@Approw said:
I was talking about using the display text behavior outside of the actual gameplay (custom or no custom font), so in the main menu for example. The player probably wont even notice if there are framedrops in the menu's.
I see, yes, that makes sense, thanks for the clarification.
@dgackey said:
As I understood the feedback, the way you've currently implemented things with that game and the scope of what you're trying to do are just fundamentally in conflict with each other and weren't likely to be easy fixes.
@dgackey, could you please involve me in this issue? I am keen to understand what exactly is in "conflict" in @Hymloe s game.
Admittedly it is quite a large project, but his approach is well structured and quite efficient. Could you forward the feedback you got from the developers to me?
My last analysis showed, that after the mayor table issues had "mysteriously" been resolved to an extent, the main culprit for possible crashes were:
1) the spiking of fonts which @Hymloe makes estensive use of, and
2) GS loading all sound being referenced in code for a particular scene, even though they are not actually called on the scene. His scenes get built dynamically from a table, therefore it plays sounds according to the current settings. As all possible sounds are wrapped in rules, these all load even though they never get played on the scene.
Admittedly, all sounds loading at the start of a scene is clearly a good design choice, avoiding adhoc loading lag during gameplay. This may be an area where the project could be butchered for the sake of stability ... by removing some sounds.
All this talk of custom fonts. Making a custom font is actually pretty easy. The difficulty comes in putting together the (hope I'm using the right term here) kern table. Spawning the correct letter in the correct place is very simple. It's just a matter of working out where the correct place is. How closely should an e be spawned to a l? What about an e to a w? etc.
That's where all the difficulty and work comes in. Actually spawning the font is easy.
@Armelline said:
All this talk of custom fonts. Making a custom font is actually pretty easy. The difficulty comes in putting together the (hope I'm using the right term here) kern table.
It's kerning tables (rather than 'kern'), or kerning pairs.
@Armelline said:
That's where all the difficulty and work comes in. Actually spawning the font is easy.
Agreed, even with numbers you still need to kern, although it's a lot simpler as em widths can be grouped in three lots, I've got a very old GS project somewhere that kerns numbers so you don't have to rely on monospaced fonts, might try and dig it out.
There are a lot of bitmap font generators around these days and they all produce the required kerning/kern tables which are supported by All the major/minor development frameworks. It would be a joy to see GS fully support bitmap fonts.
@tmann said:
There are a lot of bitmap font generators around these days and they all produce the required kerning/kern tables which are supported by All the major/minor development frameworks. It would be a joy to see GS fully support bitmap fonts.
Can you link an example of one? Whipping up a system to generate the fonts in GameSalad really wouldn't be too difficult given the right information.
I had thought of doing what I think you are suggesting - basically implementing some kind of decent full font support but it is a lot of work and without sprite sheet support life is waaaaay to short (well mine is anyway)
@tmann said:
I had thought of doing what I think you are suggesting - basically implementing some kind of decent full font support but it is a lot of work and without sprite sheet support life is waaaaay to short (well mine is anyway)
Yeah, looking at what gets outputted there, it would still be a ton of work. First the png would need to be split into separate characters, then the kerning information would have to be pulled out (and I'm not convinced enough is provided).
I might whip up a fixed width font demo later as it'll be so much simpler, but I'll wait on GameSalad to implement custom fonts, I think.
@Armelline said:
I might whip up a fixed width font demo later as it'll be so much simpler
Took about 30 seconds to adapt my custom number fonts to a custom monospace fonts demo. A bit more effort will be needed to account for wrapping and punctuation, but monospace fonts really aren't an issue.
Yep, but I never miss an oppurtunity for a bit of one-upmanship.
Many of the comments in the forum have errors. I think it's the stupid automobile corrected, I mean auto correct!
@ForumNinja What happened to "Quote" button functioning properly? Now it just starts a new comment with just the >@whomever without the quote? Shall I report it as a bug?
@PhilipCC said:
ForumNinja What happened to "Quote" button functioning properly? Now it just starts a new comment with just the >whomever without the quote? Shall I report it as a bug?
@Hopscotch said: @dgackey, could you please involve me in this issue? I am keen to understand what exactly is in "conflict" in @Hymloe s game.
Thanks for chiming in @Hopscotch ... I'm seriously lost, as I don't seem to be able to get anyone at GS to take responsibility for the issues. And it means a lot to me to have had you take a look at my project, and deem it quite reasonable. It's very much appreciated.
Well total devastation here.
I have just got back from holidays (I live in Australia) to see a message saying that my free trial ends in 14 days. Having just started about 60 kids on a 12 week task based on Game Design using Gamesalad in the last week of last term, their homework was to analyse some 1980s style arcade games and research various games, this has thrown a whole tool box into the works.
As our Budgets have been completed at the end of 2014 and we don't finish our budgeting process until November/December this year for next year, I am basically stuffed.
As I only saw this today, I have been frantically emailing various staff to see if I can access some funds somehow, anywhere, anyhow. It probably wont be that successful. My kids have got a lot out of GameSalad over the last several years with several of them going on to purchase the Pro Version. This is a huge blow to me and I am not sure what to do or recover from here as I have been pumping the kids up for many weeks prior to the shool holidays. Our kids dont make any money out of this, the only ones who have tried, have purchased the Pro Version.
I am pretty disappointed with the late minute notice.
@andrew.mcmillan@bcgs.wa.edu.au said:
Well total devastation here.
I have just got back from holidays (I live in Australia) to see a message saying that my free trial ends in 14 days. Having just started about 60 kids on a 12 week task based on Game Design using Gamesalad in the last week of last term, their homework was to analyse some 1980s style arcade games and research various games, this has thrown a whole tool box into the works.
As our Budgets have been completed at the end of 2014 and we don't finish our budgeting process until November/December this year for next year, I am basically stuffed.
As I only saw this today, I have been frantically emailing various staff to see if I can access some funds somehow, anywhere, anyhow. It probably wont be that successful. My kids have got a lot out of GameSalad over the last several years with several of them going on to purchase the Pro Version. This is a huge blow to me and I am not sure what to do or recover from here as I have been pumping the kids up for many weeks prior to the shool holidays. Our kids dont make any money out of this, the only ones who have tried, have purchased the Pro Version.
I am pretty disappointed with the late minute notice.
Contact Game Salad, and ask them for a deal. They were talking about something like "up to 90% off the price for education."
See what you can put together with them. Perhaps you can sort out a quick makeshift deal to keep your class going in the short term, at least.
Good luck.
PS: You could try GameMaker. There's a free version.
@andrew.mcmillan@bcgs.wa.edu.au said:
Well total devastation here.
I have just got back from holidays (I live in Australia) to see a message saying that my free trial ends in 14 days. Having just started about 60 kids on a 12 week task based on Game Design using Gamesalad in the last week of last term, their homework was to analyse some 1980s style arcade games and research various games, this has thrown a whole tool box into the works.
As our Budgets have been completed at the end of 2014 and we don't finish our budgeting process until November/December this year for next year, I am basically stuffed.
As I only saw this today, I have been frantically emailing various staff to see if I can access some funds somehow, anywhere, anyhow. It probably wont be that successful. My kids have got a lot out of GameSalad over the last several years with several of them going on to purchase the Pro Version. This is a huge blow to me and I am not sure what to do or recover from here as I have been pumping the kids up for many weeks prior to the shool holidays. Our kids dont make any money out of this, the only ones who have tried, have purchased the Pro Version.
I am pretty disappointed with the late minute notice.
dgackeyAustin, TXInactive, PRO, Chef EmeritusPosts: 699
I've already emailed Andrew, thanks.
NB: while I'm extremely sympathetic about the situation here, I have also tried for a long time to impress upon education users the value of licensing with companies as opposed to simply relying on the free version, anonymously. It's hard to build a relationship with a company when they don't even know you're using the product
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
NB: while I'm extremely sympathetic about the situation here, I have also tried for a long time to impress upon education users the value of licensing with companies as opposed to simply relying on the free version, anonymously. It's hard to build a relationship with a company when they don't even know you're using the product
@dgackey Super! GS is a great learning tool that builds a wide variety of skills!
You make a good point about licensing that I hadn't considered. Having spent 20 wonderful years as a teacher and 15 as an educational consultant pushing for the introduction of new technology I am very sympathetic with teachers working hard at convincing colleagues and administration to allow them to introduce new ideas and programs Even when things are free this can sometimes be a daunting task.
Go teachers go!
dgackeyAustin, TXInactive, PRO, Chef EmeritusPosts: 699
@kolabo it's a tough job and educators are put in a really unenviable position. We do the best we can to make it easier for them.
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
I decided to come back to GS to try to start making games again just to see that I won't be able to use it now because I can't afford it. 10/10 would switch to gamemaker again
NB: while I'm extremely sympathetic about the situation here, I have also tried for a long time to impress upon education users the value of licensing with companies as opposed to simply relying on the free version, anonymously. It's hard to build a relationship with a company when they don't even know you're using the product
Thankyou Dan for your prompt response. And as I mentioned in my email, I do understand the need for change and GameSalad has obviously made a quick decision about its change in direction, that is probably what is the biggest obstacle for our school.
I also, and I am sure that many other institutions, very much appreciate the generous education pricing. It is quite substantial, and from my experience in only using GameSalad for 3 years, I know of several students who have purchased the Pro Version and I am sure that if I can continue with GameSalad there will be more.
I am interested in what education users can do then to "build a relationship with a company". Is it just the payment of the license so that you know who is using the product? or is it the involvement in competitions or contributions to the blogs or forums. If there is more that I can do to benefit the students then I will pursue it. I have contacted GameSalad in the past, particulalrly when we were using the Windows version in what seems a lifetime ago and did explain then that we were using it as a school.
As Kolaba mentioned it is often extremely difficult to introduce new ideas and programs, and interestingly enough it was through the demonstration of some students games and their design processes as examples of what we were doing that helped us in our submission for the setting up of my lab of 17 new 27"IMacs, 10 MacBook pros and 10 IPads at the end of 2013 in what was a totally Windows dominated school of 1000 students.
I am working hard at rustling up the funds, I only have another 3 or four staff to hold to ransom (unfortunately they hold the purse strings rather tightly).
Once again thank you for your response and i am hopling that I can establish a better relatinship with the GameSalad Team.
@andrew.mcmillan@bcgs.wa.edu.au said:
. . . interestingly enough it was through the demonstration of some students games and their design processes as examples of what we were doing that helped us in our submission for the setting up of my lab of 17 new 27"IMacs, 10 MacBook pros and 10 IPads at the end of 2013 in what was a totally Windows dominated school of 1000 students.
It must be endlessly frustrating for GS staff to hear people complain about having to pay for their product (not that this was your issue at all, just using your point here as a springboard to make a more general point) whilst seemingly indifferent about having to pay out hundreds/thousands of dollars for their hardware, lol, so you find people logging on to the forum on their $2000 Retina iMac (or even a $1000 Mac/PC) through their broadband connection or mobile device (for which they pay a monthly fee) to express their absolute outrage at being expected to pay $20 to use GameSalad
I can imagine, with a school, it's easy for those with their hands on the purse strings to see a room full of shiny iMacs or PCs, looks impressive when the parents / school inspectors visit, looks good when promoting the school, but software like GameSalad is much less visible, especially to less technically minded people.
Comments
I see, yes, that makes sense, thanks for the clarification.
D/P
@dgackey, could you please involve me in this issue? I am keen to understand what exactly is in "conflict" in @Hymloe s game.
Admittedly it is quite a large project, but his approach is well structured and quite efficient. Could you forward the feedback you got from the developers to me?
My last analysis showed, that after the mayor table issues had "mysteriously" been resolved to an extent, the main culprit for possible crashes were:
1) the spiking of fonts which @Hymloe makes estensive use of, and
2) GS loading all sound being referenced in code for a particular scene, even though they are not actually called on the scene. His scenes get built dynamically from a table, therefore it plays sounds according to the current settings. As all possible sounds are wrapped in rules, these all load even though they never get played on the scene.
Admittedly, all sounds loading at the start of a scene is clearly a good design choice, avoiding adhoc loading lag during gameplay. This may be an area where the project could be butchered for the sake of stability ... by removing some sounds.
MESSAGING, X-PLATFORM LEADERBOARDS, OFFLINE-TIMER, ANALYTICS and BACK-END CONTROL for your GameSalad projects
www.APPFORMATIVE.com
All this talk of custom fonts. Making a custom font is actually pretty easy. The difficulty comes in putting together the (hope I'm using the right term here) kern table. Spawning the correct letter in the correct place is very simple. It's just a matter of working out where the correct place is. How closely should an e be spawned to a l? What about an e to a w? etc.
That's where all the difficulty and work comes in. Actually spawning the font is easy.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
It's kerning tables (rather than 'kern'), or kerning pairs.
Agreed, even with numbers you still need to kern, although it's a lot simpler as em widths can be grouped in three lots, I've got a very old GS project somewhere that kerns numbers so you don't have to rely on monospaced fonts, might try and dig it out.
Apple call the kern rather than keening, as far as I'm aware
And for fixed width fonts there's no issue - as easy as custom numbers.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
There are a lot of bitmap font generators around these days and they all produce the required kerning/kern tables which are supported by All the major/minor development frameworks. It would be a joy to see GS fully support bitmap fonts.
Can you link an example of one? Whipping up a system to generate the fonts in GameSalad really wouldn't be too difficult given the right information.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Free and easy
http://kvazars.com/littera/
but the real the Uber God(s) of superb software engineering 71 Squared
https://71squared.com/glyphdesigner
I had thought of doing what I think you are suggesting - basically implementing some kind of decent full font support but it is a lot of work and without sprite sheet support life is waaaaay to short
(well mine is anyway) 
Yeah, looking at what gets outputted there, it would still be a ton of work. First the png would need to be split into separate characters, then the kerning information would have to be pulled out (and I'm not convinced enough is provided).
I might whip up a fixed width font demo later as it'll be so much simpler, but I'll wait on GameSalad to implement custom fonts, I think.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
'kerning' (rather than keening).
You don't need to kern fixed width (monospaced) fonts.
Typo
That's why there's no issue :P
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Yep, but I never miss an oppurtunity for a bit of one-upmanship.
Took about 30 seconds to adapt my custom number fonts to a custom monospace fonts demo. A bit more effort will be needed to account for wrapping and punctuation, but monospace fonts really aren't an issue.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
@Armelline and @Socks said:
Many of the comments in the forum have errors. I think it's the stupid automobile corrected, I mean auto correct!
@ForumNinja What happened to "Quote" button functioning properly? Now it just starts a new comment with just the >@whomever without the quote? Shall I report it as a bug?
No auto correct would spit out 'opportunity', that's all my own keyboard clumsiness !
Yeah, it's never worked properly for me.
Thanks for chiming in @Hopscotch ... I'm seriously lost, as I don't seem to be able to get anyone at GS to take responsibility for the issues. And it means a lot to me to have had you take a look at my project, and deem it quite reasonable.
It's very much appreciated.
Well total devastation here.
I have just got back from holidays (I live in Australia) to see a message saying that my free trial ends in 14 days. Having just started about 60 kids on a 12 week task based on Game Design using Gamesalad in the last week of last term, their homework was to analyse some 1980s style arcade games and research various games, this has thrown a whole tool box into the works.
As our Budgets have been completed at the end of 2014 and we don't finish our budgeting process until November/December this year for next year, I am basically stuffed.
As I only saw this today, I have been frantically emailing various staff to see if I can access some funds somehow, anywhere, anyhow. It probably wont be that successful. My kids have got a lot out of GameSalad over the last several years with several of them going on to purchase the Pro Version. This is a huge blow to me and I am not sure what to do or recover from here as I have been pumping the kids up for many weeks prior to the shool holidays. Our kids dont make any money out of this, the only ones who have tried, have purchased the Pro Version.
I am pretty disappointed with the late minute notice.
Contact Game Salad, and ask them for a deal. They were talking about something like "up to 90% off the price for education."
See what you can put together with them. Perhaps you can sort out a quick makeshift deal to keep your class going in the short term, at least.
Good luck.
PS: You could try GameMaker. There's a free version.
@dgackey ????
I've already emailed Andrew, thanks.
NB: while I'm extremely sympathetic about the situation here, I have also tried for a long time to impress upon education users the value of licensing with companies as opposed to simply relying on the free version, anonymously. It's hard to build a relationship with a company when they don't even know you're using the product
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
@dgackey Super! GS is a great learning tool that builds a wide variety of skills!
You make a good point about licensing that I hadn't considered. Having spent 20 wonderful years as a teacher and 15 as an educational consultant pushing for the introduction of new technology I am very sympathetic with teachers working hard at convincing colleagues and administration to allow them to introduce new ideas and programs
Even when things are free this can sometimes be a daunting task.
Go teachers go!
@kolabo it's a tough job and educators are put in a really unenviable position. We do the best we can to make it easier for them.
Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com
I hear you.
I decided to come back to GS to try to start making games again just to see that I won't be able to use it now because I can't afford it. 10/10 would switch to gamemaker again
Thankyou Dan for your prompt response. And as I mentioned in my email, I do understand the need for change and GameSalad has obviously made a quick decision about its change in direction, that is probably what is the biggest obstacle for our school.
I also, and I am sure that many other institutions, very much appreciate the generous education pricing. It is quite substantial, and from my experience in only using GameSalad for 3 years, I know of several students who have purchased the Pro Version and I am sure that if I can continue with GameSalad there will be more.
I am interested in what education users can do then to "build a relationship with a company". Is it just the payment of the license so that you know who is using the product? or is it the involvement in competitions or contributions to the blogs or forums. If there is more that I can do to benefit the students then I will pursue it. I have contacted GameSalad in the past, particulalrly when we were using the Windows version in what seems a lifetime ago and did explain then that we were using it as a school.
As Kolaba mentioned it is often extremely difficult to introduce new ideas and programs, and interestingly enough it was through the demonstration of some students games and their design processes as examples of what we were doing that helped us in our submission for the setting up of my lab of 17 new 27"IMacs, 10 MacBook pros and 10 IPads at the end of 2013 in what was a totally Windows dominated school of 1000 students.
I am working hard at rustling up the funds, I only have another 3 or four staff to hold to ransom (unfortunately they hold the purse strings rather tightly).
Once again thank you for your response and i am hopling that I can establish a better relatinship with the GameSalad Team.
Andrew McMillan
I would like to have a shared license so I can install across multiple labs with one license.
I can imagine, with a school, it's easy for those with their hands on the purse strings to see a room full of shiny iMacs or PCs, looks impressive when the parents / school inspectors visit, looks good when promoting the school, but software like GameSalad is much less visible, especially to less technically minded people.
I want Apple to move to a free model.