a time frame on the actor bug were you can't add an attribute to a actor thats already in a scene. if you do they all act like prototypes change one change them all. I reported this and got a response so I know its known about. For me this is a show stopper I can't even work in 10.4 or nightly builds this really really needs to be fixed.
heres a video of that bug also the actor on scene size unlocks when you move one thats a old bug that I can work around but SUCKS.
Now imagine trying to deal with those bugs and working on a game thats a year in development, the game below is close to finish line, but I still change things so if I try to add an attribute too one of my little Bots I have to go into 32 scenes and remove them then put them back in just so the new attribute will take affect, SUCKS. so I'm stuck working in 10.3.
How about reducing workload and free up resources a bit by maintaining one version of the program? Either switch to nightlies permanently and make them open to everyone, or stick with working on the current public version only i.e. 10.4.x. It must be messy maintaining the two! You'll also end up having more people on hand to test any new features and find bugs etc. not just the small handful of pro members that have decided to move over to the nightlies.
As they stand at the moment I don't really get the nightlies, not just because they're often weeks apart but because you keep throwing in half arsed features that just seem to stay broken/incomplete through each nighty build, and it's taking forever for any of them to appear in a public release. Some of the bugs you've said previously should be an easy fix (not you personally).
There's so many things that could be included that would make GameSalad awesome but to be honest I'd be a much happier bunny with a stable and more reliable Creator.
Vibrate would be cool for a game I'm sure, but if it takes me two to three times as long creating that game because Creator isn't playing nice then it's a pointless addition, and you can probably understand why people were joking with frustration about it!
@dgackey You know something else that should really only be a line of code that would be really nice to have in there... a flag to lock the screen on. Problem is with accelerometer games is if they don't have any touch gestures on them the screen shuts off every 30 seconds even though you are playing it through the accelerometer. That can be a big pain and would be a nice simple quick addition.
My game will run on iPad 1 for about eight rounds through the game which has two scenes before it crashes. The ad banner starts to flash red when changing scene or ad about one or two rounds before crashing. It will keep running but keeps crashing periodically. The only way to free it up is to shut down and restart the iPad to get another eight rounds.
I need to know if this memory issue still exists before I go and implement all the code to destroy all the actors. So please may I have an answer?
This may be related to my 'pause scene' issues. The game runs absolutely fine but after pausing the game it'll crash soon after.
I've already sent in a file to the gs crew for analysis.
QS
Gs seems to compound the pause scene memory on top of whatever scene your in, which can be pretty taxing. Would love for some controls over memory dumping. Or at least a tie in to pause or change scene.
Comments
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
See http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/56860/highly-effective-memory-optimization-suggestion-for-games-with-more-than-one-scene
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Can you enlighten us...?
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Prior to that, adding FB sharing to the existing Twitter functionality was something that was long overdue and many of you asked for. We put it in.
Believe me, if things like snapping to grid and some of the other interface improvements were that trivial to implement, we'd have them in tomorrow.
Regarding the comments that there have been 2-year-old bugs that haven't been fixed yet, that's a statement that @codewizard and I take very seriously, and we sat down and went through the bug database for several hours on Friday.
Suffice it to say that there have been things that fell through the cracks during some of the personnel changes that have occurred in the past, but we have been doing our best to address bugs as quickly as possible, and grab whatever high-value/low-risk features we can along the way.
One thing I'll ask of everyone is to please make sure you're submitting tickets through the support page for any outstanding bugs that are plaguing you. We're working on a way to increase visibility of those acknowledged and outstanding defects so you'll know what we're aware of and what we aren't.
Thanks,
Dan
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
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Can you not simply post a list of known bugs here on the forums ?
One-liners about bugs as old as the company, while an understandable stress relief, are unfortunately unlikely to help get an issue into that queue. Again, I cannot address the statements made 8 months ago or a year ago. I was fairly surprised myself that this wasn't already public and I'm looking into it.
Regarding "simply post[ing] a list", of course I can copy-paste a JIRA page onto the forums, but it will be about as useful as any tabular data posted into a forum, which is to say, probably a jumbled mess of broken formatting and not-terribly useful summary data. This isn't rocket science, we should be able to post this stuff.
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
I have been involved with other software for my business and they all have a detailed bug reporting system and they respond to bug reports from users. Without this things will always fall through the cracks and like Socks said who would keep filling out bug reports if they get no response and don't see any change to the software.
Without a proper bug reporting system the quality of the software will suffer needlessly. It will be much easier for the GS team to fix bugs in an orderly fashion and get input from their beta testers. We all know how bad software can get when bugs aren't addressed and you keep building on top of it and how much time is wasted chasing your tail trying to fix and patch it. It compounds until eventually you have to stop rip the whole thing apart and just about start from scratch. I am not saying GS is anywhere near that point but you get my drift.
We all want a good quality product and it is achieved with good staff and efficient processes. From what I have read here it sounds like you have good staff so what about an efficient bug reporting system and process to deal with them.
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We do respond to every bug report that is received by our ticket system. I don't know the complete chronology of when that was implemented, but I know how it works right now, and can see the hundreds of tickets we have resolved, how many we get every day, etc.
As for what happened to bugs and feature requests from 2+ years ago, I couldn't hazard a guess, but decisions made in the past to restrict transparency probably didn't help the matter.
As I said, looking into it.
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
It's not like people are demanding joints and polygonal collisions and custom fonts before another year has come and gone, just a vague idea of when some of the basic features and bug fixes might start to appear ?
And without wanting to sound rude (and admittedly having zero experience of running a software development company), I'd be tempted to say if "one of the central frustrations you're expressing is that expectations are being set and then not being met" the answer might be to set more reasonable expectations that can be met, rather than leaving your users in the dark ?
@dgackey I doubt anyone thinks they will, after a couple of years of firing off futile reports through the official channels I really think you can excuse people for the occasional (good natured) joke.
(P.S. It wasn't me doing the one liners, it was another user). That would be very welcome !
So, with respect, I don't think anything about the way the two of us are operating here is leaving customers in the dark. I recognize we have a lot of work to do to earn back goodwill that was spent prior to our arrival, and we're going to work hard to do that, but one thing I won't do is make promises we aren't sure we can keep.
Yep, I know, and I wasn't really directing that at you (or even at him), just trying to illustrate that the most reliable way to ensure your big ticket issues are addressed is to get them into the database. I understand the cynicism, but cynicism doesn't solve problems.
I just want you guys to get the features you need to make great games.
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
Example, I have a game I started back in 2011 (possibly the best game in the world, very likely to singlehandedly drag the world out of recession), it ran aground when I discovered that the animation behaviour (specifically the frame rates) were completely screwed up, the game relied heavily on the animation behaviour so was put on hold, of course bug reports were sent in, numerous times, extensive and in exacting detail with example projects and illustrations . . . . we are now 7 weeks off 2014 and I am none the wiser as to knowing whether this bug will ever be ironed out, it's worth repeating an earlier point, I'm not saying that after 2 years I am still waiting for the bug to be addressed, I am saying that after 2 years I am still waiting for news as to whether the bug is even on GameSalad's radar, let alone resolving it.
Add to this the idea that, at this stage, you feel that giving users a vague idea (even a very vague ballpark guess) as to when things might progress would leave you open to criticism (if delivery dates were missed) so would rather not comment on timescale . . . it's in this context that I'm using "left in the dark", which I don't think is an unreasonable use of the phrase. Sure cynicism doesn't solve problems, agreed, that's not it's function. I personally wouldn't label one of your paying users a cynic for expressing his entirely reasonable frustrations through a good natured joke.
Anyhow, I think I'll leave it there, I'm mostly just moaning now, but thanks for the reply, it's genuinely appreciated, and I hope you (and Codewizard) get the chance to work your magic and get things moving in the right direction.
What I was referring to there was the comment that there wasn't any point in reporting bugs because they were ignored for X number of years and therefore, the entire system is a black hole.
At any rate, I appreciate the feedback and we'll continue to update the forums on progress -- good, bad, and ugly.
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
Fair enough, but I'd only make the same point, I don't think voicing an entirely reasonable (and demonstrably true) frustration necessarily marks you out as a cynic.
Those bugs really were reported, many many times, there really was zero feedback, the bugs really do keep appearing release after release, year after year, so if expressing a genuinely held frustration about something that is demonstrably true makes me a cynic, then I'm a cynic.
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
Universal Binary Template - Universal Binary Template Instructions Rev 4 (Short) - Custom Score Display Template
One quick question, would we have to resubmit bug reports from prior to the implementation of the new bug reporting regime, or are all the old longstanding bugs still on record somewhere . . . ?
EDIT, I suppose the list of known bugs would answer this question, so I'm happy to wait until that turns up.
It's kind of like developing a game that has 100 systems in it, but a 50% portion of them have no polish and are largely uneeded. (Not being literal here, just an example).
I can think of a few major bugs off the top of my head that have been around for awhile, and i'm probably missing some:
Animations are inaccurate and play at variable rates. Using interpolate or a timer animation system is much smoother and more accurate... with a higher fps cap. Which brings me to the next issue.
Interpolate tends to skip a bit on the last portion of a long interpolation.
Timers are also prone to getting off sync, not such a big issue though.
Duplicating actors gives them some weird twin power thing where sometimes making changes to ones attributes cause the others to become broken.
Sometimes dragging an attribute to a rule makes it so the rule has no options (true/false, expression field, etc) unless you go back and then re-enter the actor.
Sometimes attributes will change back to an old attribute or behave oddly.
Off center dragging of rulesets so the mouse has to be way out of position to the the scrolling boundry.
Tables can seriously slow down the creator sometimes, other times they are just fine.
All of these have been around for awhile and persist through the versions, none of them are issues I experience in a single project/situation/computer. Completely across the board issues.
So yeah, these would be nice to address, especially the behavior issues. When you get a chance of course... I know that banging your head against a bug that makes no sense is torture and often unproductive vs creating something new that takes a few hrs. But sometimes it has to be done.
Ok rant ended for now. These never seem to break much new ground anyway ( or in this case fill in the old cracks!). Oh well, such is the life of a GS developer.
Thanks for the work you have done GS team. GS is really a great tool as-is. I just want to see all the potential in it come to fruition.
I am really not the best person to reel off specifics on any individual bug, but I'll ask @BlackCloakGS in the morning.
/off to bed...
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
first off Yes I know my grammar sucks but I will get my point across.
Is there a time frame on the actor bug were you can't add an attribute to a actor thats already in a scene. if you do they all act like prototypes change one change them all. I reported this and got a response so I know its known about. For me this is a show stopper I can't even work in 10.4 or nightly builds this really really needs to be fixed.
heres a video of that bug also the actor on scene size unlocks when you move one thats a old bug that I can work around but SUCKS.
Now imagine trying to deal with those bugs and working on a game thats a year in development, the game below is close to finish line, but I still change things so if I try to add an attribute too one of my little Bots I have to go into 32 scenes and remove them then put them back in just so the new attribute will take affect, SUCKS. so I'm stuck working in 10.3.
How about reducing workload and free up resources a bit by maintaining one version of the program? Either switch to nightlies permanently and make them open to everyone, or stick with working on the current public version only i.e. 10.4.x. It must be messy maintaining the two! You'll also end up having more people on hand to test any new features and find bugs etc. not just the small handful of pro members that have decided to move over to the nightlies.
As they stand at the moment I don't really get the nightlies, not just because they're often weeks apart but because you keep throwing in half arsed features that just seem to stay broken/incomplete through each nighty build, and it's taking forever for any of them to appear in a public release. Some of the bugs you've said previously should be an easy fix (not you personally).
There's so many things that could be included that would make GameSalad awesome but to be honest I'd be a much happier bunny with a stable and more reliable Creator.
Vibrate would be cool for a game I'm sure, but if it takes me two to three times as long creating that game because Creator isn't playing nice then it's a pointless addition, and you can probably understand why people were joking with frustration about it!
See http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/56860/highly-effective-memory-optimization-suggestion-for-games-with-more-than-one-scene
My game will run on iPad 1 for about eight rounds through the game which has two scenes before it crashes. The ad banner starts to flash red when changing scene or ad about one or two rounds before crashing. It will keep running but keeps crashing periodically. The only way to free it up is to shut down and restart the iPad to get another eight rounds.
I need to know if this memory issue still exists before I go and implement all the code to destroy all the actors. So please may I have an answer?
Universal Binary Template - Universal Binary Template Instructions Rev 4 (Short) - Custom Score Display Template
I've already sent in a file to the gs crew for analysis.
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
[Image of Game] "John Smith has just beat level 26 on Beans and Rice! To download Beans and Rice from Google Play, tap here: http://shorturl/adfasdfas
"John Smith just pinned an image to Pinterest" [image of game play]
etc. etc...
Using game variables in social sharing beyond the single URLs would help us market immensely.