GameSalad Deleting Wrong Image (to the left) in GS Image Browser

Iodine

Hello,

For the past 3 months, I've been creating a game with GameSalad. I've encountered a very consistent and frustrating bug.

If I delete an image by selecting it in the GS Image Browser window by pressing EITHER the "-" or Delete key, it will NOT delete the image I have selected, but the one to the direct left of the said image.

Observations:
- I have GameSalad on two OS X computers (10.9.4 and 10.8.5) BOTH have this error.
- I have updated to the latest version of GameSalad each and every opportunity.
- Even if I do NOT save after importing or deleting, the program acts as if I did when I restart my computer and/or GameSalad.
- Restarting the program or computer, does not fix the issue.
- Reinstalling GameSalad does not fix the issue.

I keep thinking "Surely the devs know about this obvious error, I'm sure they'll fix it any day now." But it has been 3 months and the problem has not gone away. This is extremely annoying to my workflow as I have to constantly increment save and import "null" images just so I can delete the image I actually want to delete.

I have Google searched extensively and found this occurred to two other people, back in 2011 and 2012, but no response or fix was given.

I am enjoying this program but sometimes I can't believe how limited the UI is. I can't even scale the size of my work area? Why are there no layers? Everything is just stacked on top of other layers, it's not very easy to control and therefor cumbersome and time-consuming.

In all honesty, I realize the program is still being developed but the image deletion is actually pretty frustrating. I can deal with the lack of smooth UI, but not that.

I look forward to any help, thank you for your time.

Socks

@Iodine said:
GameSalad Deleting Wrong Image (to the left) in GS Image Browser

Yes, this is a long standing bug, both image import and image deletion can often be very hit and miss, attempting to delete multiple images can make the process even more unpredictable.

@Iodine said:
Even if I do NOT save after importing or deleting, the program acts as if I did when I restart my computer and/or GameSalad.

Yes, this is a separate issue - and not necessarily a bug, it's just the way GS works, when you delete an image it is immediately taken out of the GS file, the GS file on disk is altered live, I'm not aware of any other modern application that behaves like this, every other application I know of, or have ever heard of, will alter the copy of your file held in RAM until you tell it overwrite the copy on disk (’save'), so it's not surprising that GS's file handling often catches people out - as well as making the (separate) image deletion Issue a much worse problem than it might otherwise be - in fact it's a perfect storm as far as image handling goes, the software removes the wrong image and then immediately compounds the issue by writing the messed up file over your previously saved file.

The workaround is to save your GS project as normal, then increment a second saved copy (example - MyGame 056 to MyGame 057) - then import or delete your images, if things go awry throw MyGame 057 away and return to MyGame 056, incrementally save it to MyGame 057 once more an try again.

@Iodine said:
I keep thinking "Surely the devs know about this obvious error, I'm sure they'll fix it any day now." But it has been 3 months and the problem has not gone away.

It's hard to know whether GS know about the issue or not, I've checked in the new bug database but couldn't find anything, but maybe my search terms weren't right ('delete' 'deletion' 'import' etc), there are numerous other long standing bugs that don't appear to be in the database.

And the image deletion bug is a lot older than 3 months, it's been an issue for as long as I've use GameSalad, so at least a few years.

@Iodine said:
I am enjoying this program but sometimes I can't believe how limited the UI is. I can't even scale the size of my work area? Why are there no layers? Everything is just stacked on top of other layers, it's not very easy to control and therefor cumbersome and time-consuming.

People have been complaining about GS's UI since the late 1850s : ) it never really changes, GS move at their own somewhat glacial speed when it comes to UI improvements, I've always thought (a complete guess on my part) that the issue might be that GS are predominately, or even wholly, programmers and not designers, so whereas the average user who comes from a design background might kill for the ability to place their assets and actors into folders or be able to zoom in and out of a project, the same functionality might take second place in the minds of people who find network server communication or social media functionality more impressive/challenging or otherwise engaging from a technical point of view.

But like I say this is a complete guess, I could be completely wrong, but whatever the cause it's absolutely true that while GS's back end is getting some impressive improvements and added functionality, the store front is stuck in 1997 Hopefully the rumoured new cross platform Creator will address some of these issues.