State of the Salad 03/2018

adent42

In late January, after the High Sierra panic, we had a bit of a slow-down due to yours truly getting the flu. But the team continued working and with a little post-recovery elbow grease we got a lot done!

Creator 2.0

Lots of new stuff! We're just about done testing, so you should it soon. Aside from the usual slew of bug fixes we've done the following:

Behaviors

Behaviors have been ported. I'm not gonna list them.

Because they're all there!

Path Finding? Check.
Loops? Check.
IAP? Check.

Speaking of IAP and Game Services, we've added some cool test dialogs. You will be able simulate things like payment failure, payment success, delayed payments, etc.

But wait, there's more!

In order to add the testing functionality, I had to add some hooks into the HTML5 engine. You will be able use these same hooks to wire up your own IAP or Leaderboard / Achievement services to the HTML5 export!

I'll try to get some documentation on that later, but if anyone want to do a video, PM me and I can send some notes to let you figure it out yourself.

There is also now a setting to toggle visibility of Monetization and Platform Service behaviors Those behaviors are 'Off' by default for now, as most beginners don't need them yet.

Custom Collisions

The HTML5 tool will now be able to handle setting custom collision shapes. You can now even toggle a preview of the shape:

AND you now have the option of having GameSalad Auto-Trace your image to set up custom collision shapes automatically.

UI Tweaks

We made a few small tweaks to the UI.

• Custom attributes have a darker background color, to make them easier to spot.
• When you create a new custom attribute, focus is automatically on the name field, so you can name it right away.
• Grouping behaviors have a little bit of excess spacing removed.
• Type to insert behavior is available!
• Rule/Group/Timer shortcut buttons are now bigger and should be the correct size on Firefox.

There's still a ways to go before Creator 2.0 becomes a replacement for Creator 1

We're still missing large project import, controller support, copy/paste for actors and scenes, a cleaner "pro" UI, offline mode, a desktop wrapper, and the community favorite "dark UI". So much stuff to do.

Still. All the behaviors! That was a milestone that got me doing the Dance of Joy:

Speaking of Creator 1...

Creator 1.25.88 and Ad Network Updates

At the beginning of February we released Mac Creator 1.25.88. That wrapped up major issues plaguing Creator 1.25.84. Unfortunately, we had to roll back a lot of unfinished code that was mistakenly merged into our codebase.

With the rolling code back and forth, we're just now catching up to where we were a month and a half ago with the iOS engine ad updated. We've just finished a first pass of ChartBoost and Tapdaq SDK updates and things look good.

As a public service announcement, if you're publishing an iOS app with an ad network, please be sure to check: "Allow App To Talk To Any Domain Insecurely". I'm not sure about the other ad networks, but it's definitely necessary for Admob.

We've also finally got some good repo cases of the "unresponsive edge" bug so we'll be looking into that after the ads release. (Honestly, we had a hell of a time finding a way to consistently reproduce it).

Education

In case you're curious, GameSalad for Education is still rolling out to schools across the country.

https://twitter.com/jfarmer_MRES/status/966846129429204993

As the school year wraps up, our curriculum team is preparing for the next school year with an improved CS curriculum and new cross-curricular units that allow students to use game creation beyond CS and Game Design classes. Having a game creation unit in my Social Studies classes when I was a kid would have been SOOOO awesome.

That’s all for now. We’ll get back to you soon about the ad network update and we’ll see you in a couple of months with another State of the Salad!

RowdyPants

@adent42 Sounds like y'all have been working hard! Thanks for the update.

dapion

Sounds good! Thanks for the information...

indra.aziz

Yey! Cheering for you and the GS team!

Armelline

Sounds great! Thanks for the update and all the hard work.

I hope this State post and all the work @adent42's put in to improving the IAP experience in 2.0 AND supporting the ad networks AND the custom collision shapes goes some way to convincing the very vocal doubters that GS isn't abandoning us non-edu developers!

AlchimiaStudios

Good to hear the progress as always. I'm super stoked you got custom collisions (and a preview!) and all the behaviours ported. Can't wait for full feature parity.

Looking forward to the Desktop Creator updates.

vetie

Awesome news. I am currently re-evaluating Game Salad along with several other game engines to see which I will be using in the future.

Thanks!

daveyj0nes

Game salad is a fabulous tool. It’s great to hear progress is still being made. Perhaps I’m missing something, but it seems that the online creator 2.0 is not easy to find. I kept hearing people taking about it in the forums but figured it was still I beta until someone on YouTube mentioned the address. Does anyone who has spent time with both the Mac Creator and the web-based tool have any opinion as to which is more functional...? Can you import a Mac creator project into the web tool?

adent42

@daveyj0nes We haven't made the online creator easy to find on purpose. It's still incomplete compared to the desktop versions. Once we launch this latest version we're still going to be missing a way for users to handle game controller input and it's still not able to convert larger projects from the native tool (which is an answer to your questions. It can use projects from the Mac creator, in theory. But if the project is too large, then the servers won't finish converting it).

If you're just doing it for fun, I'd try the web creator, as that's where the future of the tool is going to lie. If you're building a game for commercial release, then definitely stick with the native tools for now.

Armelline

@adent42 said:
Once we launch this latest version we're still going to be missing a way for users to handle game controller input and it's still not able to convert larger projects from the native tool (which is an answer to your questions. It can use projects from the Mac creator, in theory. But if the project is too large, then the servers won't finish converting it).

I'd not prioritise controller support, but big project import is vital

But in my experience, bigger, more demanding and complicated projects fail pretty hard when previewed in HTML5, though, anyway.

kes0h

Nice to see things are moving. IMHO the biggest feature which is missing in both creators Is google play leaderboards and achievements support. when u implement Amazon's L@A IT kills your android game at google play store. Better to buy appformative solution .

Hopscotch

@kes0h said:
Better to buy appformative solution .

thank you for the kind words about AppFormative!

Just to let others know, single leader-boards are free. Also, with all leader-boards, you are in full control of how and what gets displayed, and can be seamlessly integrated, and the look and feel adapted to the design style of your app.

kes0h

Free? I bought license key for Single leaderboard 14 days ago for 15 USD. Anything changed? PS: @Hopscotch Roland, i sent you some questions in PM and another to info@appformative.com . Need your help pls. Thx Petr

@Hopscotch said:

@kes0h said:
Better to buy appformative solution .

thank you for the kind words about AppFormative!

Just to let others know, single leader-boards are free. Also, with all leader-boards, you are in full control of how and what gets displayed, and can be seamlessly integrated, and the look and feel adapted to the design style of your app.

Hopscotch

@kes0h said:
Free? I bought license key for Single leaderboard 14 days ago for 15 USD. Anything changed?

Erm, momentary delirium on my side, I apologize! You are right.

adent42

Just to keep everyone up to date, testing was going fine until today (mostly because up until now I was tweaking some stuff and only letting one ad show). Chartboost Video ads are having problems (their HTML5 / interactive ads work as expected). I'm waiting for some help from Chartboost to get past this. On the plus side, everything else seems good, so we'll be ready to push an update as soon as we figure out the Chartboost issue.

In case you're wondering, the issue happens when a video ad displays. For some reason it isn't properly dismissing when you click the "x". The video goes away, but the gradient that backs the view doesn't disappear. So you're game is stuck (we actually unpause the game correctly, but you can't see it due to the overlay).

pHghost

Great news!

Yeah, I noticed that bug you mentioned a couple of times, though I wasn't sure what was happening there.

Braydon_SFX

@adent42 said: AND you now have the option of having GameSalad Auto-Trace your image to set up custom collision shapes automatically.

Just gotta say - this works extremely well. Custom collisions are now so much easier to use. You literally just click one button

Zwire

@adent42 - are you also aware that if I only select interstitials to show, that often the screen for rewarded videos shows instead of the interstitial?

My rewarded ad button also shows interstitials sometimes which shoudnt be happening.

Any info on this would be nice.

Thanks,

Zwire

Armelline

@adent42 Please please please export compliance fix in next build

adent42

@Armelline sorry, we can't easily fix that since we use encryption to protect the game projects. If it helps you can answer yes to question 2 of the encryption questions since it's use for DRM / IP Protection. Not sure how that changes submission requirements. For a future release, we can weaken the encryption, but it's not a quick fix, since we have to do it for both publishing and the engine.

Hypnorabbit

Thanks @adent42 and friends, really great to see the current developments. Still highly skeptical of Gamesalad: Online Edition but I guess I'll have to port my projects over when you really start to prioritise that completely.

Japster

@adent42 said:
@Armelline sorry, we can't easily fix that since we use encryption to protect the game projects. If it helps you can answer yes to question 2 of the encryption questions since it's use for DRM / IP Protection. Not sure how that changes submission requirements. For a future release, we can weaken the encryption, but it's not a quick fix, since we have to do it for both publishing and the engine.

I remember the bad old days before encrypted builds, when that a**hole GS user was ripping off other user's games, and passing them off as his own, so knowing this ^^^ I'm happy to put up with the confirmation for longer...

Ps - Weaken, as in 'still strong, but no confirmation needed?'

Cheers @adent42

Armelline

@adent42 said:
@Armelline sorry, we can't easily fix that since we use encryption to protect the game projects. If it helps you can answer yes to question 2 of the encryption questions since it's use for DRM / IP Protection. Not sure how that changes submission requirements. For a future release, we can weaken the encryption, but it's not a quick fix, since we have to do it for both publishing and the engine.

@adent42 Isn't such use exempt (according to the "primary function test"), and we can safely tick "No" on that box asking if we use encryption when we upload builds for TestFlight? I know I've ticked "No" for every GS game I've ever released and had no issues. In which case, a plist change is all that's needed for us to not have to answer the question with every single build uploaded, unless I'm mistaken?

(Since they word different questions differently, yes and no seem to be confusing, so take it as read that by no I mean "I don't use encryption in a relevant way.")

I suspect we're talking at slightly cross-purposes.

adent42

@Armelline I'll take another look, you're probably right.
@Japster it's just the size of the encryption key. We currently use a 256-bit encryption key. To have a certain exemption for export compliance, we'd have to have a 56-bit or lower key.

Armelline

@adent42 Awesome, thanks! - I spend an insane amount of time waiting for builds to finish processing so I can go in and click "No" to release the build for the client to look at. Would be a huge boon to be able to upload and walk away from the computer!

adent42

UPDATE

No word from Chartboost yet. I'm gonna try to pull some strings and hope to get some help on the bug.

As for the new Creator 2.0, we're probably gonna wait until next week to release. A lot of the team is on low burn / vacation this week since it's Spring Break for Texas. We decided launching would be better when all hands are on deck. If all goes well also we'll also be able to launch with large project import as well (I just finished the first pass of the code and we just need to do some testing).

Japster

@adent42 said:
@Armelline I'll take another look, you're probably right.
@Japster it's just the size of the encryption key. We currently use a 256-bit encryption key. To have a certain exemption for export compliance, we'd have to have a 56-bit or lower key.

Great to know! - Thanks @adent42

AlchimiaStudios

@adent42 said:
UPDATE

No word from Chartboost yet. I'm gonna try to pull some strings and hope to get some help on the bug.

As for the new Creator 2.0, we're probably gonna wait until next week to release. A lot of the team is on low burn / vacation this week since it's Spring Break for Texas. We decided launching would be better when all hands are on deck. If all goes well also we'll also be able to launch with large project import as well (I just finished the first pass of the code and we just need to do some testing).

Thanks for the update.

unbeatenpixel

Can we decide minimum supported OS version? Like +9, +10. Greater than +8 to avoid performance problems on some devices.

@adent84

adent42

Good thing I looked, because @adent84 can't help you!

The problem is we precompile the engine and I think iTunes Connect will block your submission if the plist minimum version doesn't match the app's compiled minimum version.

We'd have to compile 3 version of the engine with different minimum iOS versions to get that effect. It's unlikely with the number of other things we need to fix/update at this time.

I'll keep it in mind and if there's an opportunity, we can take a look into doing something, but I wouldn't hold your breath right now.

jr2520

@adent42 I've submitted 2 tickets on your "Pro User Gamesalad Support" days ago and still have not received anything indicating my tickets were even received. I've been using GameSalad for years and continually pay your $30/mo so I'm bewildered on why I cannot get in touch with support.