Release Candidate 0.13.10 Mac ARC with performance improvements

BlackCloakGS

Release Candidate 0.13.10

Fixes:

• Fixed crash when closing a project after opening a table.

• Fixed issue where adding or deleting conditions from a rule wouldn't take until you re-opened the actor.

• Fixed crash when setting a project screenshot.

Known Issues:

• Hitting ESC to close the expression editor can cause a crash.

• Copy Table behavior does not copy over row and column names. The workaround is to reference the actual row and column numbers instead of the name.

• Post-app signing buttons such as "Show In Finder" and "iTunes Connect" and "Publish" will crash creator if clicked. The Finish button at the bottom will not cause a crash, however.

• Changing table column type removes the column header

• Creator may crash when moving an actor from one layer to another.

• Table Boolean values will not change if they're on the first row.

• You may experience a crash when logging into GameSalad Creator from the Dashboard.

• An occasional crash may occur when loading a project while an Android device is plugged in via USB.

• The Animate behavior will currently not show its images until you back out of the Actor and re-open it.

• Moving from Actor Editor back to the Actor pane can cause a memory spike (memory leak is being investigated)

Includes all the fixes and features from 0.13.9 RC

Report Any Bugs
If you find bugs in the Release Candidate, let us know! We'll be watching the forums, support tickets and bug database for info on this. Once we're all happy with the state of the build then we'll make it stable.

Take a moment to review the "known issues" section of the release notes before reporting any bugs. No need to duplicate reports on what we already know, right?

Thanks for your help!

Go Get It!

See the release notes here:

http://gamesalad.com/download/releaseNotes/creator/rc

Download the release candidate here:

http://gamesalad.com/download/releases

Scroll down until you see "Release Candidates

Armelline

Sounds great!

Table Boolean values will not change if they're on the first row.

Aaah I encountered this one today and was about to submit a bug report. Glad I don't have to

pHghost

@BlackCloakGS said:

Copy Table behavior does not copy over row and column names. The workaround is to reference the actual row and column numbers instead of the name.

More importantly, the Copy Table behavior actually deletes the row and column names in the original table, so if you use any references to row and column names, this will completely break your code -- and with 99% certainty it is why my AI pathfinding logic suddenly stopped working from 0.13.9 RC onwards. I was hoping that would be the version which would see me coming back to the project, but it seems there still some time to wait. Hope this isn't a complicated fix and gets resolved soon!

CasualEvolution

What is "ARC"? How much it's improve the performance? Thanks!

pHghost

@casualevolution said:
What is "ARC"? How much it's improve the performance? Thanks!

Automaton-Robot Coalition. It isn't about app performance, but speed and stability of Creator. Much improved.

stevej

@casualevolution said:
What is "ARC"? How much it's improve the performance? Thanks!

It basically means that when a section of memory that has been allocated for a specific purpose is no longer needed for that purpose, it is immediately freed up to be allocated for something else. This is opposed to "garbage collection", where memory is only freed up periodically, which can lead to "hiccups" in performance while the garbage collector is looking for memory that needs to be freed.

BlackCloakGS

ARC = Automatic Reference Counting

Armelline

ARC actually stands for Awesomely Rapid Creator, in this instance. 'Cause that's what it is!

viking

The Creater is faster than it has ever been since I started using Game Salad! Amazing!

Here is one concern I have though in regards to the switch from .13 to .14: The new rendering engine seems to create some issues for my game. In .13 I run through my animations (300+ frames per actor) with alpha zero before gameplay starts and that allows me to run them at 55-56 fps the first time the player sees the character animating in the game.

However, in the .14 nightly build this does not do the trick. Every time I start the game on the device, the character stutter through the first pass of the animation sequence and it looks terrible. The frame rate is around 3-5 fps compared to 55 in .13. But, after the first run-through of the animation the .14 version runs my animation at blazing rock-steady 60 fps every single time. Which is awesome! I need to figure out how to get it running this fast the first time. Any ideas?

Still, the worst thing with .14 is when I put my iPad to sleep for a couple of hours and pick up the game again. Now the animation that used to run at 60 runs at 1 frame per second. And it continues to run at 1 fps without any speed increase. I have to stop the app from running and boot it up again to make it first stutter through one play through and then it's playable again.

Has anyone noticed the same with their projects?

AlchimiaStudios

@viking said:
The Creater is faster than it has ever been since I started using Game Salad! Amazing!

Here is one concern I have though in regards to the switch from .13 to .14: The new rendering engine seems to create some issues for my game. In .13 I run through my animations (300+ frames per actor) with alpha zero before gameplay starts and that allows me to run them at 55-56 fps the first time the player sees the character animating in the game.

However, in the .14 nightly build this does not do the trick. Every time I start the game on the device, the character stutter through the first pass of the animation sequence and it looks terrible. The frame rate is around 3-5 fps compared to 55 in .13. But, after the first run-through of the animation the .14 version runs my animation at blazing rock-steady 60 fps every single time. Which is awesome! I need to figure out how to get it running this fast the first time. Any ideas?

Still, the worst thing with .14 is when I put my iPad to sleep for a couple of hours and pick up the game again. Now the animation that used to run at 60 runs at 1 frame per second. And it continues to run at 1 fps without any speed increase. I have to stop the app from running and boot it up again to make it first stutter through one play through and then it's playable again.

Has anyone noticed the same with their projects?

Yep, that among other weird issues in 14.

Animation lag
Images not displaying until well after the scene loads (show as white or colored boxes)
Incorrectly rendering blending layers

Then again, 14 hasn't been updated in 2 months, as ARC became a huge focus, which I am grateful for. Still some work to be done for sure on the render engine.

pHghost

@viking said:
However, in the .14 nightly build this does not do the trick.

Am I missing something? 0.14 nightly? Where, how did you get that?

viking

Sorry about the confusion @pHghost. No one outside of GameSalad has .14. I called the .13.2 Nightly version .14 because it is using the new rendering engine that will be released in .14. Hope that clears it up...

pHghost

Ah...

Understood.

Hymloe

@stevej said:
It basically means that when a section of memory that has been allocated for a specific purpose is no longer needed for that purpose, it is immediately freed up to be allocated for something else. This is opposed to "garbage collection", where memory is only freed up periodically, which can lead to "hiccups" in performance while the garbage collector is looking for memory that needs to be freed.

Would now be a good time to try my old project which has been shelved for a long time due to the table-memory issues? Will ARC possibly help me / solve my problems?

Or am I better off waiting for the further work being done in that area for the 0.14 release?

I'm happy to stay with 0.11.13 for now, which is nice and stable, and keep working on other things.

viking

Using ARC only improves the Creator memory performance and it does not help with the memory issues on the device. You'll have to wait for .14 and hope the memory related bugs have been fixed. Can't wait for .14 myself.

Armelline

@viking said:
Sorry about the confusion pHghost. No one outside of GameSalad has .14. I called the .13.2 Nightly version .14 because it is using the new rendering engine that will be released in .14. Hope that clears it up...

There's a 0.14.0 nightly. It's 0.13.2 renamed to reflect the feature set. That's probably where the confusion comes from. http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/74854/nightly-build-0-14-0