State of GameSalad on 5-15-2013
CodeWizard
Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 1,143
Hello! It's that time again... time for another weekly state of GameSalad post. Steel yourselves.
Estimated Stable Build Schedule
We have no planned stable build releases for this week. We’re focusing all of our efforts on the nightly builds and getting them out to all Pros first.
Pending Updates
These updates are pending for stable build release. They are available in the nightly builds of the engine and Creator. Once they are well tested they will be pinched off and released to the general public.
1. We’ve done an initial optimization pass on some of the Lua code. Especially related to how we compute delta times in the iOS engine. Should help improve general performance.
2. An optimization pass has been completed for OpenGL rendering. This should help out performance in several cases, especially particles. We’re seeing pretty absurd improvements for particles.
3. We’ve optimized some Lua memory footprint code that has the potential to shave megabytes off of your game’s memory size. At least it’s shaved some MBs off of my test cases. This was mostly done by optionally allocating some objects that were previously allocated all the time.
4. We removed the publishing fireworks sound effect.
5. We’ve addressed some of the Creator stuttering related to looking for Android ADB installations.
6. We’ve fixed an issue in Creator that caused entering non-numeric text into numeric fields. This also has a positive side effect of fixing some possible rounding issues in number constraints.
7. We’ve added WAV file support to Creator and the native engine. This support allows you to choose WAV files as your preferred file format for sound effects. The effect of making this choice is to have much faster loading on iOS. Speed gains are less notable on Android due to the suboptimal way we handle loading data from the device. We’ll be resolving that soon.
8. We’ve added TGA image support to the native engine. This support allows you to choose TGA files for your images. TGA files load significantly faster than PNGs. We still have some creator work necessary to finalize this support.
9. We’ve updated how the ad bar works in your free games. It now takes less memory (1/30th as a matter of fact) and also takes advantage of some new iOS features to make installing targeted apps easier.
What We're Working On
1. We're continuing to profile the game engine looking for CPU bottlenecks and RAM hogs. We're continuing to identify places that should receive immediate optimization. This effort will continue for the foreseeable future. This is my main engineering focus for now.
2. We still have a bit of work to finalize TGA support in Creator. This should wrap up this week.
3. We're still working on getting the new nightly build process in place for Pro users. Nightly builds are flowing out to line cooks and sous chefs. We’re finishing up some web work this week before we can release this to all Pro users. I expect this to be ready next week.
4. We're still wrapping up the major Mac Creator improvement pass. These improvements will greatly enhance the stability and performance of the Mac Creator. We'll be rolling this out to all Pro users for feedback once the nightly build process is ready for use. We’ve reduced the number of engineers working on this to one so that more optimization tasks could be started.
5. We have an engineer doing an optimization pass on the HTML5 and Lua engines. This should help improve general performance of both engines. Lots of good progress has been made on this over the past week. This work will be continuing for the next week or two.
6. One of our engineers is working on reorganizing our engine code to make debugging and development easier for us. Part of this work includes integrating the third-party Zerobrane Lua IDE. It also includes integrating a Lua debugger and socket library. Some good building blocks for things to come.
7. Looks like one of our engineers will be resurrecting the old "stretch" mode to complement overscan and letterbox for universal resolution support. He's pretty confident that should be achievable this coming week. More news as progress is made.
8. We're also working on upgrading the ad bar to provide better cross-promotion opportunities to Pro users. We've got some irons in the fire here and will have more news as work progresses.
What's Coming Down The Pipe
Our primary focus will remain code cleanup, bug fixing and engine optimization for the next few weeks. Once we're satisfied with where the core engine is at, we'll begin turning our attention to new feature development and additional platform support.
The top things on my list are: creator workflow improvements, custom fonts, automated texture atlas support, improved render batching, Android IAP and async multiplayer support. Some other odds and ends may come up first as necessary, but those are the main points I'll be pressing for. ETA of those features is not available yet, but they're top on my list to tackle as soon as feasible. More news as we make progress on our existing workloads.
Looks like we may be biting off a virtual file system implementation relatively soon. This will help us better secure your projects, reduce their size when installed and improve load times. More news soon.
Summary
We're continuing to tap dance in the kitchen to magic up improvements for you. Nightly builds are working well. We should be able to open them up to all Pro’s next week. I’m super excited about that!
Until next week...
Estimated Stable Build Schedule
We have no planned stable build releases for this week. We’re focusing all of our efforts on the nightly builds and getting them out to all Pros first.
Pending Updates
These updates are pending for stable build release. They are available in the nightly builds of the engine and Creator. Once they are well tested they will be pinched off and released to the general public.
1. We’ve done an initial optimization pass on some of the Lua code. Especially related to how we compute delta times in the iOS engine. Should help improve general performance.
2. An optimization pass has been completed for OpenGL rendering. This should help out performance in several cases, especially particles. We’re seeing pretty absurd improvements for particles.
3. We’ve optimized some Lua memory footprint code that has the potential to shave megabytes off of your game’s memory size. At least it’s shaved some MBs off of my test cases. This was mostly done by optionally allocating some objects that were previously allocated all the time.
4. We removed the publishing fireworks sound effect.
5. We’ve addressed some of the Creator stuttering related to looking for Android ADB installations.
6. We’ve fixed an issue in Creator that caused entering non-numeric text into numeric fields. This also has a positive side effect of fixing some possible rounding issues in number constraints.
7. We’ve added WAV file support to Creator and the native engine. This support allows you to choose WAV files as your preferred file format for sound effects. The effect of making this choice is to have much faster loading on iOS. Speed gains are less notable on Android due to the suboptimal way we handle loading data from the device. We’ll be resolving that soon.
8. We’ve added TGA image support to the native engine. This support allows you to choose TGA files for your images. TGA files load significantly faster than PNGs. We still have some creator work necessary to finalize this support.
9. We’ve updated how the ad bar works in your free games. It now takes less memory (1/30th as a matter of fact) and also takes advantage of some new iOS features to make installing targeted apps easier.
What We're Working On
1. We're continuing to profile the game engine looking for CPU bottlenecks and RAM hogs. We're continuing to identify places that should receive immediate optimization. This effort will continue for the foreseeable future. This is my main engineering focus for now.
2. We still have a bit of work to finalize TGA support in Creator. This should wrap up this week.
3. We're still working on getting the new nightly build process in place for Pro users. Nightly builds are flowing out to line cooks and sous chefs. We’re finishing up some web work this week before we can release this to all Pro users. I expect this to be ready next week.
4. We're still wrapping up the major Mac Creator improvement pass. These improvements will greatly enhance the stability and performance of the Mac Creator. We'll be rolling this out to all Pro users for feedback once the nightly build process is ready for use. We’ve reduced the number of engineers working on this to one so that more optimization tasks could be started.
5. We have an engineer doing an optimization pass on the HTML5 and Lua engines. This should help improve general performance of both engines. Lots of good progress has been made on this over the past week. This work will be continuing for the next week or two.
6. One of our engineers is working on reorganizing our engine code to make debugging and development easier for us. Part of this work includes integrating the third-party Zerobrane Lua IDE. It also includes integrating a Lua debugger and socket library. Some good building blocks for things to come.
7. Looks like one of our engineers will be resurrecting the old "stretch" mode to complement overscan and letterbox for universal resolution support. He's pretty confident that should be achievable this coming week. More news as progress is made.
8. We're also working on upgrading the ad bar to provide better cross-promotion opportunities to Pro users. We've got some irons in the fire here and will have more news as work progresses.
What's Coming Down The Pipe
Our primary focus will remain code cleanup, bug fixing and engine optimization for the next few weeks. Once we're satisfied with where the core engine is at, we'll begin turning our attention to new feature development and additional platform support.
The top things on my list are: creator workflow improvements, custom fonts, automated texture atlas support, improved render batching, Android IAP and async multiplayer support. Some other odds and ends may come up first as necessary, but those are the main points I'll be pressing for. ETA of those features is not available yet, but they're top on my list to tackle as soon as feasible. More news as we make progress on our existing workloads.
Looks like we may be biting off a virtual file system implementation relatively soon. This will help us better secure your projects, reduce their size when installed and improve load times. More news soon.
Summary
We're continuing to tap dance in the kitchen to magic up improvements for you. Nightly builds are working well. We should be able to open them up to all Pro’s next week. I’m super excited about that!
Until next week...
Comments
Oh, yeah, I forgot to add that. Let me edit it now.
Good work guys
And I thought that the Google IO was exciting...
Awesome work guys, amazing how much you're getting done each week now.
Really looking forward to the Nightly Builds!
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In the short time I have been using the tool I liked it. I want to suggest if at some point, may include scaling option style "nearest neighbor" of Photoshop. Surely this is not very difficult to implement and would allow the scaling preserve pixels without softening, very useful in retro games. Well, thanks again for keeping us informed.
Thank @BlackCloakGS it's his idea and work. I'm just the messenger.
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Just wondering: I converted PNG files to TGA using Preview and the file size typically tripled. Surely this will not load faster?
Noooooooooooooooooo
Can you please keep the social sharing part in the pipeline.
I am using Gamesalad pro for my company's app which has twitter and facebook sharing. I am having some trouble in using tweet sheet. Although it is very easy to use, I am not able to catch the response.
Facebook is totally unavailable in Gamesalad. I am using a server side script to implement it, but error handling part is very poor as Gamesalad is not even allowing me to check Network Reachability.
Gamesalad is seriously an awesome platform to create games on, but games are incomplete without social sharing these days. That, I believe, is the most important part that you should focus on for next releases.
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Anyway, @Braydon is right, custom loading wheel would be a nice alternative
Lost track...lol
I guess some did not read this part very well...
Before asking for more features you should understand this part is a little more important to get us where we need to be... Great job @CodeWizard and the rest of the GS team... you are doing great things and please keep up the great work!!!
We're not removing overscan. Resurrection of "stretch" will be an option for you to take advantage of if you like.