GameSalad 0.9.0 - The Best Things In Life Are Free.
Yodapollo
Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 447
Sorry, everybody. It looks like, in all the madness of relaunching the site, the official forum announcement was deleted by accident. Here it is, again. I'm sure many of you read it on the blog, but here it is in yellow-sticky form. Thanks, everyone.
- Yodapollo
GameSalad 0.9.0 - The Best Things In Life Are Free.
It's here!
At long last, GameSalad 0.9.0 Beta has arrived, and it is the biggest and best update we've ever produced. Also, as promised, we are debuting an entirely new membership system with GameSalad 0.9.0. We still have two membership tiers, now called Basic and Professional.
But wait, what's it going to cost, you ask?
Today we're proud to unveil a new "Free to Make" subscription program for developers looking to publish to iOS, Mac, or the Web. GameSalad is introducing the "Free to Make" model by offering Basic subscription at no cost to users.
That's right - it's free!
We're also announcing a new Professional level account, which includes additional monetization features like iADs and promotional links, available today at the cost of $499 a year. Custom Splash Screens are no longer available under the Professional account.
Developers will continue to publish games under their personal Apple iPhone Developer accounts, which are still required in order to publish and test their iOS creations on Apple devices.
"By introducing the "Free to Make" model, we're holding true to what really sets GameSalad apart from everyone else," said Steve Felter, recently named CEO of GameSalad. "Making game design accessible to everyone is our top priority. GameSalad 0.9.0 is our biggest and best update ever - and it's just the beginning. This is the foundation for building the ultimate game creation tool."
Current Express and Pro users have the option of upgrading to the new Professional membership for only $99 for the first year. This "Legacy User Upgrade Offer" expires Dec 31, 2010. Both the Basic and Professional accounts are available today at GameSalad's website.
Now onto the juicy details of GameSalad 0.9.0 Beta. This update is the most advanced, best performing version of the GameSalad Creator to date. The new version of GameSalad Creator features an entirely redesigned Dashboard and Publishing Wizard.
The GameSalad development team has applied the same design philosophy to the Creator's new Dashboard and Publishing Wizard that made GameSalad Creator such a success to aspiring game makers. Users can now manage their online portfolios, get the latest GameSalad news, and submit their games to the App Store with significantly more speed and ease.
"GameSalad 0.9.0 was designed to eliminate all barriers for an iPhone game developer," said Chief Product Officer Michael Agustin. "Our goal was to remove all the confusion around iTunes Connect publishing and provide a better way for developers to manage their games portfolio within the tool."
In addition, GameSalad 0.9.0 Beta boasts a completely refactored scenegraph and new asset manager, providing improved performance, memory management, and stability, as well as integral under-the-hood framework to enable the slew of upcoming features and new game mechanics.
With GameSalad 0.9.0 Beta, we've also eliminated more than 80% of all reported crashes, improved performance and stability, and made significant improvements in the user experience for independent creators.
For a detailed list of GameSalad 0.9.0 Beta updates, check out our Release Notes.
Also, for those who were looking forward to having their games published under the previously announced GameSalad Direct plan, we have some good news. GameSalad will also be publishing select titles from their community through a new program to be announced in full next week.
Where should you go from here?
- Yodapollo
GameSalad 0.9.0 - The Best Things In Life Are Free.
It's here!
At long last, GameSalad 0.9.0 Beta has arrived, and it is the biggest and best update we've ever produced. Also, as promised, we are debuting an entirely new membership system with GameSalad 0.9.0. We still have two membership tiers, now called Basic and Professional.
But wait, what's it going to cost, you ask?
Today we're proud to unveil a new "Free to Make" subscription program for developers looking to publish to iOS, Mac, or the Web. GameSalad is introducing the "Free to Make" model by offering Basic subscription at no cost to users.
That's right - it's free!
We're also announcing a new Professional level account, which includes additional monetization features like iADs and promotional links, available today at the cost of $499 a year. Custom Splash Screens are no longer available under the Professional account.
Developers will continue to publish games under their personal Apple iPhone Developer accounts, which are still required in order to publish and test their iOS creations on Apple devices.
"By introducing the "Free to Make" model, we're holding true to what really sets GameSalad apart from everyone else," said Steve Felter, recently named CEO of GameSalad. "Making game design accessible to everyone is our top priority. GameSalad 0.9.0 is our biggest and best update ever - and it's just the beginning. This is the foundation for building the ultimate game creation tool."
Current Express and Pro users have the option of upgrading to the new Professional membership for only $99 for the first year. This "Legacy User Upgrade Offer" expires Dec 31, 2010. Both the Basic and Professional accounts are available today at GameSalad's website.
Now onto the juicy details of GameSalad 0.9.0 Beta. This update is the most advanced, best performing version of the GameSalad Creator to date. The new version of GameSalad Creator features an entirely redesigned Dashboard and Publishing Wizard.
The GameSalad development team has applied the same design philosophy to the Creator's new Dashboard and Publishing Wizard that made GameSalad Creator such a success to aspiring game makers. Users can now manage their online portfolios, get the latest GameSalad news, and submit their games to the App Store with significantly more speed and ease.
"GameSalad 0.9.0 was designed to eliminate all barriers for an iPhone game developer," said Chief Product Officer Michael Agustin. "Our goal was to remove all the confusion around iTunes Connect publishing and provide a better way for developers to manage their games portfolio within the tool."
In addition, GameSalad 0.9.0 Beta boasts a completely refactored scenegraph and new asset manager, providing improved performance, memory management, and stability, as well as integral under-the-hood framework to enable the slew of upcoming features and new game mechanics.
With GameSalad 0.9.0 Beta, we've also eliminated more than 80% of all reported crashes, improved performance and stability, and made significant improvements in the user experience for independent creators.
For a detailed list of GameSalad 0.9.0 Beta updates, check out our Release Notes.
Also, for those who were looking forward to having their games published under the previously announced GameSalad Direct plan, we have some good news. GameSalad will also be publishing select titles from their community through a new program to be announced in full next week.
Where should you go from here?
Comments
is there any royalty fee in basic free plan? I dont think so. am I correct? please let me know.
No royalty fees. No rev share. Free to make. Free to test. Free to publish. Of course, you'll still need an Apple iPhone Developer Account, which you can get from Apple for $99/year. I hope that answers your question,
@TechnoDave
We have been noticing some errors with our iPhone publishing server. Our devs are working on it and should have it resolved before the weekend is over.
- Yodapollo
Edited cause now I can see the fix and features. Thank you TSB
www.marcosriffel.com
Overall my game does seem to be running better! Thanks!
Twitter:rondorocket
Web: rondorocket.com
I'm shocked that basic is now going to be free, but good on GS
Can't wait to give it a go!
I am glad that 0.9 is here... I am playing with it now to get comfy...
I am excited that I will be getting back to work soon.
I especially love the upgrade price... and the new Pro Price... very nice of you!
Appreciate all your hard work and your tolerance of my temper tantrums.
MH
Well isn't that just great....
I won't be able to do take advantage of that. So looks like it is the free, lame version for me once my subscription expires. There is no way I can afford the full $500 price of the Pro version......
And I can't earn enough money through the App Store to buy the discounted price in time thanks to 0.9.0 not working whatsoever on Leopard, and I can't buy the required Snow Leopard as I have next to no money.
The bad news just keeps piling up for me. It may be best if I just walk away from GameSalad altogether. I can't even use the program for at least two of my final 3 months in my subscription.
Please allow people to continue to finish and publish their projects in 0.8.9 because many hours have been spent by people getting work-arounds working for bugs. It may be that 0.9.0 has fixed some if these but to many people, this could mean a rewrite and months of time lost.
When I create a project from scratch then I would do it 0.9.0 and then report any probs. Because you do not publish a detailed bug fix/rule change log then I have no idea what has changed. Remember that many of your devs are programmers in one or more languages so we do understand the techno speak.
So, until I can get Snow Leopard, which won't be till after the Legacy User upgrade offer expires, I'm screwed. No game making for me.
Also, I just set up a pledge drive on Kickstarter. I just need freaking $130, which is easy to get compared to all the people on there that need thousands of bucks.
As most people know, the rules are held in XML format within the gameproj file. As you do not publish the layout of this file, do you have a tool which validates or reports rule errors? Example would be an actor was deleted but some of it's data still exists or copy/pasted rules have missing rule parameters like references to scene objects etc etc. If the configuration design was available then we could write shareware/freeware tools to do this job.
As a programmer, most of my coding looks at what could go wrong with user input and autocorrects/fixes on the fly. I seem to be one of these people who use software and find it breaks without too much trouble. I can't tell you how many times over the years I have been in contact with ibm's software labs in the states for reporting the first bug of it's type in their applications or operating systems. Just one of those things. Gs needs more tools.
Paying money != free
...in case you weren't aware.
I don't mind buying a program that I can depend on; I was even planning on purchasing licensing when I had my games ready, but the constant changing here is anything but dependable. I never know what's going to be functioning/available next. Unfortunately for me, this latest update rendered the ENTIRE PROGRAM unavailable. Seems like a step backwards to me, but congrats to everyone who just bought a mac in the past year....ridiculous.
Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard is no longer supported by Apple for iOS development. As a result, we have decided to drop support for Leopard, which has also allowed us to focus more on reliability and functionality within Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and we've even been able to start looking forward to 10.7 Lion.
The upgrade to Snow Leopard is $30, I believe, which pales in comparison to the $100 that used to be necessary for the Express GameSalad membership.
We made an official announcement via blog, forum, and newsletter in order to alert our users of this change of support two weeks ago.
Also, GameSalad is entirely free to download and use. If you have an Intel-based Mac running Snow Leopard and you have an Apple iPhone Developer account, then you are ready to download and use GameSalad. Never did we say or suggest that making games is entirely without cost. We only meant to convey that their is no cost for basic GameSalad membership and usage. I hope that answers your concerns.
- Yodapollo
Is there going to be support for Admob anytime soon?
Capice...
Did you read Yodapollo's post? Game Salad is FREE! that is $249 cheaper than Corona without any restrictions!
if you want to use iAds... and remember that Apple only implements iAds on free games...
if you want to use URL to link to your web page and your other games...
then you pay for your professional GS.
at your stage in development experience... go with the free GS!
MH
The problem was that collision detection did not detect a collision with multiple actors of the same type at the same time. For instance, you are making a platformer game like me, and you have an actor that collides with various 'ground surface' objects. The player actor would walk across the intersection of two adjacent ground actors, and GS would not detect the collision with the second ground actor even though the player was in contact with it.
I'm glad to hear GS has apparently fixed this bug, but I have already come up with a workaround with the previous version of GS to fix this bug in my game. Now, I'm guessing that when I download the new GS release, it is going to cause all heck to break loose in the collision detections of my game?
Hopefully it won't, but I am not too sure. I guess I have no choice but to download the new version of GS and hope for the best since I would not be able to publish my game using the prior version of GS in which I created my own fix for this bug.
Is anyone having any problems with projects that you were building with the older version of GS, now that you have downloaded the new one? Are your games working the way they did on the old version, or are they acting funny?
I understand your frustration completely. I know this is a bit ridiculous of a solution, but I downloaded a virtual machine a few weeks ago so I could continue working on gamesalad/photoshop (which I have only for mac) on my windows 7 laptop.
I wasn't paying attention to the version at the time, but it turns out the os I downloaded happened to be 10.6.4 (i.e. Snow Leopard). So I can run gamesalad on a VIRTUAL MACHINE in windows but I can't do it on my mac. This isn't a great solution, as I've heard there are issues using virtual machines to connect the ipod for testing, but you could at least continue to develop your games this way.
Has the physics engine been modified in the new version of GS??? My game character jumps by using an accelerate behavior for a short specified amount of time. Like I said, I have changed nothing in the game project, and now the character jumps significantly higher than before.
Anyone know what is going on here?