After two months of development I think I'll keep going with my game, although looking at this GS direct thing, I bought my membership a month ago and I think I threw 99 bucks away.
ramis2k said: After two months of development I think I'll keep going with my game, although looking at this GS direct thing, I bought my membership a month ago and I think I threw 99 bucks away.
Khakionion said: Having worked for THQ, knowing that reputation of which you speak, do you mind naming the studios they dropped, and which of their titles were "shovelware?"
chosenonestudios said: Glad the employees have time to interrogate their clients.
So asking a question in what could arguably be considered polite phrasing is interrogation. Just a thought, but if you were in our shoes, would you be working extra hours to talk on the forums trying to be nice to people who have been swearing at you, openly wishing for your company to fail, writing insulting and immature comments on your profile, and using your forums and bandwidth to promote your competitors?
It's 1:15 AM here and at least 16.6% -- that I'm aware of -- of my office is still working. And we've been doing this for weeks to get this update out. Our plans have had to be altered several times for various reasons, and we had to scrap what we were doing and start again. That's life in software development. We're literally working our tails off to get a great update out for you guys. We've done about 3 months of work in the last month -- we are working like dogs, both for you guys and for the love of what we do. None of us expects a big wet kiss for it, but we are real live human beings here. If you can't be kind, be a little decent. My colleagues are among the most competent I have ever had the pleasure of working with, and they do not deserve the abuse they have been getting here.
I am thankful that some of you have noticed and pointed out that the tone and responses here may be keeping people away who otherwise would really love to communicate with you. I can think of at least 2 reasons why no details have been given:
1. We aren't allowed to talk about it until all the legal stuff has been squared away. 2. We don't speak any English.
chosenonestudios said: Glad the employees have time to interrogate their clients.
I'm working overtime on GameSalad 0.9.0. I have time to defend my blood and sweat, whether at this company or a previous one.
As for you, and others, have you worked overtime on a submission to IGF? IndieCade? indiePub? Any relevant game competition or publishing contest? I look forward to seeing you (and all these other "brand managers!") announce your submission, either on this site or the others that have sprouted up in the past few weeks.
Listen to this. Please consider this a white-backgrounded post, because I am commenting outside of my capacity as an employee of GameSalad, Inc. Whether GameSalad has the ability to make your games reach greatness is irrelevant. The people who have tried to take over this forum with their hateful, unproductive comments make the Lord of the Flies look like the House of Commons. (no comment, QS!)
We are making something good. We haven't done the best job of explaining it. This is because business is complicated, and we are doing a very hard task. Have you stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, you've been freaking out at an announcement that was made A WEEK AGO? Do you realize that the original Macintosh, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the iPad, Windows XP Tablet Edition, countless game technologies like the Super Nintendo, PlayStation and Microsoft Kinect had MONTHS between their announcement, and the date when they were finally released?
You need to wait longer. Rome wasn't built in a day. GameSalad will not falter in a week or two. Please learn a little patience, as we build something awesome for you, our customers.
dmcdowell said: So asking a question in what could arguably be considered polite phrasing is interrogation. Just a thought, but if you were in our shoes, would you be working extra hours to talk on the forums trying to be nice to people who have been swearing at you, openly wishing for your company to fail, writing insulting and immature comments on your profile, and using your forums and bandwidth to promote your competitors?
It's 1:15 AM here and at least 16.6% -- that I'm aware of -- of my office is still working. And we've been doing this for weeks to get this update out. Our plans have had to be altered several times for various reasons, and we had to scrap what we were doing and start again. That's life in software development. We're literally working our tails off to get a great update out for you guys. We've done about 3 months of work in the last month -- we are working like dogs, both for you guys and for the love of what we do. None of us expects a big wet kiss for it, but we are real live human beings here. If you can't be kind, be a little decent. My colleagues are among the most competent I have ever had the pleasure of working with, and they do not deserve the abuse they have been getting here.
I am thankful that some of you have noticed and pointed out that the tone and responses here may be keeping people away who otherwise would really love to communicate with you. I can think of at least 2 reasons why no details have been given:
1. We aren't allowed to talk about it until all the legal stuff has been squared away. 2. We don't speak any English.
The answer is #1.
I do appreciate what you guys are doing. I am really sorry that people act crazy on the net sometimes.
I think I might speak for a few people when I say I'm a bit baffled why more communication wasnt or isn't given sooner even if it was/is "we're ironing out legal mumbo jumbo still" or some simple "please trust us" statements. Instead, making a crazy announcement that flips tables over then letting the fallout fester isn't exactly helping. I'm not trying to justify any one rude person's comments, but I do feel that a little communication goes a long way here on such an active forum... Even if it is "we don't speak English"...."but we're hiring a translator as we speak."
Khakionion said: I'm working overtime on GameSalad 0.9.0. I have time to defend my blood and sweat, whether at this company or a previous one.
As for you, and others, have you worked overtime on a submission to IGF? IndieCade? indiePub? Any relevant game competition or publishing contest? I look forward to seeing you (and all these other "brand managers!") announce your submission, either on this site or the others that have sprouted up in the past few weeks.
Listen to this. Please consider this a white-backgrounded post, because I am commenting outside of my capacity as an employee of GameSalad, Inc. Whether GameSalad has the ability to make your games reach greatness is irrelevant. The people who have tried to take over this forum with their hateful, unproductive comments make the Lord of the Flies look like the House of Commons. (no comment, QS!)
We are making something good. We haven't done the best job of explaining it. This is because business is complicated, and we are doing a very hard task. Have you stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, you've been freaking out at an announcement that was made A WEEK AGO? Do you realize that the original Macintosh, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the iPad, Windows XP Tablet Edition, countless game technologies like the Super Nintendo, PlayStation and Microsoft Kinect had MONTHS between their announcement, and the date when they were finally released?
You need to wait longer. Rome wasn't built in a day. GameSalad will not falter in a week or two. Please learn a little patience, as we build something awesome for you, our customers.
WE DO NOT SUCCEED IF YOU DON'T.
lol, wow, so now you come to Berate angry customers for mistakes in communication that you YOU admit to making? You don't just come and drop bombs like you did, leave gaping holes in details and expect us to be happy about it.
You guys dropped the ball here plain and simple. And when money and time are involved...people tend to get pissed off, this is our livelihood also.
And Its not like you are giving us GS for free out of the kindness of your heart...we bought it!!!! I think you guys have really lost sight of that....its money we paid you, not money you paid us.
joemauke said: IBut saying there is no AngryBirds, Peggle, or Fruit Ninja on GS is because we are not good designers, is probably the most ignorant statement I have yet to hear on this board.
What's ignorant is thinking "if I can't do it, no one else can." And the reason Angry Birds is so popular is the original gameplay and concept. Angry Birds could easily have been made in GS, as could Fruit Ninja, albeit a 2D version. I haven't played Peggle, so can't comment on that. Bumps is way more "complicated" than Fruit Ninja, which, at it's heart is just a taptard game with swipes replacing the taps (I do like it, though). All you've pointed out are original concepts... Those are possible in GS, too. After all, not every native app is a number one hit, is it?
Why is a sous-chef arguing the validity of whether or not a top tier game could be made with GS? Does that really have something to do with the whole "Direct" ordeal or is this a pesonal battle... Seriously. Joe's comments/complaints seem valid and it seems rather odd for POLY to take this endeavor of trying to change his mind.
Besides... I'm more interested in where this thread is going in terms of what the yellows are saying...
Hey, just voicing my opinion, just like you. My opinion is that GS can be used to make great games. Like I said, sick of tradesmen blaming the tools.
EDIT: I'm stepping out of this for now. We're not getting anywhere and the forums have quickly turned from a nice friendly place to a very stressful environment. I'm going back to having fun, that's what all this was supposed to be about anyway.
POLYGAMe said: Hey, just voicing my opinion, just like you. My opinion is that GS can be used to make great games. Like I said, sick of tradesmen blaming the tools.
thats your opinion....mine is you cant build a skyscraper with a pocketknife......
And Im sorry if some of the Devs here are hurt by what I have said, but hey, you pay money for something you have an expectation of quality and customer service, and from what I have seen here tonight Im not getting much of either. Mostly what Im getting are excuses.
I dont know about other posters in this thread, and what they have said, I came here to post my honest misgivings about the product. Im not using bad language, posting about other engines or products that compete with yours or where to find them, or calling people names, or doing anything other then expressing my disappointment in your product (which I purchased) in a civilized and albeit kurt manner. If you cant take some criticism, you're in the wrong business.
Yeah, I'm the guy that sends a steak back when you don't cook it the way I asked you nicely..TWICE.....apparently some dev's here got butthurt and spit on it when they send it back.
Khakionion said: Do you realize that the original Macintosh, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the iPad, Windows XP Tablet Edition, countless game technologies like the Super Nintendo, PlayStation and Microsoft Kinect had MONTHS between their announcement, and the date when they were finally released?
But they gave us solid products we could use until the next announcement and we never had doubts the next playstation or mac os would be an major improvement. You've completely taken down the option to buy express/pro accounts and instead gave us an announcement that has scared off many good users and clients permanently... with all do respect you guys need to be careful when comparing apples to oranges.
A lot of people are sitting on unfinished projects because of odd bugs like sounds repeating, change scene crashes for no reason, performance etc etc.
Most people will finish and release their work if the next update fixes these problems. But because of the bugs, people are getting frustrated in waiting for an update and lack of communication has made things worse.
One of the features people want is to somehow debug the application behavour when things go wrong an this is more to help report bugs to you guys because you are not able to reproduce.
If you are working on 0.9.0 then get this released without the direct stuff and then push the direct bits in 0.9.8. The last thing you need is. 1.0 with the same bugs.
It would be nice if you could allow some people who have the most issues with their projects to get alpha releases of the next release to help you test before general release.
Running your own in house scripts to test is never and good replacement for real world testing so use experienced testers here.
tshirtbooth said: All the Sous-Chef do get beta builds before they release for bug finding. They do there best to make sure its as bug free as they can. This issue is not everyone builds a game the same way so things still get missed.
The crashing on change scene and stuff like that well thats a back end issue. And in order to fix that they would have to re do all the code for the back end. And guess what , thats what there working on. Thats why its taking as long as it is.
cheers
rofl, you said back end... twice.
Sorry just trying to lighten the mood around here a little. =/
I think by the tone, we can all see that you guys are as angry about this as we are and I hope you don't get in trouble for voicing your options, but it does all come down to communication. When you release a tiny snipit of yellow information that could completely change our GS world of course your users are going to panic its human nature!!! With such drastic changes ahead you should have not said anything at all, until you were completely ready!
I know your working hard and we all really appreciate it... I've pulled 48 hours shifts myself to get creative projects finished for clients I know its hard... You guys are tired, so are we... please go home and get some much deserved sleep and let's us all start fresh in the morning!
Ok, its 3:30am here and Im about ready to pass out.
Someone email if they come to their senses and announce they decided to keep PRO, add the ability to detect whether the app was put to sleep and woke up so we can PAUSE OUR GAME (he he, yeah you cant do that with GS i found), fixed the myriads of memory leaks, crash bugs, integrate game center, Facebook, in app purchases, yada yada yada.
if not, Ill continue to use GS as a proof of concept - mock up tool.....thanks for that at least.
BackUpAndDown said: rofl, you said back end... twice.
Sorry just trying to lighten the mood around here a little. =/
Ha, I got it! Back end!
I'm going to share a bit of behind-the-scenes GameSalad stuff here. In the past 48 hours, we've seen quite a bit of work from our developers. Obviously, I can't tip our hand. So! Here's a categorized tally of the code checkins we've seen yesterday:
GameSalad Direct: III GameSalad Creator/Engine Features: III "Project Masala": I User-submitted Bug Fixes: II GameSalad Web Backend: III
And the day before that:
GameSalad Direct: IIII GameSalad Creator/Engine Features: IIIIIIII "Project Masala": I User-submitted Bug Fixes: GameSalad Web Backend: II
Sorry, I can't share more, like how many lines of code are in each of those tally marks (some have a lot), or what exactly we did to get super fast load-times. Rest assured that we're working on all of GameSalad. We're not involved in a money grab, and we're not letting our engine stagnate. Please stay tuned!
I'm going to share a bit of behind-the-scenes GameSalad stuff here. In the past 48 hours, we've seen quite a bit of work from our developers. Obviously, I can't tip our hand. So! Here's a categorized tally of the code checkins we've seen yesterday:
GameSalad Direct: III GameSalad Creator/Engine Features: III "Project Masala": I User-submitted Bug Fixes: II GameSalad Web Backend: III
And the day before that:
GameSalad Direct: IIII GameSalad Creator/Engine Features: IIIIIIII "Project Masala": I User-submitted Bug Fixes: GameSalad Web Backend: II
Sorry, I can't share more, like how many lines of code are in each of those tally marks (some have a lot), or what exactly we did to get super fast load-times. Rest assured that we're working on all of GameSalad. We're not involved in a money grab, and we're not letting our engine stagnate. Please stay tuned!
That's great but please can you give an approximate time for release? My game is 98% done and I want to release it in mid-November (I'll announce it here later today). Loading time and random crashes (I'm sure I have some fault for part of the crashes and I'll start working harder on bug-fixing soon) are my biggest worries right now. Will I be able to use the new build until then? The problem with not having a release date like most of the software devs are doing is that you risk shipping something just to have a new release of the software that would improve your game a lot just a day after.
LAdrian said: That's great but please can you give an approximate time for release? My game is 98% done and I want to release it in mid-November (I'll announce it here later today). Loading time and random crashes (I'm sure I have some fault for part of the crashes and I'll start working harder on bug-fixing soon) are my biggest worries right now. Will I be able to use the new build until then? The problem with not having a release date like most of the software devs are doing is that you risk shipping something just to have a new release of the software that would improve your game a lot just a day after.
I myself cannot give any information on a release date.
If you have crashes, have you reported them to customer service? We cannot fix any bugs unless we know about them. Although the developers try to stay on top of the forums' activity, sending your repro cases directly to GameSalad is the only guaranteed way for bug reports to make it to the developers!
As for being 98% done with your title, congrats! The last bits of polish can sometimes be the hardest. If, in your bug-hunting, you find that the cause most likely lies with the GameSalad engine, the sooner you officially report them to us, the sooner we can fix them. Good luck finishing your title!
Its amazing what a few yellow posts can do ... Ok, some people will still come on here and say its all excuses and they aren't buying into it, for the majority though, it calms people down. Its reassuring to receive reassurance and the key to a good relationship is good communication. We're not saying spend hours on the forum and not hours working on this update but you have to be realistic, you dropped a bomb, you left so many questions unanswered and the forum errupted. You could of stepped in a very long time ago with little bits of information and this thread would of never of got this far!
On another note, its great to hear you're working as hard as you are, hopefully you make the right decision with your business model, i think your community has spoken.
Khakionion, you have no idea how much I appreciate your recent burst of posts. It's really encouraging and was i'll I needed to decide to stick with GS. ^_^
Thanks!
I hope to be able to get back to game designing soon, I really need the income. =/
Thank you Khaki for showing us that all this is affecting you guys who are trying to bring us the product.... I know how company politics can be, and know that you probably have no say in how the corporate direction of the company is decided.... So I genuinely feel for you. Your busting your guts to build a better project, but due to some crazy decisions made from above, and the atrocious public relations with the community, it seems like people are ungrateful for the efforts you guys are putting in.
Peoples anger isn't at you guys.... The engineers.... It's at the business decisions and sudden shift in direction that's come as a big kick in the teeth to a lot of developers who had spent time building their efforts around the GameSalad engine, and who have now found their efforts to be in vain if the new structure is to go ahead.
You've been caught in the middle of a horrid situation, and seeing the backlash can't be good.
But, a lot of this could have been avoided simply with better communications. Surely, you can see that. Surely you can see how some sort of roadmap showing features to be implemented, and showing some sort of projected timeline would be useful in helping your users to better understand the work your actually doing, so were not just left blindly hoping for things that we have no idea if your even planning to implement.
Chunkypixels said: Thank you Khaki for showing us that all this is affecting you guys who are trying to bring us the product.... I know how company politics can be, and know that you probably have no say in how the corporate direction of the company is decided.... So I genuinely feel for you. Your busting your guts to build a better project, but due to some crazy decisions made from above, and the atrocious public relations with the community, it seems like people are ungrateful for the efforts you guys are putting in.
Peoples anger isn't at you guys.... The engineers.... It's at the business decisions and sudden shift in direction that's come as a big kick in the teeth to a lot of developers who had spent time building their efforts around the GameSalad engine, and who have now found their efforts to be in vain if the new structure is to go ahead.
You've been caught in the middle of a horrid situation, and seeing the backlash can't be good.
But, a lot of this could have been avoided simply with better communications. Surely, you can see that. Surely you can see how some sort of roadmap showing features to be implemented, and showing some sort of projected timeline would be useful in helping your users to better understand the work your actually doing, so were not just left blindly hoping for things that we have no idea if your even planning to implement.
Comments
I feel pretty stupid.
It's 1:15 AM here and at least 16.6% -- that I'm aware of -- of my office is still working. And we've been doing this for weeks to get this update out. Our plans have had to be altered several times for various reasons, and we had to scrap what we were doing and start again. That's life in software development. We're literally working our tails off to get a great update out for you guys. We've done about 3 months of work in the last month -- we are working like dogs, both for you guys and for the love of what we do. None of us expects a big wet kiss for it, but we are real live human beings here. If you can't be kind, be a little decent. My colleagues are among the most competent I have ever had the pleasure of working with, and they do not deserve the abuse they have been getting here.
I am thankful that some of you have noticed and pointed out that the tone and responses here may be keeping people away who otherwise would really love to communicate with you. I can think of at least 2 reasons why no details have been given:
1. We aren't allowed to talk about it until all the legal stuff has been squared away.
2. We don't speak any English.
The answer is #1.
As for you, and others, have you worked overtime on a submission to IGF? IndieCade? indiePub? Any relevant game competition or publishing contest? I look forward to seeing you (and all these other "brand managers!") announce your submission, either on this site or the others that have sprouted up in the past few weeks.
Listen to this. Please consider this a white-backgrounded post, because I am commenting outside of my capacity as an employee of GameSalad, Inc. Whether GameSalad has the ability to make your games reach greatness is irrelevant. The people who have tried to take over this forum with their hateful, unproductive comments make the Lord of the Flies look like the House of Commons. (no comment, QS!)
We are making something good. We haven't done the best job of explaining it. This is because business is complicated, and we are doing a very hard task. Have you stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, you've been freaking out at an announcement that was made A WEEK AGO? Do you realize that the original Macintosh, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the iPad, Windows XP Tablet Edition, countless game technologies like the Super Nintendo, PlayStation and Microsoft Kinect had MONTHS between their announcement, and the date when they were finally released?
You need to wait longer. Rome wasn't built in a day. GameSalad will not falter in a week or two. Please learn a little patience, as we build something awesome for you, our customers.
WE DO NOT SUCCEED IF YOU DON'T.
I think I might speak for a few people when I say I'm a bit baffled why more communication wasnt or isn't given sooner even if it was/is "we're ironing out legal mumbo jumbo still" or some simple "please trust us" statements. Instead, making a crazy announcement that flips tables over then letting the fallout fester isn't exactly helping.
I'm not trying to justify any one rude person's comments, but I do feel that a little communication goes a long way here on such an active forum... Even if it is "we don't speak English"...."but we're hiring a translator as we speak."
You guys dropped the ball here plain and simple. And when money and time are involved...people tend to get pissed off, this is our livelihood also.
And Its not like you are giving us GS for free out of the kindness of your heart...we bought it!!!! I think you guys have really lost sight of that....its money we paid you, not money you paid us.
Besides... I'm more interested in where this thread is going in terms of what the yellows are saying...
EDIT: I'm stepping out of this for now. We're not getting anywhere and the forums have quickly turned from a nice friendly place to a very stressful environment. I'm going back to having fun, that's what all this was supposed to be about anyway.
And Im sorry if some of the Devs here are hurt by what I have said, but hey, you pay money for something you have an expectation of quality and customer service, and from what I have seen here tonight Im not getting much of either. Mostly what Im getting are excuses.
I dont know about other posters in this thread, and what they have said, I came here to post my honest misgivings about the product. Im not using bad language, posting about other engines or products that compete with yours or where to find them, or calling people names, or doing anything other then expressing my disappointment in your product (which I purchased) in a civilized and albeit kurt manner. If you cant take some criticism, you're in the wrong business.
Yeah, I'm the guy that sends a steak back when you don't cook it the way I asked you nicely..TWICE.....apparently some dev's here got butthurt and spit on it when they send it back.
Most people will finish and release their work if the next update fixes these problems. But because of the bugs, people are getting frustrated in waiting for an update and lack of communication has made things worse.
One of the features people want is to somehow debug the application behavour when things go wrong an this is more to help report bugs to you guys because you are not able to reproduce.
If you are working on 0.9.0 then get this released without the direct stuff and then push the direct bits in 0.9.8. The last thing you need is. 1.0 with the same bugs.
It would be nice if you could allow some people who have the most issues with their projects to get alpha releases of the next release to help you test before general release.
Running your own in house scripts to test is never and good replacement for real world testing so use experienced testers here.
Sorry just trying to lighten the mood around here a little. =/
Firstly, Thanks for the yellow posts.
I think by the tone, we can all see that you guys are as angry about this as we are and I hope you don't get in trouble for voicing your options, but it does all come down to communication. When you release a tiny snipit of yellow information that could completely change our GS world of course your users are going to panic its human nature!!! With such drastic changes ahead you should have not said anything at all, until you were completely ready!
I know your working hard and we all really appreciate it... I've pulled 48 hours shifts myself to get creative projects finished for clients I know its hard... You guys are tired, so are we... please go home and get some much deserved sleep and let's us all start fresh in the morning!
Thank you
JCFord
Someone email if they come to their senses and announce they decided to keep PRO, add the ability to detect whether the app was put to sleep and woke up so we can PAUSE OUR GAME (he he, yeah you cant do that with GS i found), fixed the myriads of memory leaks, crash bugs, integrate game center, Facebook, in app purchases, yada yada yada.
if not, Ill continue to use GS as a proof of concept - mock up tool.....thanks for that at least.
I'm going to share a bit of behind-the-scenes GameSalad stuff here. In the past 48 hours, we've seen quite a bit of work from our developers. Obviously, I can't tip our hand. So! Here's a categorized tally of the code checkins we've seen yesterday:
GameSalad Direct: III
GameSalad Creator/Engine Features: III
"Project Masala": I
User-submitted Bug Fixes: II
GameSalad Web Backend: III
And the day before that:
GameSalad Direct: IIII
GameSalad Creator/Engine Features: IIIIIIII
"Project Masala": I
User-submitted Bug Fixes:
GameSalad Web Backend: II
Sorry, I can't share more, like how many lines of code are in each of those tally marks (some have a lot), or what exactly we did to get super fast load-times. Rest assured that we're working on all of GameSalad. We're not involved in a money grab, and we're not letting our engine stagnate. Please stay tuned!
Will I be able to use the new build until then? The problem with not having a release date like most of the software devs are doing is that you risk shipping something just to have a new release of the software that would improve your game a lot just a day after.
If you have crashes, have you reported them to customer service? We cannot fix any bugs unless we know about them. Although the developers try to stay on top of the forums' activity, sending your repro cases directly to GameSalad is the only guaranteed way for bug reports to make it to the developers!
As for being 98% done with your title, congrats! The last bits of polish can sometimes be the hardest. If, in your bug-hunting, you find that the cause most likely lies with the GameSalad engine, the sooner you officially report them to us, the sooner we can fix them. Good luck finishing your title!
On another note, its great to hear you're working as hard as you are, hopefully you make the right decision with your business model, i think your community has spoken.
Thanks!
I hope to be able to get back to game designing soon, I really need the income. =/
Peoples anger isn't at you guys.... The engineers.... It's at the business decisions and sudden shift in direction that's come as a big kick in the teeth to a lot of developers who had spent time building their efforts around the GameSalad engine, and who have now found their efforts to be in vain if the new structure is to go ahead.
You've been caught in the middle of a horrid situation, and seeing the backlash can't be good.
But, a lot of this could have been avoided simply with better communications. Surely, you can see that. Surely you can see how some sort of roadmap showing features to be implemented, and showing some sort of projected timeline would be useful in helping your users to better understand the work your actually doing, so were not just left blindly hoping for things that we have no idea if your even planning to implement.
Night night
Btw in just got to work think about that lol