Updates 1.24.39 & 1.24.5821 are now live...

CodeWizard

Hey everyone! We've pushed some updates to Creator today. Here's a quick summary of the changes:

• Optimization pass on Android engine. It's now about 2mb smaller and quite a bit faster. We enabled armv7 instructions, which really helps physics heavy games.
• Network behaviors are fixed and now available on Windows.
• Table import optimization pass. Importing tables is much faster now.
• Image reordering fixes for Mac Creator (image library now automatically orders alphabetically).
• Refactoring how we process the main game loop to better handle variable framerates. This should improve physics simulation stability.
• You can now set actor visibility on HTML5 during runtime.
• Updated Chartboost for Android to deal with Marshmallow OS issues.
• You can now use the number pad on HTML5.

We reenabled sleeping in the physics engine. For most games, this will have no impact except to make things faster when you have a lot of unmoving objects. However, if your game relies heavily on the order of collision events you may need to make some changes to your logic.

Enjoy!

wilsongalucho

YAY!!! Let me test my battle scene now on Android!!

stanny

Does this improve scene loading times?

izam

Thanks guys for focusing on Android! Will test this out

Socks

@CodeWizard said:
(image library now automatically orders alphabetically).

Good grief !! That sounds like a disaster ! Seriously !?

Going to check it out now . . . . .

ForumNinja

@Socks You can move your images around in the library, but when you save/exit your project and load it again they will be set back to alphabetical order

Socks

@ForumNinja said:
@Socks You can move your images around in the library, but when you save/exit your project and load it again they will be set back to alphabetical order

Yep, just checked, it's terrible ! But maybe that's just the way I work ?

Maybe I just need to stop forever whining about the images pane, and except it for what it is, I try and spend as little time in there as possible, but I use lots of images, sometimes multiple image sequences in the hundreds (something GameSalad excels at).

So now if I were to import (for example) a handful of new images to build an actor rather than them all being in once place (the nearest thing we had to a folder system was that images imported at the sometime would at least be in one location), they would now be spread out amongst hundreds of other images unless you name them all with the same starting letter or word, making sure you have nothing else starting with the same word so they don't get mixed in with them . . . .

Like I say I just need to stop forever whining about the images pane, it's a compromise at best, and it basically works, I just think this has removed a little bit of the (little) control we had with the Images pane.

. . . . . . . . .

Are there any more details on the sleeping / physics engine, sounds good if it speeds things up, but for those situations where we might need to adjust our code what should we be looking out for - and what kinds of adjustments would help ?

wilsongalucho

So far so good I've ran a few tests on Kindle and Samsung S6, my battle scene which was unplayable on Android seems like its playable. However still not as fast as Apple since on Iphone 4 runs very smoothly and on Samsung S6 I still noticed a tiny bit of lag, but will continue to test. Anyway thanks so much for the fix. Google Play the vikings are coming Cheers guys!

GeorgeGS

@Socks said:
Was there a lot of complaints about the old ordering system ?

Yes, since it was broken and could reorder things in any particular order when you loaded your project. The changes necessary to the engine to improve load times and not discard all assets only to immediately reload them if they were needed on the next scene inadvertently broke this. This seemed like a reasonable quick fix until we can work on improving it more.

Armelline

Personally I like the alphabetical order. I always name images starting with the same letter or word if they're used together, so it suits me just fine!

Socks

@GeorgeGS said:
Yes, since it was broken and could reorder things in any particular order when you loaded your project. The changes necessary to the engine to improve load times and not discard all assets only to immediately reload them if they were needed on the next scene inadvertently broke this. This seemed like a reasonable quick fix until we can work on improving it more.

Thanks for the info, like I say I just need to stop complaining about that window and get used to it, especially if this change helps in other areas like improved load times.

Armelline

@Socks - This would seem to be the bit you should cross your fingers regarding...

@GeorgeGS said:
...until we can work on improving it more.

That's progress at least!

Franto

Awesome work @GSstaff! These are some extraordinary changes, I too use alphabetical ordering of my actors, so this will help me greatly, and I can't wait to test out the android changes when I get the time.

@Socks Have you tried using a batch rename such as: http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php

You just get all the related image files, highlight them or put them in a folder, and instantaneously add an identifying letter to an entire related group, it could the front, the back, within a certain space all the image files share, it's quite the versatile program, you'll find it to be an invaluable tool to your work flow.

As for the actors and objects files in the gameproj, using Dreamweaver and Regex in the search and replace function could help you rename hundreds of files in seconds to match their new "name.png". I managed to successfully convert content in expression editors within hundreds of actors this way{instead of going into each, one at a time, which would be madness I tell ya! }

Socks

@Franto said:
@Socks Have you tried using a batch rename such as: http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php

Yeah, only for around the last 20 years or so (!)

@Franto said:
. . . help you rename hundreds of files in seconds to match their new "name.png".

Yeah, but that's not really my problem.

jorkos

I'm sharing the same sentiment as @socks - I didn't realize reordering was on the table. In my apps, all images follow number systems because I call them programmatically (for example 1-letter.png, 2-letter.png.... ). The image shown is all based on logic and variables.

Reordering by alphabet could make things really confusing....I thought the order was by date of upload which served to group them in batches of upload.

For changes like this it would be great to have some prior discussion and debate.

Thanks for listening

Armelline

@jorkos Not ideal but using letter-1.png etc. would give the same result while being more organised with the new system.

BlackCloakGS

This was a short term fix to address a breaking change caused by the faster scene loading fixes. Ultimately i want to add a search box and a filter (so you can filter by so sort of tag (may finder tags). However, there was not enough time before this release and our fix seem like the best option with the time we had. Adding search boxes and filters will cause the UI to change and we need to think through the problem so we can to it right.

NNterprises

Is this download available on Windows yet? My creator says "no updates you are all up to date", then the Download button for GS.com still only has windows 1.0.0 and seems glitchy still.

Or am I doing something wrong lol

CodeWizard

@NNODOLSKI Yeah, just grab the 1.0 version. The new version of Windows Creator automatically updates when you run it. Sounds like you're running an older version!

NNterprises

@CodeWizard Yeah I was on 0.13.40 and it was never updating..... Thanks!

NNterprises

https://youtu.be/skGd0sXhx4A

I hate to say it, but yes Window version 0.13.40 runs a lot smoother than the updated 1.24.58 whatever. As you can see in the video it stops and glitches whenever I do any action, collide with any other character, or whenever it spawns something...

This didn't happen in the 0.13.40 and that's why I never updated yet. Maybe it's something with how my game operates... but Ill have to switch to my girlfriends MAC I guess

I also signed an apk to test it on droid and it has the same glitch features from the viewer

CodeWizard

@NNODOLSKI Thanks for the video! I'll take a look at your project and see what's up.

CodeWizard

@NNODOLSKI I found the problem! It looks like you're saving a table on every action? That's taking a bit of time to process. This is only showing up now for you on Windows because we fixed table saving recently (it used to do nothing). My suggestion is that you only save a table when you need to. I'll also take a look at the table save code to see if we can improve it. But, in any case, try not to save tables so often.

For extra info, the top offenders during frames where your game hitches are:

CoolFishGS

When do you plan to fix bug with AdMob ?

bloodnite

Thanks!

Franto

@Socks Sorry for my presumption, I figured you might have known.

@GSstaff I like the fact that you guys use a quick fix to help us out while working on a better fix later. Quite a good decision.

Machinist Apps

I've created a machinist calculator using Gamesalad. Almost every scene in my app uses a finger swipe to scroll the screen. I use this method to scroll thru the different calculations.

I've used this scroll method for over a year. I think I found it on one of T-shirt booths videos back in the day.

The release from 3 weeks ago made this very glitchy on android. When I saw the update today I was hopeful this would fix the issue, but it didn't.

Has anybody else had this issue? I have an update that has been pending for a couple weeks. I'm unable to update the Android version of my app until this gets fixed. My subscription ends in 2 weeks. Help

Also, load times are still double of what they were. the longest load time was about 2.5 seconds. Now I'm up to 5 seconds.

GeorgeGS

@CoolFishGS said:

When do you plan to fix bug with AdMob ?

Is there a bug in our database for the issue?

NNterprises

@CodeWizard thanks I'll check into that. I do save stats like jumping and bashing for my achievements...I'll look into it

I believe the same issue is kindof like @Plucked Studios where my load times, and glitchyness is a lot worse than my old version

Thanks again I'll play around

clee2005

@CodeWizard said:

• Optimization pass on Android engine. It's now about 2mb smaller and quite a bit faster. We enabled armv7 instructions, which really helps physics heavy games.

Hey @CodeWizard , I was excited to try out the new optimizations, but they didn't seem to change much from the last build. Our game Word Wow is still unplayable (on a low end Android 4.4 tablet) since 1.24.x builds. 0.13.31 works great. Same source code.

I submitted a ticket... figured you might be interested (I know we are!) in knowing why it's so sluggish. Perhaps the huge dictionary tables we are using? Whatever it is, it's dramatic... in this game anyway.

Thanks!

NNterprises

@clee2005 I was also waiting for this update to finally publish my game!
V 0.13.40 was the best version that works for me, but it seems there is an issue with saving and loading tables, and with your "dictionary database" you may be having the same issues as I am