State of GameSalad on 7-24-2013
CodeWizard
Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 1,143
Hello! It's that time again... time for another weekly state of GameSalad post.
Estimated Stable Build Schedule
No stable release planned scheduled yet. QA is still digging through our first release candidate for 0.11.0. More news when it's available!
What’s New This Week?
1. We’re continuing to look for some new hires to help cover some weaknesses in our current staffing. Will keep you abreast of the developments on this front. Are you a skilled developer or do you know one? If so, head over to http://www.gamesalad.com/jobs
2. Async multiplayer is going through some optimization passes now. Cleaning up the code and making it a bit smoother. It's been delivered to the History Fighter team and is awaiting more internal testing. Still waiting on finalizing an external contract before we can push it into the nightly builds.
3. We're in the middle of revamping how we build our Android code. It's taking a while but it's sure making our internal workflow nicer.
4. We've got a fix in the nightly builds for rotation choppiness on actors.
5. We've also got a fix in the nightly builds for several loop behavior bugs found in internal testing.
6. We've moved the web page for downloading nightly builds to: http://gamesalad.com/previous-releases. Don't ask me why.
7. We've pushed up new binaries for folks publishing Android apps on Windows. These new binaries fixed several compatibility issues with your apps on Android 4.2.
8. More sound fixes are making their way into the nightly build.
9. We've begun working on integrating Amazon's in-app-purchase and GameCircle systems. We should have something useful to send to QA next week. More news on this when it gets closer to release... and it'll be exciting!
10. More iOS 7 compatibility work is happening this week.
11. We're continuing to optimize the HTML5 engine for Tizen support. Good times.
12. Looks like we're biting off a new behavior that will allow you to contact a web server, request a JSON document and put it into a table for your game to use. I can imagine all kinds of interesting uses for this feature. Can you?
Estimated Stable Build Schedule
No stable release planned scheduled yet. QA is still digging through our first release candidate for 0.11.0. More news when it's available!
What’s New This Week?
1. We’re continuing to look for some new hires to help cover some weaknesses in our current staffing. Will keep you abreast of the developments on this front. Are you a skilled developer or do you know one? If so, head over to http://www.gamesalad.com/jobs
2. Async multiplayer is going through some optimization passes now. Cleaning up the code and making it a bit smoother. It's been delivered to the History Fighter team and is awaiting more internal testing. Still waiting on finalizing an external contract before we can push it into the nightly builds.
3. We're in the middle of revamping how we build our Android code. It's taking a while but it's sure making our internal workflow nicer.
4. We've got a fix in the nightly builds for rotation choppiness on actors.
5. We've also got a fix in the nightly builds for several loop behavior bugs found in internal testing.
6. We've moved the web page for downloading nightly builds to: http://gamesalad.com/previous-releases. Don't ask me why.
7. We've pushed up new binaries for folks publishing Android apps on Windows. These new binaries fixed several compatibility issues with your apps on Android 4.2.
8. More sound fixes are making their way into the nightly build.
9. We've begun working on integrating Amazon's in-app-purchase and GameCircle systems. We should have something useful to send to QA next week. More news on this when it gets closer to release... and it'll be exciting!
10. More iOS 7 compatibility work is happening this week.
11. We're continuing to optimize the HTML5 engine for Tizen support. Good times.
12. Looks like we're biting off a new behavior that will allow you to contact a web server, request a JSON document and put it into a table for your game to use. I can imagine all kinds of interesting uses for this feature. Can you?
Comments
I'll ask the question now @CodeWizard which i'm seeing asked lots but seems to be ignored lots also ... Whats the deal with the stretch feature?
Hey @CodeWizard do you guys have any info with these issues?
http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/58592/submitting-ipad-game-issue#latest
and the rest of the GS team of course.
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This might be a newbie question, but I don't get #12, could someone explain it
15 years old | Half Baked Productions | PetRun 2.0 - Classic Features. Redesigned
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- Thomas
I. SAW!
Anyway, this is just one of those features that might seem small, but would actually solve a humungous headache for everyone I think.
Time to move it up the priority list please!
QS =
DDr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
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I have to agree. This needs to get out ahead of many other things. Currently the workarounds we are implementing to get this feature are very time consuming and borking a lot of projects if there is any camera movement in the game. We need this last week IMO. Im sure many others would agree.
Great sounding stuff going on no doubt. would really just like to see this one get moved way up the list.
Cheers
Aaron
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
- Thomas
P.S. Agreed for stretch as well.
"Here's how I think we should handle multiple resolutions nicely:
1. You provide artwork at a ridiculous size (iPad 3 resolution).
2. We scale the artwork down to various smaller resolutions (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc).
3. The engine picks the correct artwork for the current device resolution and uses that."
That way you could have correctly sized art for the same aspect ratios by even division. For other aspect ratios (like iphone 5), they would need to be something like ipad max size/1.8 rounded down for auto sizing. That would still allow for correctly scaled graphics, although a tad on the long side. Another option I would like would be multi-assets for each aspect ratio starting at the highest rez with auto scaling, so one set for iphone5 (and all 16:9), one for ipad (4:3), all packaged together but that would be larger file sizes on disk.
- Thomas
P.S. @CodeWizard - For #12, could we send information to the web as well as take information from it?
- Thomas
Since, we are talking about stretch to fit mode i thought i would give an update on the feature. I just finished stretch mode for Mac and Mac creator.
I should get to iOS after that, then android , finally web publishing support. It should be complete and in the nightly build soon maybe end of next week if every thing goes well.
It's not a technique used by any pro development studio, at all. Crop and repositioning of UI elements is the best solution, to ensure all that lovely artwork isn't being stretched and made ugly. The simplest way I can put it is that in no way should you want your circles to become ovals and squares to become rectangles. I appreciate its much easier, but you get what you pay for - put the extra work in, and the results speak for themselves.
my 2c!
but i've been designing all my games with UB Overscan in mind to have the maximum control over the design.
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I could care less if someone thinks I'm a pro if my games made that kind of money.
And btw its incredibly easy to over come situations where you are getting ovals and rectangles out of your round and square actors. Most games still look fantastic with a stretch to fit solution for UB.
@blackcloakgs sounds awesome. Really looking forward to that feature.