Release Candidate 0.12.5 is available!

colander

@adent42‌ how will renaming images in old projects work? Using the Automator App I can batch rename all my files appending "@2x" to the name and load them into my games. Will it replace the existing images or will I have to go and physically change all the images/names in all my actors in all my code in all my games? This would be a big job for me and a truly daunting task for a lot of other developers with huge games.

Socks

@jonmulcahy said:
yea that's what I do now, but I'm concerned with the stretching on the 6+. I'll wait till I get my 6+ tomorrow and see how bad it is.

The iPhone 6+ route would be > 2048 > 2208 > 1920

Here's an approximation of the result . . . the top image has been through the two scaling processes from 2048 (2048 > 2208 > 1920) to arrive at iPhone 6+ resolution, the lower image has been generated at the working size of 2208 and scaled to 1920.

I'd say the results were pretty good considering this image (420 pixels wide) would be 3.05cm wide on an iPhone6+ screen, so if you want to get an idea of the quality loss, stand about 6ft away from a 100ppi monitor (like an iMac) and see if you can see the difference.

adent42

@pHghost There was another bug found yesterday that we're still working out, so no 0.12.6 today. I was able to put in the updated @3x image support so now iPhone 6+ and iPad RD will use @3x. iPad and all other iPhones with RI will use @2x images. Standard resolution phones (which I don't think are even supported by this build + iOS version) will use the 1x images. Since, as far is I can tell, this wasn't happening before, it also means the Universal binaries will use the higher res images when RI is enabled, whereas before they would use the @1x images.

PhilipCC

If we were going to start voting on some of the aforementioned suggestions, before a new stable release is finalised, I'd go along with these:

@adent42 said:
jonmulcahy‌ I would actually build the game using overscan instead of stretch.

You start by building your game for iPad, but keeping in mind that important game play should be in a "safe" zone in the middle of the screen.

Then I'd build my UI so that if it's sitting in the corners of the screen, it will detect screen size and move the UI elements (via a Set Attribute action). So if the screen has a smaller apsect ratio than the Gameplay aspect ration, I'd adjust it's position accordingly.

So the image will never be stretched, it will just be cropped, but you design the game so that nothing important happens in the potentially cropped areas.

I'd use 2048 images (to keep in a lower power of 2 limit) and just be okay with the image stretching a bit on iPhone 6+

@Socks said:
I think is going to be the best compromise for image quality.

pHghost

@adent42 said:
There was another bug found yesterday that we're still working out, so no 0.12.6 today.

OK, thanks for the update!

ycan

@liuxue what are you talking about ?

MarcMySalad

@ycan said:
liuxue what are you talking about ?

it's spam of course.

jonmulcahy

@ycan said:
liuxue what are you talking about ?

Banned andd removed spam

Marchief

Anyone else getting autorotate for only both landscape orientations not working?

jonmulcahy

Now how come we are having the RD iPads use @3x instead of the @2x they use now? I'm affraid that is going to cause background images to get skewed with the differences in image ratio.

I think it might be best to use @3x for the iphone6+ and @2x for everything else. @1x would be for the iPad2 which is supported by ios8

I'm going to start running tests tonifht to see if my fears are just in my head

pHghost

@jonmulcahy said:

>

Now how come we are having the RD iPads use 3x instead of the 2x they use now? I'm affraid that is going to cause background images to get skewed with the differences in image ratio.

I would think the GS team has tested the various options and is choosing an option that works well. It is a conscious decision on their side.

All the theory about how it will work is nice, but until they release 0.12.6 any tests you run will tell you zilch, since we don't know how they are implementing it in practice.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Okay so I missed some info when GS switched the image handling. When should we be adding @2x to our image names?

pHghost

@The_Gamesalad_Guru‌ -- as far as I understand it correctly, in versions 0.12.6 and up, if you check Resolution Independence.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Ah got it. I seemed to have missed that.

yattamove

Apple is slowly becoming fragmented like Android. It now takes a lot of time especially for an indie to progress with creating assets. And time is a luxury a lot of us indies don't have.

I wish this sorts out to be just like before. Just RI checked, and everything will just resize automatically.

ycan

@BlackCloakGS‌ Sometimes change scene doesn't work in Android with 0.12.5 ? Is this known or do I need to open new bug ?

BlackCloakGS

Here is a list of confirmed bug i am working on fixing for the 0.12 release. Some of these may have been fixed please look at the resolution and status.

There are a few that unconfirmed that we are still looking at that are not on this list. If i am missing any bugs please let me know.

pHghost

@yattamove said:
Apple is slowly becoming fragmented like Android.

Not really in the same way. The problem with Android fragmentation is that even if you look just at phones, their displays, device features and even OS version vary so much.

If you focus just on Apple phones (able to run iOS 8), apart from the 4s, which is kind of an old dino anyway, all iPhones have the same aspect ratio, some have simply now increased in resolution. Targeting strictly iPhone, if you build with iPhone 6+ in mind, your games should play beautifully on all iPhones 5 and up, scaling down.

If you include iPads, it gets a lot more complicated. But that 'fragmentation' is due to the fact that you are introducing different form factor, a tablet, which has a radically different screen aspect ratio etc. and is unavoidable.

pHghost

@yattamove said:
It now takes a lot of time especially for an indie to progress with creating assets. And time is a luxury a lot of us indies don't have.

As a matter of fact, if you look at a lot of apps, iPad versions of them don't just scale content, they have (usually radically) different design, using the added screen estate.

If you want to make life simpler, you can always focus on deploying just on one of the two platforms, iPhone or iPad and that should really solve the complexity.

jonmulcahy

@pHghost said:
If you want to make life simpler, you can always focus on deploying just on one of the two platforms, iPhone or iPad and that should really solve the complexity.

I wonder if it would be possible to read the device screensize and based on that, direct it to difference scenes.

if 1024x768 goto iPad scene
if 320x568 goto iPhone scene
etc.

coding wise it would work fine. Maybe time to try and bust out a project!

pHghost

@jonmulcahy said:
I wonder if it would be possible to read the device screensize and based on that, direct it to difference scenes.

Oh, absolutely! Some people do that. I avoid it so far since all my apps to date are single-scene, and I want to get away from the loading wheel, but you can definitely have a 'secondary splash' as your initial scene and then switch to iPhone or iPad-specific scenes from there.

yattamove

@pHghost‌
I guess you're right. But I find it simplier to just use stretch and Ice Cream Sandwich (& above) in Android. Works right out of the bat for phones and tablets everytime. Honeycomb and below are dinos too, so I don't support them. Their more or less standard 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratios both for phones and tablets are not that far. Thank you for your suggestions.

@BlackCloakGS‌
Thank you for taking time to squish all these bugs. I hope for a stable release soon.

Hopscotch

Got one more for you @BlackCloakGS‌

The localized currency symbol is missing from the price string in the table.

http://bugs.gamesalad.com/show_bug.cgi?id=337

I love the sound of the mail notifications as these get marked as resolved

BlackCloakGS

I don't think apple sends down the local symbol. we were going to add a new device attribute to allow you to get the language code.

Hopscotch

@BlackCloakGS‌ , it is a request you need to do just like for the Price, added to that you need to request the string indicating the placement of the symbol. In some countries it is before, in some after the price amount.

I posted the way to do it earlier.

BlackCloakGS

can you repost the info here or in the bug and i will look into it

edit: ok found how get that info in objective-c just need to figure out Google Play and Amazon.

Hopscotch

@BlackCloakGS‌ here is the link to the StoreKit reference

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/StoreKit/Reference/SKProduct_Reference/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008414-CH1-SW3

and

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/StoreKitGuide/Chapters/ShowUI.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008267-CH3-SW5

Display prices clearly, using the locale and currency returned by the App Store. Ensure that the price of a product is easy to find and easy to read. Don’t try to convert the price to a different currency in your UI, even if the user’s locale and the price’s locale differ. Consider, for example, a user in the United States who prefers the United Kingdom locale for its units and date formatting. Your app displays its UI according to the United Kingdom locale, but it still needs to display product information in the locale specified by the App Store. Converting prices to British pounds sterling, in an attempt to match the United Kingdom locale of the rest of the interface, would be incorrect. The user has an App Store account in the United States and pays in U.S. dollars, so prices would be provided to your app in U.S. dollars. Likewise, your app would display its prices in U.S. dollars. Listing 2-3 shows how to correctly format a price by using the product’s locale information.

Listing 2-3 Formatting a product’s price

NSNumberFormatter *numberFormatter = [[NSNumberFormatter alloc] init];

[numberFormatter setFormatterBehavior:NSNumberFormatterBehavior10_4];

[numberFormatter setNumberStyle:NSNumberFormatterCurrencyStyle];

[numberFormatter setLocale:product.priceLocale];

NSString *formattedPrice = [numberFormatter stringFromNumber:product.price];

BlackCloakGS

Yep i got it totally understand.Thank you for the details. Feel free to add this to the bug. Now i just need to see how to do this in Andoird.

colander

@adent42‌ can you answer my question I asked earlier here it is below.

How will renaming images in old projects work? Using the Automator App I can batch rename all my files appending "@2x" to the name and load them into my games. Will it replace the existing images or will I have to go and physically change all the images/names in all my actors in all my code in all my games? This would be a big job for me and a truly daunting task for a lot of other developers with huge games.

jonmulcahy

@colander said:
adent42‌ can you answer my question I asked earlier here it is below.

How will renaming images in old projects work? Using the Automator App I can batch rename all my files appending "@2x" to the name and load them into my games. Will it replace the existing images or will I have to go and physically change all the images/names in all my actors in all my code in all my games? This would be a big job for me and a truly daunting task for a lot of other developers with huge games.

This will be an optional thing. The old way will still work.