State of GameSalad on 4-18-2017

ForumNinja

I know you guys are overdue for an update, and I appreciate your patience! Here’s some insight into what we’re working on / how it’s going.

Web Version of Creator

All our development efforts are currently focused on the web version and updates to the HTML5 engine. We’ve made huge progress on the upcoming web version and are looking at having the alpha version out for people to check out within the next month or so.

Some of the notable improvements already in the web version:

• A reworked expression editor:
• You can type in it and it’ll autocomplete your attributes / functions for you
• There’s some very basic error handling
• You can’t save an invalid expression
• Tables now have their own section in the expression editor (i.e tables.PurchaseTable)
• A search bar for actors, images, etc
• Reworked UI (I really want to share screenshots but can’t yet):
• We have plans to have dark and light UI
• You can see instance attributes for an actor while in the scene view
• Unlocking and locking attributes is more intuitive (there’s a little lock icon next to the attributes that you can toggle)
• Adding tags isn’t as tedious now: You simply type the name of the tag you want for an actor in a Tags field, and if the tag doesn’t exist it’s added to the list of tags (no more needing to leave the actor view to add tags)
• You can view, create, and edit game attributes while in the Actor view
• Really common attributes (i.e color, size, rotation etc) are no longer in dropdown boxes
• There’s more, but that’s what I’ve got off the top of my head
• Zoom functionality (finally)
• Some slight terminology changes to be more in line with actual programming languages (i.e rules now have the sections if, then, else)

We’re also working on using some cool browser tech that will let you edit your games offline even in the browser. So even before we release the wrapped “desktop” versions, you will be able to work offline after the initial upload. Once you’re online, the system will begin to sync your data to our servers.

The preview for the web version will use our HTML5 engine, so one of our devs is giving it a tune up currently. If there’s any HTML5 specific issues you know about, feel free to shoot me a message with some details and I’ll get it looked at.

Tizen

We pushed a publishing update for the Tizen platform that allows the quit game behavior to be used to close the app.

We heard that Tizen was being picky about the back button closing quitting the app, so as long as you handle the back button input (by using a rule with a key condition with the text “back” inside it), you should be able to upload to the Tizen store without issues.

Hiring

We’re currently hiring some contractors to help write our next set of curriculum units. If you have experience writing curriculum, developing projects, taking screenshots, and recording videos, you may qualify for the contracting position! More details at http://gamesalad.com/jobs

Icebox

This is great ! it might be the least interesting but im hyped about the dark UI , I hope you update us more often , great news!

Braydon_SFX

@ForumNinja said:

We have plans to have dark and light UI

YES!

jamie_c

Sounds great. I've been messing around with some other web/browser based apps lately and it's really not as bad as I thought it would be. That seemed like a major drawback to me at first, but not so much now after playing around with a couple others. Looking forward to trying out the alpha!

RossmanBrothersGames

@ForumNinja said:

The preview for the web version will use our HTML5 engine, so one of our devs is giving it a tune up currently. If there’s any HTML5 specific issues you know about, feel free to shoot me a message with some details and I’ll get it looked at.

Controller support

blob

These Ui and Workflow enhancements are great and very much appreciated, yes yes and yes!
I just hope the web version will be able to handle big projects and that we'll still have some kind of backward compatibility with our current projects as @adent42 mentioned before....

Also, students are very impatient and have the attention span of gold fish these days,
So improved loading time would benefit them. (just watching out for students nothing to do with developers need)...

Please don't wait for the forum monsters to be kicking and screaming to give us some news in the future..

Thank you @ForumNinja

Toque

"Search bar"

A little embarrassing I just kissed the monitor..........

jasonnowak

@ForumNinja is there any info about on-device previewing? Will we still be able to quickly test projects on devices either through wifi or USB connection?

All of these other features sound great and I can't wait to try them out!

Thanks!
Jason

AlchimiaStudios

This is great, thanks for the update.

Do custom collision work with the HTML5 engine?

Would also love controller support.

PhilipCC

@ForumNinja Just about any news around here is welcome news. If you guys would just keep us in the loop about what you are up to, more veterans will keep paying their subscriptions instead of defecting.

Thanks for the news.

BigDave

Sounds nice and its just good to hear you guys still busy making it work.

BigDave

But there is more reasons we can NOT use Tizen than the home button.
The game salad mobile/editor version is not equal the html version, which is the base for Tizen. Behaviours behave different between mobile and html versions.

BigDave

Making a living from mostly 2-3 of my meanwhile older games I really hope forward for compatibility of the older projects within the new browser version of game salad.
If this can not be guaranteed I rely on the old version to build the OS and Ad sdk updates.

If neither of both happens in the future this could be fatal for my business. Entirely build on the foundation of game salad.

BigDave

The zoom and the auto-completion feature sounds neat, its great to hear about those UI improvements.

BigDave

It would be great if the HTML 5 version finally works withought issues. So STEAM (pseudo PCversion) and other online platforms or even once own blog with an ad banner can become additional revenue stream / exposure channels.

( i know a handful already handed in steam versions but they must be able to avoid behaviours /attributes that are not working in the html version, because none of my games works 100% as a html version)

Two.E

There are a lot of great changes going on. I am sure a lot of them will be looked over, but its going to make development so much quicker and easier to explain. Like having tables with their own expression editor section, or seeing/editing the attributes for an actor while still in the scene (Great to hear!).
Look forward to hearing more!

birdboy

Sounds fantastic! Autocomplete and typable attributes in the expression editor could potentially speed up development a lot. Something I'd love would be color coding for expressions (different colors for self. or game., system attributes, custom attributes, functions and so on). Also fully visible expressions independent of their length would go a long way towards simplifying development (I'm on a Mac and I have to constantly move the expression editor left and right to work on long expressions). Right now my own expressions can become an endless unreadable mess often times requiring minutes of deciphering.

With these workflow changes I really hope that at some point (after all of this has reached a point of good usability) we'll get some of the missing essential pro features that would make GameSalad a force to be reckoned with.

Armelline

You can’t save an invalid expression

This is the hugest thing in that list.

adent42

For people that asked

@BigDave yes, we are planning on older project support. At first, the system will import projects from the publishing server. I'm writing the important bit of that import script as a library so it can be used locally when we make the desktop version.

@jasonnowak at first there will be no previewer support, but I'm hoping to add a mode to the viewer that will let you click a QR code or enter a unique ID and load the preview from the editing server soon after the tool is done.

@AlchimiaStudios custom collisions are already implemented in the current HTML5 engine, though they will have some differences due to performance issues in the HTML5 engine (and the fact that I sort of rushed the implementation way back when we introduced custom collision shapes).

KnightStar

So here's the $60k question, @ardent42 & @ForumNinja - do you guys a ballpark (see what I did there - BALLPARK) time-frame as to when you guys may have this update go Live?

This makes deciding on starting a new project a factor..

RedRobo

@adent42 said:
For people that asked

@BigDave yes, we are planning on older project support. At first, the system will import projects from the publishing server. I'm writing the important bit of that import script as a library so it can be used locally when we make the desktop version.

Thanks @adent42 As someone with years invested in the current format this is reassuring.

CasualEvolution

Hi @adent42 please will be great if you can see this post, I think that this issue can boost loadin times :
http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/comment/593511#Comment_593511

jasonnowak

@adent42 It's great to hear that will be added later. Fast previewing is one of my favorite things about GS development.

On a semi-related note...given that Creator will be a web-based tool, will it function well (or at all) on Safari for iPad / iPhone? I've had a longstanding dream of being able to use GS on the go with just an iPad

Jason

pHghost

@jasonnowak said:
I've had a longstanding dream of being able to use GS on the go with just an iPad

Same here. If it is a browser tool, better make full use of that!

BigDave

@adent42 said:
For people that asked

@BigDave yes, we are planning on older project support. At first, the system will import projects from the publishing server. I'm writing the important bit of that import script as a library so it can be used locally when we make the desktop version.

I love you

adent42

@pHghost not at first if only because for development speed we're not testing if we handle all touch events. The good thing is there's nothing preventing us from doing so we'll probably spend a week or two after we're done with implementing all the behaviors to get that working.

Ideally for tablets, we'd be able to package it as an app so you don't have to deal with browser chrome (url bar, back buttons, etc) when working on a tablet.

AlchimiaStudios

@adent42 said:

Ideally for tablets, we'd be able to package it as an app so you don't have to deal with browser chrome (url bar, back buttons, etc) when working on a tablet.

Yeah that would be optimal for sure.

Braydon_SFX

@adent42 said:

Ideally for tablets, we'd be able to package it as an app so you don't have to deal with browser chrome (url bar, back buttons, etc) when working on a tablet.

That'll be really really nice actually. I'd support that 100%!

smurfted

Stupid question.

But, what kind of timescale before we get to see something then boys?

Nabbo (ReflectiveByte)

@ForumNinja @adent42 Does this mean that I can work on gs on tablet?

viking

@adent42 Will there be any improvements in loading times on mobile devices with the new Web version of the Creator after publishing to the device, or is the underlying engine the same as before - just different Creatir interface?