This would be incredibly useful. It'll seriously speed up development time, cut-down app size and just make everything look shinier!
Will it work across all publishable SKUs?
QS =D
Custom fonts would be great, but without some basic controls like leading, kerning and word spacing they risk looking amateurish, as you probably know great typography is not simply typing some words out on our keyboards . . . . and few things shout 'amateur' louder than poorly kerned text . . . I just hope custom fonts don't simply add our imported fonts to the current list in the display text behaviour, I hope they come with their own panel with some level of user control over standard type/character parameters.
The "actor will not appear to change unless reverted to prototype" is really starting to bug me big time - has anybody reported this and if so had it been resolved recently? Did support say that it's done?
If not I will submit one, cheers, M@
Yep, this is the first big bug that has really slowed down my work, I'm constantly wondering why something's not working, changing numbers and rules, only to realise the changes I've made to the actor in the actors window have not been picked up by the actual actor in the scene, even with the >unlock >revert to prototype trick some changes still don't translate like the actor's colour for instance, if you have 112 yellow actors in your scene and change the master actor to red, those 112 actors will stay yellow, even after the revert to prototype trick, they will be red when you run the game, but your working layout will show them as yellow, which on complex layouts with lots of different elements can get very confusing, the only way to have your working scene display the actors correctly is to delete and replace all 112 yellow actors, which with GS is a pain because you have to do all the manual rounding up of multiple decimal place X and Y values for every single actor and all that crap, this is a major bug, basically the whole prototype / instance underpinning of game design within GameSalad has now gone !
@Socks - I know - I have had a dark foreboding sense that this is the tip of the iceberg in a very cold part of the sea.
As a side note - here I was having complete brain fade wondering how to spell the word 'amateur' the other day and I asked about but still think that result was a failure. Kind of ironic on all accounts. :-\"
I'd like to give my 2c on the Stencyl debate. While it is true that they have been doing great with the new engine, is also true that Stencyl has been stuck in development for this same reason for more than 12 months which is a huge time. Not only that but since all of their focus is getting the engine stable right now, it means that no new features for the editor have been added.
It's a difficult balance to keep.
I like the simplicity and minimalism of Gamesalad. Of course everyone wants the fastest engine with all of the features, but there are trade offs and priorities to deal with.
I don't know what was the situation before, but I like the way progress is communicated and everyone kept in the loop.
I sure think batching and sprite sheet will bring that last bit of performance and fluidity needed (I hate seeing little glitches and hiccups in the fps), and then back to adding more features and workflows which is what GS does best.
. . . and then back to adding more features and workflows which is what GS does best.
I'm not sure how anyone could argue that adding features and workflow is what GS does best !? :-/ Workflow in GameSalad, if I'm being entirely frank, is awful, for every single value entered you have to open and close windows and go back and forth between panels, I'd have to say GameSalad has possibly the worst workflow of any application I've ever used, there are lots of things to love about GameSalad, but the workflow certainly isn't one of them !
I had the inevitable task of locating a certain actor the other day, as all the actors (40 or so) were invisible I needed to:
Click on scene. Click on layers. Open the layers drop down. Select and double click an actor to bring up its attributes and check if it was the right one. Then hit the back button. Click on scene. Click on layers. Open the layers drop down again, find your place in the list . . . . etc etc
An interface with a viable workflow would simply allow you to click on an actor within a list and let you see its attributes right there without leaving that window, want to see the next actor's value ? Simply hit the down arrow. Doing it like this you could check 40 actors for a bad value in seconds.
As for 'adding more features', you can't honestly argue this is something GS does best, Creator is incredibly basic for a piece of software in 2013. All we can really compare GS to is other software, especially other SDKs, and seeing as GS lacks such basic tools as rulers or guides or the ability to zoom into your work area or select more that 1 actor at once or even drag select I'd argue it is almost feature free (certainly the UI).
I'm really glad to hear CodeWizard and blackcloakGS are speaking to some UI design people >- <:-P >- <:-P >- <:-P >- <:-P sorting out Creator is something long overdue, a viable, workable, robust interface with even basic layout tools would make an enormous difference to GameSalad.
The "actor will not appear to change unless reverted to prototype" is really starting to bug me big time - has anybody reported this and if so had it been resolved recently? Did support say that it's done?
If not I will submit one, cheers, M@
Yep, this is the first big bug that has really slowed down my work, I'm constantly wondering why something's not working, changing numbers and rules, only to realise the changes I've made to the actor in the actors window have not been picked up by the actual actor in the scene, even with the >unlock >revert to prototype trick some changes still don't translate like the actor's colour for instance, if you have 112 yellow actors in your scene and change the master actor to red, those 112 actors will stay yellow, even after the revert to prototype trick, they will be red when you run the game, but your working layout will show them as yellow, which on complex layouts with lots of different elements can get very confusing, the only way to have your working scene display the actors correctly is to delete and replace all 112 yellow actors, which with GS is a pain because you have to do all the manual rounding up of multiple decimal place X and Y values for every single actor and all that crap, this is a major bug, basically the whole prototype / instance underpinning of game design within GameSalad has now gone !
Click on scene. Click on layers. Open the layers drop down. Select and double click an actor to bring up its attributes and check if it was the right one. Then hit the back button. Click on scene. Click on layers. Open the layers drop down again, find your place in the list . . . . etc etc
This is the bane of my GameSalad life. I love GameSalad, but one day having to do this constantly will drive me away.
Even just breaking GS Creator's interface into moveable units à la Photoshop would make a world of difference.
Click on scene. Click on layers. Open the layers drop down. Select and double click an actor to bring up its attributes and check if it was the right one. Then hit the back button. Click on scene. Click on layers. Open the layers drop down again, find your place in the list . . . . etc etc
This is the bane of my GameSalad life. I love GameSalad, but one day having to do this constantly will drive me away.
Even just breaking GS Creator's interface into moveable units à la Photoshop would make a world of difference.
I've asked countless of times for a shortcut key to the layers panel, something that should only take 5-10 minutes to add in (an hour max) and would cut out half of those tedious steps above.
This is the bane of my GameSalad life. I love GameSalad, but one day having to do this constantly will drive me away.
Yeah, that day is getting pretty close for me too, the interface is too much of an obstacle to workflow, a couple of projects have become moderately complex and now I spend hours each day clicking back and forward and back and forward and back and forward and back and forward and back and forward and back and forward and back and forward and back and forward . . . . . . . . . . ad nauseam . . . . . . just to do very very basic tasks.
And every time you leave a window and return to it (not out of choice, but because GS forces you into this pointlessly convoluted workflow) everything, absolutely everything, is reset, your position in whatever list you are looking at is gone, any dropdowns that were open are now closed, if you'd scrolled to the bottom of the sounds or actors or images panel you are now back at the top, on the surface of it this is no big deal, just scroll down again, but if you have hundreds of images (easy with a few dozen animation sequences) and you are dealing with image - for example - 364 out of 500 images, every time you have to leave that window and return then you lose your place in the list and have to spend 5 or 10 seconds locating the right image again . . . . do this 50 or 100 or 200 times a day and it starts to feel like torture.
It's as if you were in Photoshop, and you were drawing, so you draw some lines, you draw some more lines, all looks good, but there's one little bit that doesn't look very smooth to you, the line is a little wobbly, so you hit 'E' (for the eraser), rub out the bit you don't like, mmmmm, it might need a little bit more removed, so you rub a bit more out, then hit 'B' to put you back onto the paint brush . . . and carry on.
But if Photoshop were GameSalad it would be . . . . you draw some lines, all looks good, but there's one little bit that doesn't look very smooth to you, so you'll need the eraser, so you click on 'utilities' then chose the 'tools' tab, then from the pull down menu choose 'eraser' - at this stage the image you are working on has disappeared as you are in a different 'mode', it's not visible on the screen, so to get it back you go choose 'painting' and then 'current projects', then from the pulldown menu choose 'main canvas', then rub a little bit of the wobbly line out, take a look, mmmmm . . . . maybe I need to rub a little bit more out . . . so you go back to 'utilities' then chose the 'tools' tab, then from the pull down menu choose 'eraser', then back to the image, so choose 'painting' and then 'current projects', then from the pull down 'main canvas' . . . rub a tiny bit more from the wobbly line, looks good now . . . so you can carry on with the drawing, so click on 'utilities' then chose the 'tools' tab, then from the pull down menu choose 'paint brush' . . .
5,000,000,000 times a day, all day, every day !! 8-X ) :-B [-O< 8-}
I've asked countless of times for a shortcut key to the layers panel, something that should only take 5-10 minutes to add in (an hour max) and would cut out half of those tedious steps above.
Just shut up with your whining and get on the Playhaven, 'buzz' and Tizen bandwagon.
Just shut up with your whining and get on the Playhaven, 'buzz' and Tizen bandwagon.
Already on it. Expect to see my forth game exclusive to Tizen which consists of a vibrating Playhaven ad. I would have put more effort into it but I was sick of accessing the layers panel with the last three games.
Already on it. Expect to see my forth game exclusive to Tizen which consists of a vibrating Playhaven ad. I would have put more effort into it but I was sick of accessing the layers panel with the last three games.
Comments
As a side note - here I was having complete brain fade wondering how to spell the word 'amateur' the other day and I asked about but still think that result was a failure. Kind of ironic on all accounts. :-\"
It's a difficult balance to keep.
I like the simplicity and minimalism of Gamesalad. Of course everyone wants the fastest engine with all of the features, but there are trade offs and priorities to deal with.
I don't know what was the situation before, but I like the way progress is communicated and everyone kept in the loop.
I sure think batching and sprite sheet will bring that last bit of performance and fluidity needed (I hate seeing little glitches and hiccups in the fps), and then back to adding more features and workflows which is what GS does best.
.Gianmichele
I had the inevitable task of locating a certain actor the other day, as all the actors (40 or so) were invisible I needed to:
Click on scene.
Click on layers.
Open the layers drop down.
Select and double click an actor to bring up its attributes and check if it was the right one.
Then hit the back button.
Click on scene.
Click on layers.
Open the layers drop down again, find your place in the list . . . . etc etc
An interface with a viable workflow would simply allow you to click on an actor within a list and let you see its attributes right there without leaving that window, want to see the next actor's value ? Simply hit the down arrow. Doing it like this you could check 40 actors for a bad value in seconds.
As for 'adding more features', you can't honestly argue this is something GS does best, Creator is incredibly basic for a piece of software in 2013. All we can really compare GS to is other software, especially other SDKs, and seeing as GS lacks such basic tools as rulers or guides or the ability to zoom into your work area or select more that 1 actor at once or even drag select I'd argue it is almost feature free (certainly the UI).
I'm really glad to hear CodeWizard and blackcloakGS are speaking to some UI design people
Even just breaking GS Creator's interface into moveable units à la Photoshop would make a world of difference.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
And every time you leave a window and return to it (not out of choice, but because GS forces you into this pointlessly convoluted workflow) everything, absolutely everything, is reset, your position in whatever list you are looking at is gone, any dropdowns that were open are now closed, if you'd scrolled to the bottom of the sounds or actors or images panel you are now back at the top, on the surface of it this is no big deal, just scroll down again, but if you have hundreds of images (easy with a few dozen animation sequences) and you are dealing with image - for example - 364 out of 500 images, every time you have to leave that window and return then you lose your place in the list and have to spend 5 or 10 seconds locating the right image again . . . . do this 50 or 100 or 200 times a day and it starts to feel like torture.
It's as if you were in Photoshop, and you were drawing, so you draw some lines, you draw some more lines, all looks good, but there's one little bit that doesn't look very smooth to you, the line is a little wobbly, so you hit 'E' (for the eraser), rub out the bit you don't like, mmmmm, it might need a little bit more removed, so you rub a bit more out, then hit 'B' to put you back onto the paint brush . . . and carry on.
But if Photoshop were GameSalad it would be . . . . you draw some lines, all looks good, but there's one little bit that doesn't look very smooth to you, so you'll need the eraser, so you click on 'utilities' then chose the 'tools' tab, then from the pull down menu choose 'eraser' - at this stage the image you are working on has disappeared as you are in a different 'mode', it's not visible on the screen, so to get it back you go choose 'painting' and then 'current projects', then from the pulldown menu choose 'main canvas', then rub a little bit of the wobbly line out, take a look, mmmmm . . . . maybe I need to rub a little bit more out . . . so you go back to 'utilities' then chose the 'tools' tab, then from the pull down menu choose 'eraser', then back to the image, so choose 'painting' and then 'current projects', then from the pull down 'main canvas' . . . rub a tiny bit more from the wobbly line, looks good now . . . so you can carry on with the drawing, so click on 'utilities' then chose the 'tools' tab, then from the pull down menu choose 'paint brush' . . .
5,000,000,000 times a day, all day, every day !! 8-X
:-B
Oh, Haven. Never mind.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support