Gamesalad was paid a sum of money by samsung to bring in Tizen capacity. GS needs money to stay alive. Since nobody was paying when companies like samsung offer a tidy sum to support their os if your GS you do it. Plus you forget how much money many users got to port their games to Tizen. The average developer on here got like $400 some as high as $900 per game. You guys bitch but have no idea what went on. If you payed attention over the years you would have read this info. Also it was explained over a year ago why adding fonts are so hard to put into GS. You can't have it all and the software be free. Now it's not free and you need to give them time to work through things.
@The_Gamesalad_Guru I was pretty sure samsung payed gamesalad to support their new OS, and it's understandable gamesalad took their offer. However, I'm not sure why you say I'm bitching, because we just state some facts that can't be ignored. And yes, they have been discussed over and over and over again, but that only shows how much we want it, right?
The average developer on here got like $400 some as high as $900 per game.
Thats all great, but that was over a year ago. We did get some amazing features and ofcorse a more stable tool, but still no custom fonts.
Now it's not free and you need to give them time to work through things.
@Franto said:
I don't remember any ads in the creator when I used the free version.
Oh, you mean in the Creator? I thought you were talking about apps.
Ads in the Creator sound like nonsense to me, frankly. Especially if you want to have Creator work in offline mode as well (which is a necessity for many).
Since the explosion of the mobile app stores, everyone suddenly assumes ad supported software with in-app purchases is the norm. First off, I don't understand why people would want the most annoying aspects the mobile revolution brought used on desktop, and secondly, those models aren't necessarily as practical on desktop. I know only a single piece of desktop OS software that has ads; it isn't under very active development (so they don't need huge sums of cash to maintain it) and more importantly, it is an online-only tool, so understandably, the devs know you will be always online when using it.
What would stop users from turning off their Wi-Fi to get rid of the ads, turning it on just to publish?
All these issues have been addressed ad nauseam at some point it becomes bitching. Don't hold your breath for custom fonts. This was well discussed some time ago. @BlackCloakGS explained to us how difficult adding more fonts is. It's easy to sit back and say do this without knowing how the software architecture is. You guys brought up Tizen and I explained why it was done and how all benefited from it. Short memories we all have. Everyone was excited when they lined up for their checks, now it's "why did they bother with that?" It makes no logical sense. Just read all the posts everyone is all over the place. This why don't they do this or why don't they do that most of which as relates to revenue was tried and didn't work. When a company has layoffs it's not ever a good sign. Can't you get that if something didn't change GS wasn't going to be able to operate anymore?
There are no free lunches. Yes other companies may do free and that is becuase they have investors but at some point those investors will demand a return on their money and the free ride will have to end there too some day. All companies need revenue. This is why business exist. Most internet companies are realizing AD revenue just doesn't cut it. Even companies like facebook are realizing that. There is a difference between what a company might want to do and what they have to do to stay alive. If you can't see this is a last ditch effort by GS then you're not paying attention or don't fully understand business.
Blame always beings at the top of the corporate ladder. It's obvious Steve Felters leadership and vision for the company was not up to par. He was installed a CEO by steamboat ventures an investment arm of disney company. Disney is a major investor in GS. There is only so much capital any investment firm will put into a venture. If GS can show better revenue performances they may get another round of capital influx to begin to grow the company. This is just how it is, like it or not. Yeah it sucks, but life isn't easy. If you look at the chamber of commerce stats most startups fail in five years, plus or minus a year. It's not easy getting a company off the ground. It can take a decade to get a company where it needs to be.
@codewizard knows what they need to do. Let's see how it shakes out over the next few months. This isn't going to happen overnight. Accept that and let's move on to developing games on these forums.
@The_Gamesalad_Guru You guys brought up Tizen and I explained why it was done and how all benefited from it. Short memories we all have. Everyone was excited when they lined up for their checks, now it's "why did they bother with that?" It makes no logical sense.
What do you mean by "it makes no logical sense"? If gamesalad would announce they're working on console support or whatever, everyone would be super excited! But that doesn't mean the requests of awesome basic features will stop, it just wont...
There are no free lunches. Yes other companies may do free and that is becuase they have investors but at some point those investors will demand a return on their money and the free ride will have to end there too some day.
Im not even sure why you bring up this subject again, but guess you are right. Gamemaker for example was found in 1999, and if I remember correctly it has always been free and it still exists in all its glory, probably because of a very loyal community. I think a big turn off for a lot of beginners is when they post their first question if blabla is possible, a lot of times its stuff that gamesalad can't do out of the box, so it has to be done with a workaround, or it can't be done at all. Killing these problems would help gamesalad a lot, so people will stick with the tool and are happy paying customers. The market of games keep shifting, and so does the exploration of mechanics. If starters even can't do the most basic things, they will try something else that can do what they have in mind. I don't need to be a businessman to understand this. I'm not going to continue regarding this subject, because it's an never ending discussion. All I hope is gamesalad will continue their developments and above all keeps existing:)!
@The_Gamesalad_Guru said:
Don't hold your breath for custom fonts. This was well discussed some time ago. BlackCloakGS explained to us how difficult adding more fonts is.
Actually I brought this up repeatedly at monthly meetups until a straight answer was given. Custom fonts is one of the easier "difficult" things to do. It's not easy, by any means, but it's significantly easier than, for instance, polygonal collisions. Of all the "big" new features, this is the one you're probably safest to hold your breath for.
Honestly I can't see this new structure being successful. With only a 15 day free trial, I don't see this attracting a lot of new users, certainly not long term. Pro pricing is fine, standard pricing should have been much lower. My guess is that there will be major changes within a year.
@Approw said:
Im not even sure why you bring up this subject again, but guess you are right. Gamemaker for example was found in 1999, and if I remember correctly it has always been free and it still exists in all its glory, probably because of a very loyal community. I think a big turn off for a lot of beginners is when they post their first question if blabla is possible, a lot of times its stuff that gamesalad can't do out of the box, so it has to be done with a workaround, or it can't be done at all. Killing these problems would help gamesalad a lot, so people will stick with the tool and are happy paying customers. The market of games keep shifting, and so does the exploration of mechanics. If starters even can't do the most basic things, they will try something else that can do what they have in mind. I don't need to be a businessman to understand this. I'm not going to continue regarding this subject, because it's an never ending discussion. All I hope is gamesalad will continue their developments and above all keeps existing:)!
Adding more standard fonts to the display text behaviour is surely trivial and presumably just a licensing issue.....
Full support of custom/bitmap fonts with associated description/layout and kerning tables is certainly a biggish job but really should be in sight by now.
If bitmap font support does get sorted perhaps we will also see sprite sheet and improved animation support ?
@The_Gamesalad_Guru said:
Don't hold your breath for custom fonts. This was well discussed some time ago.
Not quite accurate. At a recent meet-up it was revealed that 'custom' fonts at coming. The reason I put custom into quotation marks is because it depends what you mean by custom. If you mean you make letters and numbers in Photoshop, and want those to be used (as with current custom score 'fonts,' then don't hold your breath. That's not coming soon, if ever. BUT: importing your own TTF fonts should be supported, hopefully not too far into the future. Yes, that means you can create your own pixel-fonts, if you know how to make TTF fonts.
The second part of this, whic is the more complex part that might take some time, is native device rendering of text. At the moment, text is rendered by the GS core instead, which unfortunately often results in slightly fuzzy text. To get rid of that, they would have to rewrite the whole way text is handled by GS, so don't expect that terribly soon.
@tmann said:
Adding more standard fonts to the display text behaviour is surely trivial and presumably just a licensing issue...
See above.
@tmann said:
Full support of custom/bitmap fonts with associated description/layout and kerning tables is certainly a biggish job but really should be in sight by now.
If bitmap font support does get sorted perhaps we will also see sprite sheet and improved animation support ?
They are separate things. What do you mean by improved animation support?
@pHghost Like an earlier suggestion, the free version should only work with an online connection, which ensures the ads work as well. If they want offline, basic sub at the minimum would provide that.
The entire ad/in-app model is the only means to combat piracy, thus it's annoying nature. Piracy of premiums gave birth to something karmicly reflective to Piracy: Ad/In-app.
Thus, it is annoying, but the most effective way to circumvent piracy. Somebody somewhere posted discussion with their hair cutter, who mentioned that they wouldn't buy a premium game since they could just pirate it. The point of the discussion was to show how many, many people give second thought to the ethics of wether it's wrong to download pirated software due to how easy it is to do so, and why ads/in-app on a free game are the most effective methods right now to make your money back on a game.
And back to the topic of creator, I don't know how effective ads would be in desktop, but it's just a suggestion I wanted to put out there to help them out with their users who can't afford GS, as one of the many viable routes GS might want to consider.
No demands from me here, GS has everything I ever wanted in a framework and the price model to me is acceptable since I remember Unity had something similar at some point, but at $70 a month I think?
@stevej said:
I can't say for version numbers, but using the new rendering engine in Mac (it's already in Windows), and being able to create a standalone Windows .exe are still planned.
What does that actually means? That windows creators viewer uses new rendering engine or that if i generate project with windows it will benefit from new rendering engine?
@Approw said:
What do you mean by "it makes no logical sense"?
This is what I mean by no logical sense.
@hymloe said:
Yes, CUSTOM FONTS have taken forever, hidden away behind efforts to support Tizen, and Windows Store, and all sorts of stuff that would be great in an ideal world, but should come after really useful everyday good features that existing users need for iOS and Android.
So I responded with the facts as to why GS put tizen ahead of some things. They did it for the influx of cash, period.
As to fonts. More fuzzy fonts do absolutely no good. I rarely use the fonts they suck and make a game look second rate. I'd rather see them get more facebook or multiplayer back in than waste lots of time providing more fuzzy fonts. That makes no sense to me either.
@vonhank said:
What does that actually means? That windows creators viewer uses new rendering engine or that if i generate project with windows it will benefit from new rendering engine?
It means that Windows Native Preview uses a newer renderer than Mac Preview. The devices use the same renderer as Mac Preview.
As to fonts. More fuzzy fonts do absolutely no good. I rarely use the fonts they suck and make a game look second rate. I'd rather see them get more facebook or multiplayer back in than waste lots of time providing more fuzzy fonts. That makes no sense to me either.
I agree it's not the best looking text, but I rather have a little less quality in my fonts then having a ton of actors with an assload of contrains just to display some scores, which can result in a lagging game when the game already puts gamesalad to the max. On top of that you have to be exact with text or number export from photoshop, otherwise it looks fuzzy or blurry too, also this takes too much unnecessary time. I do know that the text behavior is not very lightweight, but at least you can put it in a simple rule to turn it on and off.
@Approw said:
I agree it's not the best looking text, but I rather have a little less quality in my fonts then having a ton of actors with an assload of contrains just to display some scores, which can result in a lagging game when the game already puts gamesalad to the max.
Strangely, I found the complete opposite, I found - through a lot of testing - that the Display Text behaviour was a noticeable strain on the target device's processor, perhaps this was particular to my situation, but having 5 or 6 actors using Display Text (and these actors were themselves being constrained to a particular position and rotation and scale) ground my game into the dirt ! When I removed the Display Text behaviours and replaced them with images (whilst still being constrained to the same position and rotation and scale) my laggy 45fps game went straight back up to 60fps . . . I followed this up with lots more testing (I test everything !! Lots ! ) with a clean project, on an iPad1, 2, 3, Air 2 and an iPhone4 . . . the take away message for me was that the Display Text behaviour is relatively heavy on the processor - I've never used the behaviour since, all text in the projects I'm working on have moved over to images.
Another point worth making is - this is just my personal opinion - that the currently popular/recommended way of making custom fonts (they really should be called custom numerals, the method only works for numbers) is a pretty bad way of approaching this task, in fact I can't honestly imagine a more inefficient way, like you say it requires an 'assload of constrains'.
The most obvious improvement you can make to the standard method is to change the score only when the score changes ! Using a 100,000 point score display will have 6 constrains updating on every code cycle, the vast majority of which will be wasted as the score doesn't tend to change every 1/60th of a second, a lot of games might only change the score every few seconds or longer - so here a Change Attribute would be much more efficient.
But even more efficient would be to not have the 6 actors in the first place, but to render off the numbers 0 to 999 as seperate images (my separate '000' images come to about 2.3k each, or 2.4MB for all 999) - then you just need 2 actors and 2 Change Attribute behaviours firing only when the score changes - rather than 6 actors and 6 Constrain behaviours firing every 1/60th of a second.
@Socks I agree with you a 100%, and thanks for some usefull info! However, using images for a single score is fine, but what if you want to show the player highscores, statistics, not to mention I always try to make a game in one scene for faster loading times, so i might need some more scores or statistics somewhere else in the scene. Yeah, it gets messy real fast this way. Having multiple text behaviors when the actual game is not being played would not be an issue at all. it might work for some people, and maybe not for others. Just having the option would be insanely awesome:)
I've built countless extensive complex games with tons of code. If one know how to build truly efficent and intergrated code a bunch of constraints aren't an issue at all. In fact i've never had a project not run at 58-60 fps. Getting looks at lots of code in projects and templates i can say most users on here write terrible inefficent code. Most are a train wreck. This is the real issue not to constrain or not. I use very few of the so called "optimization tricks" i have never had a need for them as i build very slim intergrated code. It takes way more planning to write this kind of code. You have to map out a large portion of your logic trees and then build that into a logic tree with more trunk than branches.
@Approw said:
Socks I agree with you a 100%, and thanks for some usefull info! However, using images for a single score is fine, but what if you want to show the player highscores, statistics . . .
Nothing changes, if one method is more efficient for a single score - it is also more efficient for multiple scores.
@Approw said:
Yeah, it gets messy real fast this way.
I'm not sure why this would be the case.
@Approw said:
Having multiple text behaviors when the actual game is not being played would not be an issue at all.
@The_Gamesalad_Guru Thats absolutly true! Writing clean code is super important, the problem for most people is that they have no clue whats going on under the hood, including me. We can assume what works best and what not, but a clear documentation would be great for all;)
Have you ever watched my GS logic series or some of my intergrated code videos? Building logic has nothing to do with knowing what's under the hood. Since logic is simply a series of steps or conditions and events, you can appy it to something as simple as making toast. Logic is applied in mechanical applications as well. I learned most about logic through hard wire electrical control systems tied to mechanical systems. This is the mistake is a lack of understanding of logic not software.
Gamesalad is very simply logic coding. Similar to the old basic computer language. Logic is simply a series of events that happen around clearly defined conditions. Logic is a way of thinking and has nothing to do with the medium it's applied to.
I don't know if any care but here is my opinion with current state. Gamesalad is great if you want to make so cool little games, maybe even some big ones. But it is slow with basic features (custom font, custom collision shape, etc). I understand the partial reason for this is because they have to make it user friendly which what Gamesalad is and it "seem" like Gamesalad is a little understaffed (hopefully this new basic plan helps that) . I am glad that some focus is put back of Gamesalad I am also more intrested (in what looks like Gamesalad 2.0) graphene. I am more interested in learn actually code, but I had fun with Gamesalad. Now I know people are going to say you are actually coding, I want to get my hands dirty and plus it is pretty hard to go from Gamesalad to another coding language. If you are good artist and don't want to learn to code Gamesalad is great for that. No offense but Gamesalad seem a bit slow compared to other engines(even with all the optimizations) (hopefully the new rendering engine helps that) but it is good for a lot of games. Over all I would say simplicity comes at a cost.(just ask apple)
At this point I would still prefer memory leak fixes and better loading times. For bigger games, there's only so much optimization you can do before you pull your hair out. What good are custom fonts/custom collisions if your game crashes? At least custom fonts/custom collisions have workarounds even if a bit tedious
@supafly129 said:
At this point I would still prefer memory leak fixes and better loading times. For bigger games, there's only so much optimization you can do before you pull your hair out. What good are custom fonts/custom collisions if your game crashes? At least custom fonts/custom collisions have workarounds even if a bit tedious
There are ways to make them sharp, mind you (of course, it's a workaround).
But what @Socks says about the Display Text behavior is interesting, wouldn't think it would be such a drain. It all probably comes down to the fact that the rendering isn't native. Even though current generation iPhones are way ahead of iPhone 4 in terms of performance and the effects might not be that visible anymore, it doesn't change the fact that the processing drain is still there!
Comments
Gamesalad was paid a sum of money by samsung to bring in Tizen capacity. GS needs money to stay alive. Since nobody was paying when companies like samsung offer a tidy sum to support their os if your GS you do it. Plus you forget how much money many users got to port their games to Tizen. The average developer on here got like $400 some as high as $900 per game. You guys bitch but have no idea what went on. If you payed attention over the years you would have read this info. Also it was explained over a year ago why adding fonts are so hard to put into GS. You can't have it all and the software be free. Now it's not free and you need to give them time to work through things.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
@The_Gamesalad_Guru I was pretty sure samsung payed gamesalad to support their new OS, and it's understandable gamesalad took their offer. However, I'm not sure why you say I'm bitching, because we just state some facts that can't be ignored. And yes, they have been discussed over and over and over again, but that only shows how much we want it, right?
Thats all great, but that was over a year ago. We did get some amazing features and ofcorse a more stable tool, but still no custom fonts.
GO GAMESALAD:)!
Oh, you mean in the Creator? I thought you were talking about apps.
Ads in the Creator sound like nonsense to me, frankly. Especially if you want to have Creator work in offline mode as well (which is a necessity for many).
Since the explosion of the mobile app stores, everyone suddenly assumes ad supported software with in-app purchases is the norm. First off, I don't understand why people would want the most annoying aspects the mobile revolution brought used on desktop, and secondly, those models aren't necessarily as practical on desktop. I know only a single piece of desktop OS software that has ads; it isn't under very active development (so they don't need huge sums of cash to maintain it) and more importantly, it is an online-only tool, so understandably, the devs know you will be always online when using it.
What would stop users from turning off their Wi-Fi to get rid of the ads, turning it on just to publish?
All these issues have been addressed ad nauseam at some point it becomes bitching. Don't hold your breath for custom fonts. This was well discussed some time ago. @BlackCloakGS explained to us how difficult adding more fonts is. It's easy to sit back and say do this without knowing how the software architecture is. You guys brought up Tizen and I explained why it was done and how all benefited from it. Short memories we all have. Everyone was excited when they lined up for their checks, now it's "why did they bother with that?" It makes no logical sense. Just read all the posts everyone is all over the place. This why don't they do this or why don't they do that most of which as relates to revenue was tried and didn't work. When a company has layoffs it's not ever a good sign. Can't you get that if something didn't change GS wasn't going to be able to operate anymore?
There are no free lunches. Yes other companies may do free and that is becuase they have investors but at some point those investors will demand a return on their money and the free ride will have to end there too some day. All companies need revenue. This is why business exist. Most internet companies are realizing AD revenue just doesn't cut it. Even companies like facebook are realizing that. There is a difference between what a company might want to do and what they have to do to stay alive. If you can't see this is a last ditch effort by GS then you're not paying attention or don't fully understand business.
Blame always beings at the top of the corporate ladder. It's obvious Steve Felters leadership and vision for the company was not up to par. He was installed a CEO by steamboat ventures an investment arm of disney company. Disney is a major investor in GS. There is only so much capital any investment firm will put into a venture. If GS can show better revenue performances they may get another round of capital influx to begin to grow the company. This is just how it is, like it or not. Yeah it sucks, but life isn't easy. If you look at the chamber of commerce stats most startups fail in five years, plus or minus a year. It's not easy getting a company off the ground. It can take a decade to get a company where it needs to be.
@codewizard knows what they need to do. Let's see how it shakes out over the next few months. This isn't going to happen overnight. Accept that and let's move on to developing games on these forums.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
+1 @The_Gamesalad_Guru well said.
What do you mean by "it makes no logical sense"? If gamesalad would announce they're working on console support or whatever, everyone would be super excited! But that doesn't mean the requests of awesome basic features will stop, it just wont...
Im not even sure why you bring up this subject again, but guess you are right. Gamemaker for example was found in 1999, and if I remember correctly it has always been free and it still exists in all its glory, probably because of a very loyal community. I think a big turn off for a lot of beginners is when they post their first question if blabla is possible, a lot of times its stuff that gamesalad can't do out of the box, so it has to be done with a workaround, or it can't be done at all. Killing these problems would help gamesalad a lot, so people will stick with the tool and are happy paying customers. The market of games keep shifting, and so does the exploration of mechanics. If starters even can't do the most basic things, they will try something else that can do what they have in mind. I don't need to be a businessman to understand this. I'm not going to continue regarding this subject, because it's an never ending discussion. All I hope is gamesalad will continue their developments and above all keeps existing:)!
Actually I brought this up repeatedly at monthly meetups until a straight answer was given. Custom fonts is one of the easier "difficult" things to do. It's not easy, by any means, but it's significantly easier than, for instance, polygonal collisions. Of all the "big" new features, this is the one you're probably safest to hold your breath for.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Honestly I can't see this new structure being successful. With only a 15 day free trial, I don't see this attracting a lot of new users, certainly not long term. Pro pricing is fine, standard pricing should have been much lower. My guess is that there will be major changes within a year.
We all just need to
Fortuna Infortuna Forti Una
You know what? You're right. Carry on.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
Adding more standard fonts to the display text behaviour is surely trivial and presumably just a licensing issue.....
Full support of custom/bitmap fonts with associated description/layout and kerning tables is certainly a biggish job but really should be in sight by now.
If bitmap font support does get sorted perhaps we will also see sprite sheet and improved animation support ?
Not quite accurate. At a recent meet-up it was revealed that 'custom' fonts at coming. The reason I put custom into quotation marks is because it depends what you mean by custom. If you mean you make letters and numbers in Photoshop, and want those to be used (as with current custom score 'fonts,' then don't hold your breath. That's not coming soon, if ever. BUT: importing your own TTF fonts should be supported, hopefully not too far into the future. Yes, that means you can create your own pixel-fonts, if you know how to make TTF fonts.
The second part of this, whic is the more complex part that might take some time, is native device rendering of text. At the moment, text is rendered by the GS core instead, which unfortunately often results in slightly fuzzy text. To get rid of that, they would have to rewrite the whole way text is handled by GS, so don't expect that terribly soon.
@Armelline
See above.
They are separate things. What do you mean by improved animation support?
@pHghost Like an earlier suggestion, the free version should only work with an online connection, which ensures the ads work as well. If they want offline, basic sub at the minimum would provide that.
The entire ad/in-app model is the only means to combat piracy, thus it's annoying nature. Piracy of premiums gave birth to something karmicly reflective to Piracy: Ad/In-app.
Thus, it is annoying, but the most effective way to circumvent piracy. Somebody somewhere posted discussion with their hair cutter, who mentioned that they wouldn't buy a premium game since they could just pirate it. The point of the discussion was to show how many, many people give second thought to the ethics of wether it's wrong to download pirated software due to how easy it is to do so, and why ads/in-app on a free game are the most effective methods right now to make your money back on a game.
And back to the topic of creator, I don't know how effective ads would be in desktop, but it's just a suggestion I wanted to put out there to help them out with their users who can't afford GS, as one of the many viable routes GS might want to consider.
No demands from me here, GS has everything I ever wanted in a framework and the price model to me is acceptable since I remember Unity had something similar at some point, but at $70 a month I think?
What does that actually means? That windows creators viewer uses new rendering engine or that if i generate project with windows it will benefit from new rendering engine?
This is what I mean by no logical sense.
So I responded with the facts as to why GS put tizen ahead of some things. They did it for the influx of cash, period.
As to fonts. More fuzzy fonts do absolutely no good. I rarely use the fonts they suck and make a game look second rate. I'd rather see them get more facebook or multiplayer back in than waste lots of time providing more fuzzy fonts. That makes no sense to me either.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
It means that Windows Native Preview uses a newer renderer than Mac Preview. The devices use the same renderer as Mac Preview.
I'm sure my life doesn't make any sense too.
I agree it's not the best looking text, but I rather have a little less quality in my fonts then having a ton of actors with an assload of contrains just to display some scores, which can result in a lagging game when the game already puts gamesalad to the max. On top of that you have to be exact with text or number export from photoshop, otherwise it looks fuzzy or blurry too, also this takes too much unnecessary time. I do know that the text behavior is not very lightweight, but at least you can put it in a simple rule to turn it on and off.
Strangely, I found the complete opposite, I found - through a lot of testing - that the Display Text behaviour was a noticeable strain on the target device's processor, perhaps this was particular to my situation, but having 5 or 6 actors using Display Text (and these actors were themselves being constrained to a particular position and rotation and scale) ground my game into the dirt ! When I removed the Display Text behaviours and replaced them with images (whilst still being constrained to the same position and rotation and scale) my laggy 45fps game went straight back up to 60fps . . . I followed this up with lots more testing (I test everything !! Lots !
) with a clean project, on an iPad1, 2, 3, Air 2 and an iPhone4 . . . the take away message for me was that the Display Text behaviour is relatively heavy on the processor - I've never used the behaviour since, all text in the projects I'm working on have moved over to images.
Another point worth making is - this is just my personal opinion - that the currently popular/recommended way of making custom fonts (they really should be called custom numerals, the method only works for numbers) is a pretty bad way of approaching this task, in fact I can't honestly imagine a more inefficient way, like you say it requires an 'assload of constrains'.
The most obvious improvement you can make to the standard method is to change the score only when the score changes ! Using a 100,000 point score display will have 6 constrains updating on every code cycle, the vast majority of which will be wasted as the score doesn't tend to change every 1/60th of a second, a lot of games might only change the score every few seconds or longer - so here a Change Attribute would be much more efficient.
But even more efficient would be to not have the 6 actors in the first place, but to render off the numbers 0 to 999 as seperate images (my separate '000' images come to about 2.3k each, or 2.4MB for all 999) - then you just need 2 actors and 2 Change Attribute behaviours firing only when the score changes - rather than 6 actors and 6 Constrain behaviours firing every 1/60th of a second.
@Socks I agree with you a 100%, and thanks for some usefull info! However, using images for a single score is fine, but what if you want to show the player highscores, statistics, not to mention I always try to make a game in one scene for faster loading times, so i might need some more scores or statistics somewhere else in the scene. Yeah, it gets messy real fast this way. Having multiple text behaviors when the actual game is not being played would not be an issue at all. it might work for some people, and maybe not for others. Just having the option would be insanely awesome:)
I've built countless extensive complex games with tons of code. If one know how to build truly efficent and intergrated code a bunch of constraints aren't an issue at all. In fact i've never had a project not run at 58-60 fps. Getting looks at lots of code in projects and templates i can say most users on here write terrible inefficent code. Most are a train wreck. This is the real issue not to constrain or not. I use very few of the so called "optimization tricks" i have never had a need for them as i build very slim intergrated code. It takes way more planning to write this kind of code. You have to map out a large portion of your logic trees and then build that into a logic tree with more trunk than branches.
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Nothing changes, if one method is more efficient for a single score - it is also more efficient for multiple scores.
I'm not sure why this would be the case.
I don't understand what this means ?
@The_Gamesalad_Guru Thats absolutly true! Writing clean code is super important, the problem for most people is that they have no clue whats going on under the hood, including me. We can assume what works best and what not, but a clear documentation would be great for all;)
Have you ever watched my GS logic series or some of my intergrated code videos? Building logic has nothing to do with knowing what's under the hood. Since logic is simply a series of steps or conditions and events, you can appy it to something as simple as making toast. Logic is applied in mechanical applications as well. I learned most about logic through hard wire electrical control systems tied to mechanical systems. This is the mistake is a lack of understanding of logic not software.
Gamesalad is very simply logic coding. Similar to the old basic computer language. Logic is simply a series of events that happen around clearly defined conditions. Logic is a way of thinking and has nothing to do with the medium it's applied to.
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I don't know if any care but here is my opinion with current state. Gamesalad is great if you want to make so cool little games, maybe even some big ones. But it is slow with basic features (custom font, custom collision shape, etc). I understand the partial reason for this is because they have to make it user friendly which what Gamesalad is and it "seem" like Gamesalad is a little understaffed (hopefully this new basic plan helps that) . I am glad that some focus is put back of Gamesalad I am also more intrested (in what looks like Gamesalad 2.0) graphene. I am more interested in learn actually code, but I had fun with Gamesalad. Now I know people are going to say you are actually coding, I want to get my hands dirty and plus it is pretty hard to go from Gamesalad to another coding language. If you are good artist and don't want to learn to code Gamesalad is great for that. No offense but Gamesalad seem a bit slow compared to other engines(even with all the optimizations) (hopefully the new rendering engine helps that) but it is good for a lot of games. Over all I would say simplicity comes at a cost.(just ask apple)
At this point I would still prefer memory leak fixes and better loading times. For bigger games, there's only so much optimization you can do before you pull your hair out. What good are custom fonts/custom collisions if your game crashes? At least custom fonts/custom collisions have workarounds even if a bit tedious
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I agree. More fuzzy fonts are a waste.
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With bitmap font support comes sprite sheet support and therefore better animation support.
First off, bitmap fonts are likely not coming soon, if ever, as far as anyone knows.
Still don't understand what you mean by better animation support. Better in what way? Is there something specific you would like?
There are ways to make them sharp, mind you (of course, it's a workaround).
But what @Socks says about the Display Text behavior is interesting, wouldn't think it would be such a drain. It all probably comes down to the fact that the rendering isn't native. Even though current generation iPhones are way ahead of iPhone 4 in terms of performance and the effects might not be that visible anymore, it doesn't change the fact that the processing drain is still there!
@pHghost sprite sheets ( kind of said it a few times now
)
and support for Spline or Spriter would be great too