State of GameSalad on 10-23-2014
Hello again everyone and I know it’s been a while since a State of GameSalad has been posted. This is due to our “state” not really changing much these past weeks. I’d like to say thank you guys for your continued patience as we focused on annihilating bugs and making a stable version 12 releases for our Mac Creator. Without further adieu here’s the crisp new State of GameSalad post you were promised!
Stable Release 0.12.10! Yes you read that right. We’ve just put up a new stable release for our Mac users! (go get it here: http://gamesalad.com/download/releases) Now that this is out, work is being resumed on our other projects listed blow! This features a lot of bug fixes such as “Fixed Mac App rejections from the App Store” and “Fixed screen rotation not working on iOS 8 devices.” For more information check out this post: http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/73545/stable-release-macintosh-gamesalad-creator-0-12-10#latest
Release 12 for Windows users. (This is the Windows version of Mac creators’ release 0.12.10) Now that the stable release for Mac is out we have more work than before focusing on getting our Windows users up to date! I don’t have a time estimate as of yet, but it’s high on the list
Resolution independence. If you are confused about how the new resolution independence features work then check out this thread and ask any questions you may have there: http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/73348/notes-on-resolution-independence-on-0-12-x/p1
Release 0.13.0. for Mac users. (The next big release for Macs) Work is still being done on this front, just not as quickly since some manpower is being moved over to get our Windows users up to date. For those who don’t know, a couple of the major additions that will come with release 13 are facebook integration and the new rendering system. It’s my understanding that our first pass at facebook integration will include being able to post to walls (images, text, and even URLs). The new rendering system should bring improved performance and memory usage with it which is great news!
New nightly build for Mac. I’ve been informed that we are working on getting the nightly builds through our new build system, and hope to get one out for you guys in a few weeks! We also currently hope to have a new nightly build for Windows shortly after the release of the new Mac nightly build.
New marketplace! Good progress has been made here as I’ve been informed that the front end of our new marketplace is nearly completed and there’s only 1 major feature left to add!
GameSalad Game Jam 2014! Are you a fan of our previous Amazon promotion which awarded a month of FREE pro in exchange for publishing to Kindle? If so, you're going to want to participate in our GameSalad Game Jam! for more details, see the Game Jam 2014 forum post here: http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/73549/free-months-of-pro-cash-prizes-gamesalad-2014-game-jam
Cross platform creator. Great progress is still being made here and, as I’m sure you know, I can’t say much else
That’s all for this week. Thanks again for your patience and your help finding bugs in our Release Candidates! More info coming at you guys next week!
Comments
@ForumNinja thank you, are you going to resume weekly updates?
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Great stuff !!
Looking forward to the new rendering system.
Thanks! Really wish 0.13.0 would come sooner though for Mac since FB integration/performance improvements would be killer i feel like the work on the Windows creator will delay major Mac improvements deep into 2015
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@colander Yes the weekly updates will be resumed
Yeah!
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@ForumNinja You are truly the bearer of good news this week.
Thanks for updates
I agree 100%. This to me is the BIGGEST UPDATES which most ppl are dying for
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It would also be extremely nice for Windows users to catch up with Mac
They should just abandon the windows side and spend their time on MAC till they have a cross platform build and then Windows user would be fine... windows is so far behind now what does it really matter to wait for the cross platform build now anyway?
You can't just charge people for pro membership and leave them hanging. I would understand if the PC version was free only, but its not and they have paying customers as well. Its a unfair for them to be behind in updates, specially if their paying for PRO.
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Also a lot of schools and students use the windows version
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When I paid for "Pro" with GameSalad I read that you are paying for addtional "Pro" features and none of them said anything about Windows or Mac... So, even if they did pull back on an outdated version (windows), GS could apply their very limited resources to the up to date version (Mac) and the cross platform version.
That maybe true, but the schools are not going to pay for "Pro" and use GS for mostly teaching the basic of logic.
So why should GS waste more time for that since the current version of windows is able to provide that now?
They pay a student rate and it also builds the user base.
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I understand that, however to teach game design does GS really need to have the Windows creator that updated or to teach a student basic Game Design, you do not need to have a published app with all the bells and whistles of the Pro features???
I mean if you take a look at it, the GS team has proven are not that concerned with the Windows version anymore then most GS programmers or it would be updated just like the Mac version.... and if education was a big concern for the GS team they would have completed the GS certification to verify the instructors know what they are teaching their students with the GS creator.
http://gamesalad.com/education/resources-for-education/certification
This was from the poll about which version of GS creater we each use, but I think @Tiny_Ideas is onto a brilliant Idea that GS should postpone all version updates for both Mac and Windows and focus on just the cross platform GS creator!!!
http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/73619/which-version-of-gs-creator-do-you-use-to-build-and-publish-apps#latest
If you think about that, once they change over to the cross platform GS creator they could spend the time updating just one GS creator and we would all be on the same sheet of music, and what a great note it would be!
How about it @ForumNinja??
@Wboko
Until we see something solid (maybe around 2016 or so... at this rate) then the cross platform Creator is just pie in the sky... and could well be just another LUA Free type wild goose chase.
Im really hoping they're going to pull it out of the bag this time, but the lack of visible/public progress, and the fact another year has pretty much gone by doesn't fill me with too much confidence.... we've been here before with GameSalad... on more than one occaision.
But hey ho... it is what it is.... and we soldier on, and use the software as it is. Its still a great tool as it is, with all its quirks and issues.
@Chunkypixels, I love the quote "LUA Free type wild goose chase"!!!
True, except they've said we'll see a preview of the Cross-Platform Creator before the year is out. We didn't even get that kind of information with the LUA-Free engine, so I'm just happy with what we've got so far.
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So are we thinking Winter for the Windows version or more like Spring. Mac users get all the love... Windows users... all the pain. The disparity between the two versions is GLARING now.
....
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Yeah, well I guess you don't know that it was more glaring when all users were Mac because there was no Windows version?
As we all have witnessed @codewizard has turned gamesalad around. He has definitely done more than any past leaders. We see much faster turn around on things than in the past. His track record on delivering on promises is right up there. I firmly believe he will deliver a cross platform creator as he demonstrated he is not a cut and run kind of person. He is although dealing with limited staff and that slows things down. As I've said a ton of times, I have complete and unwavering confidence in codewizard's leadership and his staff's dedication to this software. I think their doing a good job with their limited resources. I know I wouldn't want to be in that position of being understaffed. I want to say to @BlackCloakGS thank you for your hard work as much of the burden seems to fall on you.
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Not only do we not have a solid foundation to build this house on. We now have 2 houses being built............wait.... no....... a 3rd house to rule them all. So once the Cross Platform Creator is built. We will no longer have a mac and windows version? Because the CrossPlatform will stand for both? Thats cool. Oh but wait.................... Does that mean we will be starting all over again, with a new version system? CP version 0.0.0.0.0.1. And if so ? Does that mean Ill never see the day when GS climbs out of the Beta Pit? Oh and has HTML5 independent abilities, seeing any love?
Hear, here! Three cheers for @BlackCloakGS !
@ForumNinja
Hey, do you know if image compression is something that will come back?
i.e previously we could use compression tools like Image Alpha to make 8 bit pngs that retained the alpha channel. This was very useful for having small app sizes that kept to the over-the-air limit of the time.
As we no longer can, the overall file size for apps has more than doubled. I'm updating a bunch of stuff and one game that was approx 40mb is now over 100mb. Seems this should be addressed as GS is primarily a tool for making mobile apps.
The current over-the-air limit is 100mb but that's not exactly huge for universal apps that have iPad retina sized images and duplicate images for smaller devices. Being able to use images with a smaller file size would be useful.
I just saw the update email this morning. Awesomeness. Progress is kewl!
@HoneyTribeStudios I've been informed that, due to us having a much improved way of loading images coming up that can't support png compression algorithms, we won't be supporting image compression. We will however, be working on getting the published app's file size down, but I don't have an ETA on which release that will go in yet.