0.8.3 please?

Slowboy

Hi, could we get an official answer from the team please, as to whether 0.8.3 is in progress? Any estimated release date?
I would be entirely happy if the ONLY fix that this included was to fix the way the app window stretched to half size widescreen when I press the preview button! I'm about to go postal in a minute!!
Thanks though
Wayne

jonmulcahy

yea, that's a pain in the ass, but if it's anything like before, the next release will be ready when it's ready. the resizing of the app window is annoying, but not a show stopper.

I got my 1st gen touch in the mail yesterday so I can test on an older device, and I was floored at how much faster .8 made my games run. HUGE difference.

gregr209

Its gonna look bad at MacWorld if they demo using this current version. I still am hoping for a 1.0 release at MacWorld :-)

Vmlweb

I would love to know if and when 0.83 will be releases cause Im not upgrading until app my games are compatable

eboy

What? I have been yapping about this for a week, I thought I was the only one with the problem. I get kernel panics and total computer freezes when I hit preview...is this what you guys are experiencing?

iWin

i would be soo glad if they could fix the preserve current scene glitch..

scitunes

@eboy - no. the window just becomes half of the normal window height.

eboy

oh, I get a crazy kernel panic/computer freeze. No one seems to be able to give me any advice..

BeyondtheTech

So, is 0.8.2 a viable engine to work with and send games to the App Store with? My development went into a halt when I saw the timers and such got all messed up with Spellcaster. I didn't know whether or not to wait for a fix or to have to rework some of my stuff in order to get it to work properly again.

Please advise!!

JGary321

The primary thing I have noticed personally is a bug with preserve current scene. Which makes most pause solutions inoperable. I personally didn't have to do much to fix anything else.

butterbean

I haven't noticed many issues at all with my games, at least current ones. Prior ones would be a pain to go back and fix, but other than the window size issue giving me issues, it works great, and framerates are certainly better

butterbean

Yea I agree, I mentioned that above but didn't explain quite well

shaihalud

I've noticed problems with spawning and timers with my game, but after asking the GS staff nicely to offer some advice I was able to pull everything together (luckily too, what with MacWorld being this week).

Some suggestions:
If you have something that spawns an actor, you might want to add a timer function. IE, Timer- After (.01) seconds (Run to completion ON). Spawning actors was completely crashing my game, this fixed it.

Sounds not playing on destroy: I read other threads that said create an attribute to tell when something is being destroyed to play a sound. I just put the destroy on a .1 second after timer (just like the spawn timer above), which allowed sound to be played. No external attribute required. Might not be "instant," 1/10th a second is still pretty fast.

I forgot the other things I thought of. Put a timer on it.

For those of you that are having stranger problems (like GS crashing all the time or whatever), what is your Mac OS? It might be something as simple as that. I'd assume that the GS staff are all using 10.6, is everyone else on Snow Leopard?

Toby

Yep, shaihalud is correct, I had to put lots of little timer hack delays in my game to make some actions work properly. Often in a actor with 3 or 4 rules the first 1 or two would run fine but the rest were skipped over. Slowing down the game using timers set to 0.1 or 0.2 makes it play all rules.

jkornoff

I had to put a stop to upgrading my iPhone games as well after I upgraded to .82. I'd LIKE to add some new levels to my in-store games, but cannot at the moment. My my development is on hold.

I skipped .80 and .81, but .82 still broke my game. Yes, adding timers to everything works, but that is not the 'right' way to do it. My game is fairly complex and there are simply too many behaviors to try and add a timer to. Plus I'm getting several other very strange behavior bugs that don't have a fix right now.

I can sympathize with GS. Big show coming up, lots of PR potential, and a huge mess after .80. I'm sure they've been super busy. But communication is key, especially with your supporters and customers.

Patronus

I am very glad to see that I'm not the only one with problems after upgrading. I also skipped .80 and .81 hoping that .82 would be sorted - I was wrong! Working with a product that crashes every couple of minutes is really frustrating, not to mention obvious compatibility issues. And the dreaded screen resizing. My projects are also on hold now, let's hope the problems get fixed real soon. One would expect better communication with customers. Yes, this is a beta product. But keep in mind, we did pay money to use it.

Interesting: After upgrading to .82 I noticed that some of my actors started growing immediately after spawning. I checked their rules and came across a behaviour that I certainly didn't put there, namely "Grow". I don't see this behaviour anywhere in GS - has anyone seen/used it before?

BeyondtheTech

You would think they wouldn't have done something so misguided as releasing a version that doesn't work properly, right before they go to Macworld to premiere their product and people's creations with it in a very public contest. There's nothing like visiting the site and seeing a bunch of tweets and recent posts about the engine not working right for them.

Big show or not, I believe their duty lies in forming the most solid product they can. Make it work and it will sell itself, trust me. Leave it to the marketers and spokespeople to get up on stage and speak worlds about the product, but leave the programmers and developers to keep the engine running smoothly. That's my opinion.

That being said, I'll get back into developing in GS tomorrow, but I'm VERY wary of the recent changes and hope they'll align the stars for us rather quickly.

adent42

We're working hard on wrapping up 0.8.3 as soon as possible. I will say that auto screen resize has been fixed.

dereklarue

Sweet, cant wait for 0.8.3!
Hope alot of bugs get fixed, including preserve scene!

BeyondtheTech

Amen to that, adent42. Thanks for the heads up. It's reassuring at least, considering sometimes we feel like leaves in the wind...

ORBZ

I'm really unsure if I should continue using GameSalad as a viable development platform if I am going to have to constantly worry about games I've created becoming broken in the future due to a new version release. The only way that I can see this problem being resolved is if there is a drop-down somewhere in the editor that would let us specify the version of the GS engine that our game is designed for.

I would hate to have a game I worked on break in a year after I've long since forgotten about it only to find out that I have to now go back and rework ancient code to work in a new system. That's just not practical for any kind of real world development.

I plan on putting out 100's of games, but not if I have to maintain 100's of games indefinitely for each new version release of GS!

Admins: I would really like some direction on your future plans to address the issue of backwards (and forwards) compatibility.

Slowboy

Very good point Orbz,
I would also like to ask the GS Team (Adent?) if they would recommend us to....

a. Continue working on fixes and work arounds for problems we are experiencing in 0.8.2, or

b. Sit tight and wait for 0.8.3 because it's going to fix EVERYTHING!

?
Thanks
Wayne

JGary321

Everything is not going to be fixed. SOME of the problems lie in the fact that what WAS working, shouldn't have technically worked (devs stated this). Personally I experienced very few problems with the update. A couple, but by no means game breaking.

I would try to fix them on your own, b/c chances are if you are experiencing a LOT of bugs, some of them might not actually be bugs. There are a couple of spawning issues that are known & of course the preserve current scene bug, but beyond that probably only a few more small bugs.

So try to work with what you got basically. I doubt something this profound will happen again. This was just a major change on the back end of things.

scitunes

remember you are working with a beta product. I would hope that GS always works to make the product better as new technology improves (as it always does), however I imagine that when it is out of beta the changes will not come so often and will not be as drastic as they have been with 0.8 - Just a guess though!

sparker

A beta that you pay for..... I don't mind calling it a beta when its free for us to use in return for providing testing feedback, but if your paying for it - you expect that a minor version upgrade will not require you to spend hours re-coding (sorry, re-'not'-coding) your game so it works again....

Sam

BeyondtheTech

I think everyone needs some clarification on this, especially going forward and even before 0.8.3 (or 0.9.0 or 1.0) is released. Yes, we're all paid beta testers, and yes, we are working in both a development and production environment - this is not just internal stuff we're working with, but things that are going out to the public, things we are actually getting paid and basing our reputation on. So there has to be some better and more detailed two-way communication when it comes to major and minor changes such as these.

GameSalad does not necessarily have to be just a game development kit (GDK). It's proven itself to be a viable platform to develop applications as well - perhaps not anything too data intensive - i.e. you can create a soundboard, calculator, screen saver, stopwatch/timer, flash card or learning app, interactive book or comic, etc.

I'd like to push the limits and see what can be created with it, but I think as a paid user, it's only fair that we know what's coming down the pipe and when, especially when it comes to functional changes and updates in something that's already established or being established. This will help some of us can determine whether or not it's worth sticking around or purchasing and using an alternate GDK for other projects.

It's been said before that "it'll be ready when it's ready" and "they'll just surprise us" when it comes to a new feature, but I don't think that's wholly acceptable because some of us are depending or hoping or investing our hard-earned time and money, waiting for a feature or fix that might never surface.

I spent $750 on Torque 2D (plus over another $100 in books written for TorqueScript and basic game development using their engines), only to realize I purchased it at the wrong time of its growth or its own development phase. Along with the update of the iPhone SDK, there's a lot of relearning, retooling, reworking in order to get my first game Archangel working again with their newest update. So, the issues we're facing with GameSalad's change of engine is unfortunately not new to me, and thankfully not that drastic as Torque is. However, it shouldn't have to be this way if the developers give us a better peek under the hood and more insight on their development roadmap and timeframes.

TwistedMech

@BeyondtheTech - > agree. And I also went down the Torque route only to be very disappointed. People in the company I work for would be fired if we told customers that the application running their teller machines or bank transactions will be ready when it ready because they know their reputation depends on customer views.

I am guessing the GS people are of the attitude that this program is designed for kids for for people who will not base their business around using it for a development platform. I think having their server build the final app is wrong. I know it means they tie us into their business model but if they fail as a company then we fail because we have no way to publish new or updated versions to the App store.

It would be nice that I could have the choice to compile my game in GS V0.7.0 and KNOW its going to work. Will GS create an atmosphere of dread and fear for each new release of our software because we have NO idea if its going to get broken again.

For now, I would say GS is only good for non multilevel and non complex ruled games.

ipwnu

I agree with some of what you say BeyondtheTech. But there are always going to be people to find something to complain about. If the GameSalad devs tell us that something specific is going to be in the next build, I'm hoping to see it in that build. but if they do that, some things might occur at the last minute that either it delays when they get the next version to us, or it doesn't get added or fixed because the next version/patch needs to be ready for something like the global game jam. I was totally stoked when mac publishing was added but some of my games did break until I moved some stuff around. at least they run faster. With Macworld happening this week, I expect the gs devs are pretty busy trying to get things working.

Vmlweb

I also agree with BeyondTheTech. I always believe that your customers should know what your making for them and a rough date that it will be released. In return the customers should NOT moan if it's delayed or anything.

I really hate all this secrecy thing and it would be much better if all companies would make regular announcements about things that are "Coming Soon".

ORBZ

In the old days 80s you could grab a devs .plan file and see what he was working on.

Things are not more modern, just more complex. Twitter is just a crappy implementation of IRC for example.

My point is: a bullet list of things being worked on would be nice.

Slowboy

Nice discussion peeps, I wasn't in any way trying to stir up a hornet's nest, just looking for an opinion on what best to do in the short term.
I think that all points made have been valid, especially the suggestions with regard to being able to choose which version you 'stick with' until your game is finished - this, I think will be just as important after version 1.0, as well as now, in the beta stage.
There's definitely a fine line between moaning about things when they don't work exactly how you want them to, and simply looking for some answers.
The general consensus does appear to be that people have been able to fix their game issues and 'upgrade' their game to work with 0.8.2, so I'll be giving that a go this evening.
However, I remain mildly concerned about using timers on rules in order to 'catch' them. I'll certainly try it, and it'll probably work, but it still feels a little like a work around - one that 'may' end up unnecessary in future updates? I guess that some clarification on this particular issue was what I was really hoping for.
Anyway, I said that I am looking for short term answers, but can definitely say, as I'm sure is true of most others on this forum, that I am here for the long run!!
GS has already proven itself as an ideal tool for easily creating a wide variety of apps, and I'm confident that it'll only get better and better ;]