When will gamesalad support iPad Retina graphics?

ultima

will support for retina display for iPad 3 be available in the next version release?

[renamed the title from ipad3? To better represent the contents -jonmulcahy]

sebmacfly

I maked all the pictures in my game for the new iPad (4x more pixels).
All my actors are in stretch mode (graphics).
My picture size = 512x512 pixels, so my actor size is 256x256 (for retina effect in game).

The Retina work perfectly with the Gamesalad Viewer (Really greats graphics!)
But when i Upload it using an Ad Hoc (Publish), the icon is poor and ingame graphics too.
Why all good in the Viewer?
Can we do something?

Thanks

entersimon

I hope there is some overtime work going on to get retina working. It's the most talked about feature of the new device and getting the feature set would give us developers the edge we need as well as getting GS to show up on some search engines. Even if the new release has to be delayed to add this feature, I'd be perfectly fine with it. There are going to be millions of new device owners ready to spend money on retina able ipad apps all around the world. Time is of the essence.

sebmacfly

I hope there is some overtime work going on to get retina working. It's the most talked about feature of the new device and getting the feature set would give us developers the edge we need as well as getting GS to show up on some search engines. Even if the new release has to be delayed to add this feature, I'd be perfectly fine with it. There are going to be millions of new device owners ready to spend money on retina able ipad apps all around the world. Time is of the essence.

+1

We really need to publish an iPad retina version of our games...

mynameisace

I maked all the pictures in my game for the new iPad (4x more pixels).
All my actors are in stretch mode (graphics).
My picture size = 512x512 pixels, so my actor size is 256x256 (for retina effect in game).

The Retina work perfectly with the Gamesalad Viewer (Really greats graphics!)
But when i Upload it using an Ad Hoc (Publish), the icon is poor and ingame graphics too.
Why all good in the Viewer?
Can we do something?

Thanks

Doing that is largely pointless and will make your game look worse until the update with iPad Resolution Independence is released.

Ace

Clouds

Any news on Retina support as yet . . . . . . ?

sebmacfly

Doing that is largely pointless and will make your game look worse until the update with iPad Resolution Independence is released.

Ace

As i said, the graphics look really nice on the GS Viewer... So, i'm ready now, just have to wait for the new update (Resolution Independence).
When i publish, for an AdHoc test, graphics look worse

Clouds

Posted this elsewhere, but to repost for further information:

Regarding GameSalad Retina Support:

"Looks like Retina support is on the radar but no specific plans have been made for development while we focus on wrapping up the larger projects on the docket. I'll update on it whenever possible as I think it's a matter of "when" not "how" at this time."

I know you probably have your hands tied on this one and can't tell us when this is likely to happen, but from the point of view of game development / planning could you say whether it's likely to be a matter of weeks or months ?

jonmulcahy

I imagine this would be a pretty quick fix since retina support for iPhone is already in the game. Retina for iPad is the new hotness right now, and from the sound of it, it's going to e the next achievements and come out too late for us to take advantage of newness of it.

MarkOnTheIron

@SaladStraightShooter For a starter you could lift the limit for importing images to 2048x2048 pixels and adjust your servers to support them in the publishing process.

Clouds

Probably months, given the heavy development invested in the primary projects - but honestly the more feedback we receive asking for this the more weight gets thrown behind it.

Cheers for the quick reply.

'Months' . . . . that's a great pity, Retina is an enormous selling point right now, and from what I've heard (although yet to be confirmed) non-Retina GameSalad games don't look great on the new iPad - as the scaling Apple use tends to make them soft in places.

I have no clue how the behind-the-scenes programming and code works for things like GameSalad, but is it not a case of the final build simply referencing higher resolution image assets ?

jonmulcahy

are there really only a few people who care about this?

tenrdrmer

are there really only a few people who care about this?

I can honestly say i'm not really concerned with iPad retina I think its gonna add so much extra file size to the app it starts to leave the mobile app world. Its sad to here that standard res looks bad on the iPad 3 though. unlike the iphone retina which still looked fine. So we may not have a choice in the matter. Sucks though Also how much is a game gonna eat RAM with art that big. Especially before GS drops Lua out of the builds.

Clouds

I can honestly say i'm not really concerned with iPad retina I think its gonna add so much extra file size to the app it starts to leave the mobile app world.

You can't hold back the future ! Files size will always grow, Apple more than doubled their 3G download limit last week, they will do so again, and again, and again, year after year - in reality the mobile app world has never been stuck at a certain file size - it's moved with the technology, in 6 months time people will consider Retina graphics standard fare and much larger file sizes absolutely normal.

It's just a pity GameSalad's user base are unlikely to be part of the vanguard, let's hope we are not too far behind.

Sucks though Also how much is a game gonna eat RAM with art that big.

It may suck, but boy is it going to be worth it ! The screen is simply fantastic, oddly after playing with an iPad 3 for an hour or so the overriding impression I was left with was not how great the Retina screen looks, but how bad the iPad 1/2 screen looked !

The iPad 1/2 screen I had previously thought was great, nice and bright, good colours, a sharp and punchy image - looked hilariously cheap, washy, low-res and dull afterwards, the difference was really pronounced.

gurechan

I agree, GS needs to keep up with new hardware and allow us to develop for it almost straight away.

Having said that, we are still way behind in many areas anyway. I just want to them get it all together and release a version of GS that brings us the ability to develop some really amazing games that perform great.

jonmulcahy

I've been developing my games at iPad retina graphics, and the file size has not increased that much except for the backgrounds. There is an increase, but nothing major. So far I have 668 building slices in my game for a total of 6MB. Granted these are still smaller files, but I still have a bunch over 100x100 retina sized.

the new iPad is Retina. That's all people talk about. it sucks not being able to take advantage of all the buzz. especially since people have been testing using the iPhone Retina graphics button, and everything seems to work fine except for images over 1024/1024 due to the GS import limit.

TomCoffee

Count me in... I actually bought an iPad for the first time exclusively so that I can develop something with the retina display... I was never that impressed with the iPad 1 and 2 resolution (too low for anything really useful)... I would love to begin developing things for the higher resolution while it's still in the forefront of everyone's minds...

Clouds

Count me in... I actually bought an iPad for the first time exclusively so that I can develop something with the retina display...

I also bought an iPad 3 for GameSalad development, I expected the inclusion of Retina support to be a simple upgrade to GS that would pop up in a couple of weeks . . . : (

TouchTiltGames

I do hope this is high on the list for obvious reasons. I have a client too who I know will expect their app to support iPad retina when the time comes.

bryantmaino

New ipad 3 Hi Res screen is definitely a feature GS should capitalize on to have an edge on other development platforms.

natzuur

I too feel this should be high on the list, but writable tables are right up there with it.

Ejj

I feel like I can't really justify working on my new game until I can launch it with Retina graphics. I would like it to be handled like the iPhone, just use double resolution assets, and let me click a Retina option at the very end.

ginko1969

Despite there's many of us who already have represented how important it would be to have iPAD retina support within Gamesald, I want to add my request too.

The one and only App which I have written is basically an animated children book which relies very deeply on the high quality of the illustrations.
The new iPAD brings an enormous opportunity for this kind of App. The users can finally enjoy the details of the artworks, which look impressive at this high resolution.
The lack of retina support and the even worse lack of plan about when this will be introduced, make me feel I might have taken the wrong choice when deciding to go for GS (as a Pro user).
Don't take me wrong though. I still believe GS is an invaluable tool for easying the creation of not only games (as in my case) and I thank the whole GS team for their work.
Still I miss this crucial feature and will necessarily need to look to other SDK shouldn't it come in the near future.

Thanks

_ginko_

jonmulcahy

awesome!
i have 664 building pieces that I painstakingly made in retina resolution

gurechan

This is great news. I'll be getting a new iPad in the next week. Can't wait for this update.

sebmacfly

Retina Retina Retinaaaaaaaaaa! Hahaha

Can't wait for this update too...
My project is ready to be published with RI!

gurechan

Got my new iPad today, and must say that I'm surprised that my games that I have created for the iPad actually look fine on the new "hi-res" iPad, and not blurred like others have reported. I always create my images in the 8, 16, 32, 64, etc size, so maybe this has something to do with it.

It will be good to compare how these games look once we are able to create resolution independent games on GS.

PlutoGames

This is good news...good news indeed.

scitunes

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have been under the impression that when you use resolution independence for the iPhone retina what you are doing is telling GS to create a second set of LOW-RES graphics so that your game runs better on the OLDER devices. This then increases your file size because your project contains two sets of graphics (one set for retina one for 3GS and lower). Mainly out of laziness (I'll admit it) I have never made a game with res ind checked. I just make it for the iPhone4 retina display and the older devices will have to load larger file sizes which will hurt the performance a bit. But, my games (with res ind UNCHECKED) look crystal clear on the iPhone retina display because for a 64x64 actor size I use a 128x128 png image.

I would assume (I don't have a new iPad so not sure) that if you create an iPAd app with the current GS creator and just make all your iamges twice the size of the actor your going to use it in, your game will have iPad retina graphics. It's just that the iPad 2 and iPad 1 users may seem a performance drop.

I am wrong on this? I guarantee that my non res ind iPhone games have full retina graphics on my iPhone4.

MarkOnTheIron

No, you're not wrong.

However the problem here is the limit of 1024 pixels that GS has. Right now if you try to add a 2048 px image it will automatically resized. You can manually add it in the image folder inside the project but it will broke during the publishing process and will result in a white box.

So we still have to wait until that limit is raised.

tenrdrmer

@Scitunes Yes you are correct. I have always gone ahead and checked off RI though just so the lower end devices didn't take a hit. It will be interesting to see how big the file sizes get with the Retina Support for iPad though.