GameSalad 0.9.80 Beta: Loading, Performance, & In-App Browser

LaurenSalad

Late last week, our CEO Steve Felter announced a shift in priorities for the next release of GameSalad. Based heavily on valuable feedback from our community, we moved to dedicate more resources to improving the performance and power of the GameSalad engine. Today, we're pleased to announce the first part of those improvements with the launch of GameSalad Creator 0.9.80, available now.

Included in this release are the first of two major behind-the-scenes revisions to our engine's asset and memory management. We've also introduced a new, powerful feature that allows developers to choose pre-loaded assets and, when used efficiently, can bring loading times down to almost nothing. We also managed to sneak in a new feature to our OpenURL behavior that means never having to leave your game, even when directed to an external URL.

The new Asset Loader allows developers to select which actors will be pre-loaded into a project. The interface is a simple boolean switch, located in the attributes section of each actor. When "Pre-Load" is on, the actor will be loaded into memory at when the game launches. If "Pre-Load" is off, the actor will be loaded when it is called within the game.

This feature, when used efficiently, has the power to virtually eliminate loading times for GameSalad games and will greatly improve the experience for all of our Community's players.

In conjunction with the Asset Loader, we've also completed the first part of our asset manager refactoring. This modification is deigned to produce better performance in-game, and prevent crashes due to memory usage. Combined with the Asset Loader, developers should be able to see a noticeable increase in the performance of their titles.

Finally, we have our new In-App Browser. This feature enables developers to keep players inside their app, even when directed to an external website through our OpenURL behavior. Previously, GameSalad apps and games would have to go into multitask mode when an OpenURL behavior was activated. Now, when OpenURL is activated, the link will open via our In-App Browser. This will help keep players in-game longer and provide a better overall play experience.

We're very excited about GameSalad 0.9.80, and about the improvements we've been able to make to engine performance and load times. At the same time, there's lots more to come, and we're going to continue improving the engine and making GameSalad even more powerful as we make this final march out of Beta and toward GameSalad 1.0.

Where Do I Go Now?

1.Download GameSalad Creator 0.9.80
2.Download GameSalad Viewer
3.Asset Loader Best Practices
4.GameSalad Marketplace
5.GameSalad Cookbook

MagoNicolas

Time To test It!

Sparkyidr

Woo. Wasn't expecting any new features (other then the memory stuff)....but the in-app url stuff sounds cool.

Looking forward to getting stuck in

StormyStudio

Cool. Will take a look tomorrow . Exciting times

MagoNicolas

Best Practices Links not working for me

Edit: Now You don't have the link, LOL.

DigiChain

Yes Mago - I logged in to point out the exact same link issue... and then as if by magic - gone!

zombieaddict

hmm. am i the only one thats getting a constant crash whenever i try to get a scene to work? ive tried opening different versions of my game and even other games ive made. keeps crashing whenever i attempt to preview

pnoland

Sweet! I can't wait to try this out for my next update. The new in app URL feature could be quite interesting!

MagoNicolas

When we destroy an Actor, Should Ram Memory Go Down?

DigiChain

A quick test of my project using the viewer seems to shows no performance improvements for me (and unfortunately no frame rate improvement either) - but thankfully all seems to be running fine after the update.

I look forward to giving the Asset Loader a go though - hopefully will see a difference then.

Chunkypixels

Yup...was just rummaging through the new build...trying to figure out where we do the new asset management stuff and noticed the "plug-ins" tab too.....

Darren/Wayne... you got anything to do with this?

UtopianGames

Strange bug...this happens every time i open the project.

Darren.

LaurenSalad

The plug in tab is the reflection of some groundwork we are laying internally for future features additions. We look forward to sharing more with you as soon as it's ready.

tenrdrmer

tshirtbooth said:
Ya this is why they should have given us a test build
not sure why they didn't this time.

ill try my games and see what happens

cheers

Ditto.

I think it will show as a mistake on their part. Prob trying to rush it to quell the impatience around here.

BackUpAndDown

Will the performance improvements automatically be applied to games that have already been made? or do we need to remake the game in 0.9.80?

tenrdrmer

Im causously optimistic with the asset loader too. It sounded like when steve talked about it you would have a lot more control. Not just pre-loading somethings once on the app loading.

In my head it should have been we can basically create a rule in a level so that when a certain point is reached in the level you can start loading some of the larger stuff for the next level to come before its needed. Time will tell I guess.

The in-app browser sounds like a big help though. Will be really nice for sending ppl to Facebook or twitter pages and still get back to the game easily.

quantumsheep

MagoNicolas said:
When we destroy an Actor, Should Ram Memory Go Down?

Could you post a pic of the In-App browser please?

Cheers,

QS

tenrdrmer

quantumsheep said:
Could you post a pic of the In-App browser please?

Cheers,

QS

Well Apparently you cannot use OpenURL in preview mode anymore. I wonder if it will still function on a mac version. Or the HTML5 since I remember they said that was fixed.

quantumsheep

I meant on the device!

QS!!!

Photics

...and people say I'm cranky with every update. This one is actually pretty good.

If the In-App Web Browser worked with local files, I could make The Unofficial GameSalad Textbook with GameSalad!

Anchors should not be overlooked. I'm thinking this is an easy way to do parallax scrolling. There is much to test here.

Still missing important features though...

• Universal binaries
• Game Center Achievements
• In-App purchases

I'm surprised something like that didn't show up. A lot of these features are unexpected... like the new functions.

POM

Thanks for the update guys ,

Even after reading the 'best practice' , i still didn't fully understand it , do we need to uncheck preload art on all of our actors? even the backgrounds that you instantly see when the seen is loaded?

if we have an actor that is unmovable and has no rules , means it acts just as graphic actor ,
and you see it as soon as the scene start , do we need to use the 'null' and uncheck 'preload art' on it? will it make any load times difference in this case?

Roy.

_Belial

Is there a full change log somewhere? Did they fix the iPad splash screen bugs?

tenrdrmer

quantumsheep said:
I meant on the device!

QS!!!

Im working on that. But in the past OpenURL worked in preview mode. So why would they kill it now? Does it no longer work on Mac Apps?

CannonFodder

Thanks for the update guys.

BlackbirdStudios

This looks interesting. Can't wait to test it all out! I am with you guys though, cautiously excited. And really don't understand how the asset loader is going to work either. But good to see that some of the internal problems with the GS engine have been fixed.
-Matt

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Photics

Bummer... the anchor setting is not a numerical value.
...and I don't see where the in-app browser is.

Heh, I'm starting to feel grumpy about this update

quantumsheep

tenrdrmer said:
Im working on that. But in the past OpenURL worked in preview mode. So why would they kill it now? Does it no longer work on Mac Apps?

I guess my main fear is that it's a GS branded browser thingy - flying this update in under the radar, without us looking at it, just fuels my conspiracy theory excuse for a brain!

QS

old_kipper

As the memory management now scrubs unused graphics (if I read the blog correctly), does this mean it reloads from a cached image in the app memory or from the app resources stored on the device?

expired_012

@QS, this is how it looks on a device
I think it works pretty well. When tapping close it instantly goes back to where you left off in your game.

quantumsheep

artonskyblue said:
@QS, this is how it looks on a device

OH MY GOD!!!

IT'S GOT GAMESALAD ALL OVER IT!!!



Thanks for the post, arton!

QS

old_kipper

Yes sheepy, and it means you can put useful images and links in your apps, or even updates of weather reports for your sunshine game