0.8.3 Update Information
CodeMonkey
Head Chef, Member, PRO Posts: 1,803
Hopefully this latest version will help most of you with your issues. Its not quite out yet as I am getting the last of the testing done while the rest of the team is flying off to MacWorld. As I've had more time to get it tested properly here is what should be coming up in the "patch". As it is going out soon, it should be safe to tell you what is going to be in it. And I am awake enough to write about it.
Features:
- Extended Character list with support for UTF-8. That means you can have Asian text and other special symbols.
- Opening Actor Editors from Scene Layer: Now you just need to double click the actor's name in the Scene Layers and don't need to rearrange actors to modify a specific instance.
- Additional Warnings for removing used attributes: If you are about to delete an attribute, it will tell you where it is used as a warning.
Fixes:
- Stability improvements(less crashing). [I actually went most of the day yesterday without crashing.]
- Actors no longer disabled when new actors spawned below them in the same layer
- Inner rules are processed more reliably. Sometimes inner rules didn't fire off. This fix seems to have taken care of the issues we've seen.
- While previewing the game on the GS Viewer, you can now manually select a scene to preview by clicking on the scene from the scenes list. (Just like in the Preview Player)
- Preserve Scene option in the Change Scene behavior has been deprecated for new games. Current games with that behavior option will still be able to use it to the extent that it may not "work" as it did in previous builds. See below.
HOWEVER, some things that have been mentioned that are broken will not be fixed in this patch.
- Sounds played just as the scene is changing are not playing or completing. This was causing a memory leak before the 0.8.* build, so it was left as is since 0.8.0.
Suggested user fix: Delay when the scene is changed and/or play the sound before the scene change with enough time to complete it.
- Sounds played on an actor getting destroyed not playing.
Suggested user fix: Add a small timer delay on the destroy behavior.
- Preserve Scene isn't totally fixed if you already have it in your project. If you already have it in your project, you may notice that the Preserve Scene option is gone. There are residual settings that allow it to still be set, but for new games it will no longer be an option. My current advice is to not use it. Though it may have worked in 0.7.0, there were underlying issues that needed to be taken care of to get performance optimization in for 0.8.0.
Suggested user fix: Although it may be a pain if you are using preserve scene for pausing here is what you can do. Create a game attribute(game.Pause) that controls the pause state. For each actor that would be affected by pausing (moving, spawning, particle producing, etc) encompass all of its rules in a rule that checks the game.Pause value. That should cover most things that are not Ran to Completion. When paused, store the linear and angular velocities in actor attributes with Change Attribute behaviors as needed, zero out those velocities, and if there is gravity, give it an acceleration in the opposite direction of gravity. When you are unpaused, restore those velocities from the actor attributes.
Features:
- Extended Character list with support for UTF-8. That means you can have Asian text and other special symbols.
- Opening Actor Editors from Scene Layer: Now you just need to double click the actor's name in the Scene Layers and don't need to rearrange actors to modify a specific instance.
- Additional Warnings for removing used attributes: If you are about to delete an attribute, it will tell you where it is used as a warning.
Fixes:
- Stability improvements(less crashing). [I actually went most of the day yesterday without crashing.]
- Actors no longer disabled when new actors spawned below them in the same layer
- Inner rules are processed more reliably. Sometimes inner rules didn't fire off. This fix seems to have taken care of the issues we've seen.
- While previewing the game on the GS Viewer, you can now manually select a scene to preview by clicking on the scene from the scenes list. (Just like in the Preview Player)
- Preserve Scene option in the Change Scene behavior has been deprecated for new games. Current games with that behavior option will still be able to use it to the extent that it may not "work" as it did in previous builds. See below.
HOWEVER, some things that have been mentioned that are broken will not be fixed in this patch.
- Sounds played just as the scene is changing are not playing or completing. This was causing a memory leak before the 0.8.* build, so it was left as is since 0.8.0.
Suggested user fix: Delay when the scene is changed and/or play the sound before the scene change with enough time to complete it.
- Sounds played on an actor getting destroyed not playing.
Suggested user fix: Add a small timer delay on the destroy behavior.
- Preserve Scene isn't totally fixed if you already have it in your project. If you already have it in your project, you may notice that the Preserve Scene option is gone. There are residual settings that allow it to still be set, but for new games it will no longer be an option. My current advice is to not use it. Though it may have worked in 0.7.0, there were underlying issues that needed to be taken care of to get performance optimization in for 0.8.0.
Suggested user fix: Although it may be a pain if you are using preserve scene for pausing here is what you can do. Create a game attribute(game.Pause) that controls the pause state. For each actor that would be affected by pausing (moving, spawning, particle producing, etc) encompass all of its rules in a rule that checks the game.Pause value. That should cover most things that are not Ran to Completion. When paused, store the linear and angular velocities in actor attributes with Change Attribute behaviors as needed, zero out those velocities, and if there is gravity, give it an acceleration in the opposite direction of gravity. When you are unpaused, restore those velocities from the actor attributes.
Comments
thanks cm, sorry you had to miss mw. hope the fixes are fruitful. just thought i'd pop a positive comment in before the wave of grave commences...lol
noodles...
Any idea when "Preserve Scene" will work again?
When you say you went most of the day yesterday without crashing...did you experience the slowdown that we all experience causing you to save and restart GS? Or are you just talking about the random termination of GS?
Finally, in relation to your suggested method of implementing "pause" during game play, would it just be better to save the linear/angular velocities *and* the X/Y position and just restore all those values upon un-pause. Wouldn't that then not require messing with gravity and upward acceleration?
Will an official "pause" feature be re-implemented in the future!?
Thanks again!!!
Just my testing project and some user games as test subjects and crashes weren't happening randomly. The slow down thing may still be an issue, so keep saving once in a while.
As for pause, you don't need to store the X/Y position if your pause screen/image is moved into the scene and brought up only when the pause attribute is true. You would need to constrain the position and velocities if you ignore gravity. And that still my leave undesirable effects. If you only constrain position and you have gravity, then the velocity will still increase, and all the constrain on position would do is redraw your actor(s) each frame. So it is actually moving with gravity really quickly but is redrawn before you see in move. And if it falls off the scene that does not wrap, it will be destroyed.
Sorry, I can not discuss anything further than this next release which is coming soon.
Thanks again!
All work and no play while everyone else is away.
Many thanks for your hard work!
A small addition to your first post:
- Fixed Preview mode. Now the screen no longer shrinks when previewing the games.
Perhaps the chefs could look at addressing this issue in some future release? It's too bad a good game gets burned for something the developer has no control over.
Perhaps the chefs could look at addressing this issue in some future release? It's too bad a good game gets burned for something the developer has no control over.