Monthly GameSalad Meetup Thursday August 6 2015 at 7pm CST (01:00 GMT)

BlackCloakGS

Topic: Expression Editor in GameSalad

Come learn about GameSalad and meet other GameSalad creators. Chat with some of the developers behind GameSalad, including GameSalad's own Steve Jakab (a.k.a stevej), Alan Uthoff (a.k.a. BlackCloakGS), Tan Tran (a.k.a. adent42)

Talk: Armelline from the GameSalad Forums will be presenting

Getting to know and love the Expression Editor

Description:
A look at the less commonly used and more advanced functions found in the expression editor, including ln, log10, exp, sin, cos, mod, vectorToAngle, and the string functions

If you can't join us in person, join us online

PhilipCC

Count me in. I love what you are going to cover. It will encourage to to learn more about advanced functions and the expression editor.

robertkdale

Nice! Thanks @Armelline and GS Team!

neoman

This is fantastic! Unfortunately I can't make it but I am looking forward to the recording. Thank you to the GS team and @Armelline. This is greatly appreciated.

cherrywtz

i'm in.always wondered what to do with log10, exp, sin, cos etc

MentalDonkeyGames

I'll try my best to join this time. The subject is something that i'm very interested to Learn more about.

gingagaming

If Ted @Armelline is staying up late, I may have to do the same and tune in.

Lovejoy

Same day and time as the first Republican debate, i may make it, but not fully be paying attention.

BlackCloakGS

Just a reminder the meetup is today 7pm CST

Hopscotch

Will be there digitally! Thanks for organising @BlackCloakGS !

Armelline

Just to warn people, I've woken up with a cold this morning so I'm not feeling 100%. Hopefully won't ramble too much!

I think it's unlikely we'll get on to the text functions today based on my projections of how long this is going to take, I may have to do another talk about those another time. What I definitely plan on covering, though, are the following:

• abs
• ceil
• floor
• padReal
• padInt
• precision
• round
• roundTo
• sin
• cos
• exp
• ln
• log10
• mod
• pow
• sqrt
• magntitude
• max
• min
• vectorToAngle
• Conditional logic in the expression editor
• And of course more general expression editor usage

Emboldened ones will involve demonstrations in GameSalad, the others I'll be looking at more briefly.

BlackCloakGS

Two hours till the start of the meetup

Hopscotch

Thanks for the meetup and thanks for the presentation @Armelline !

Armelline

I'll get some links up tomorrow to the various resources I mentioned tonight. Sorry for being a bit incoherent at times but 2am + a cold doesn't lend itself to well to making sense! I'll be a bit clearer in my video course coming soon!

RThurman

Great presentation @Armelline !

Chunkypixels

One of the best meetups I've attended/watched...

Big thanks to @Armalline for staying up late and soldiering on through his impending cold. I really did learn some really useful bits... and the presentation with the slides and demonstrations was well put together and easy to understand.

I can imagine the video for this meeting becoming an invaluable tool for many users once it's been uploaded...

Highly recommended...

Some interesting snippets towards the end of the meetup too, regarding the rendering engine and what the current development priorities are... Keep it up team...

Armelline

Thank you all for the kind words! I planned a much more coherent and detailed explanation of magnitude, particularly about the difference between magnitude(x,y) and magnitude(x1-x2,y1-y2) but that got kind of lost. I'll definitely be working on doing a better job of that when I do the videos (hopefully this weekend)!

Sorry I didn't get on to the text functions, particularly as I think they're so helpful! Will definitely be in the video series too!

AssortDis

Although I signed up for the online session but as it was too early in the morning where I live, I couldn't join. I'll make sure to see your videos when they are available.

PhilipCC

@Armelline Lots of good tips and tricks well explained and depicted. Thank you, kind sir.

Socks

Will there be a video of the whole talk ?

Approw

I missed it too unfortunately, will the video be online soon?

pHghost

I fell asleep in the middle, but it was really nice, looking forward to the recording to watch the rest!

The_Gamesalad_Guru

I'm waiting for the DVD.

Armelline

Sorry guys, really under the weather today. Links will go up tomorrow. (For the resources, not the video.)

Lovejoy

@Armelline said:
Sorry guys, really under the weather today. Links will go up tomorrow. (For the resources, not the video.)

I thought tea drinkers didn't get sick

Hopscotch

@Armelline, get well soon and take your time. You really put a lot of preparation and effort into a great presentation.

@Chunkypixels said:
Some interesting snippets towards the end of the meetup too, regarding the rendering engine and what the current development priorities are... Keep it up team...

Yes @CodeWizard, @BlackCloakGS, fully support the direction mentioned!

Armelline

@Lovejoy said:
I thought tea drinkers didn't get sick

I don't drink tea

@Hopscotch I zoned out pretty much as soon as I was done talking and had asked my questions, so could you summarise the key points there? I assume it's the same things mentioned on the forums but don't want to miss anything!

Hopscotch

@Armelline, the main take-away for me is that all focus is on making the current iteration of GS stable, optimise it and add quality of life features.

This means that the new rendering engine takes a back-seat as this still has a number of issues to be sorted out, which would take quite a bit of time, and would essentially hold back more important improvements to the current implementation.

I see this as a good thing, the current rendering engine is not a problem, relative to other more pressing issues. Who knows what teething problems a new rendering engine would bring. Lets get a solid foundation first.

Armelline

@Hopscotch Agreed, thanks for the summary.

PhilipCC

@Socks said:
Will there be a video of the whole talk ?
@Approw

GS indicated that the session was being recorded so you won't miss out. It was very good.

Socks

@PhilipCC said:
GS indicated that the session was being recorded so you won't miss out. It was very good

Cool ! Looking forward to it, especially @Armelline's expression logic magic ! Although I am still of the mind (as yet untested) that in theory multiple conditions in a single expression are going to be less efficient than nested rules (for the same reasons that nested rules are more efficient than multiple condition rules) - but that's not to say they don't have their place being a very quick way to implement complex rules in a neat little package.

Also @Armelline - you missed arcsin, arccos and arctan off your list, which are all pretty useful (except maybe for arctan), they could be tagged on the end of an explanation of cos and sin and tan as they are just the inverse functions of cos and sin and tan (value returns angle, rather than angle returns value).

One other question, weren't we advised a while back (last year even?) that precision was not an efficient function, as it had to convert values to text and then back to numbers (making it comparatively slow) - and that roundTo should now be used in its place ? I only ask as it's emboldened on your list indicating it getting a demo during your talk, I thought it was like using % instead of mod(x), something looked down on whose use carries an indelible social shame ?