Mac Creator Release 0.13.34 is available

QASalad

Mac Creator Release 0.13.34 is available

Fixes:

• Fixed memory leaks with published apps

• Updated icons and graphics for various things inside Creator

• Updated HTML5 Preview to fix an issue with booleans in tables

• Bugsplat now automatically sends crash reports

• Increased general engine stability

We have removed the following deprecated behaviors
Mac: InAppPurchaseItem and InAppRestoreItem

Contains all the fixes from 0.13.33

Get the build now

iamcartez

Whoever did the new icons, good job! They look beautiful... whoever did this should get the rest of the day off an hour of freedom to check their Facebook account. >:)

Armelline

Installed it the moment the notification popped up. Looking great!

GameAlchemist

Cool update, well does it mean that there will be less load times and minimum lag(if there is any)? Because that would open more capabilities for bigger games.

jonmulcahy

installing now!

MentalDonkeyGames

Very nice looking. Great job again!

RossmanBrothersGames

@QASalad said:
Fixed memory leaks with published apps

No way! So pumped to give this a try!

The_Gamesalad_Guru

looks good on my 5K.

darrelf

Not good. The images in my portrait game are blurry and the purchase callback doesn't work. Testing on an iPad Air 2 and comparing to build .33

Braydon_SFX

Love the updated icons! It's the simple UI changes that really get me excited!

AlchimiaStudios

@QASalad said:

Mac Creator Release 0.13.34 is available

Fixes:

Fixed memory leaks with published apps

So, is there a more detailed release notes on this one? My curiosity has me, well, ...curious as to what exactly changed.

RossmanBrothersGames

@AlchimiaStudios Apps, especially larger games, have been experiencing memory build over time especially in changing scenes. This has resulted in choppy gameplay when during longer play sessions. I believe this is the fix they are referring to.

AlchimiaStudios

@RossmanBrothersGames said:
AlchimiaStudios Apps, especially larger games, have been experiencing memory build over time especially in changing scenes. This has resulted in choppy gameplay when during longer play sessions. I believe this is the fix they are referring to.

I just meant more specific. Such as what behaviours ended up causing/what ended up being fixed. I know tables were thought to be the culprit, but I read they seemed to be fixed a couple of iterations ago.

dgackey

@AlchimiaStudios said:
So, is there a more detailed release notes on this one? My curiosity has me, well, ...curious as to what exactly changed.

@GeorgeGS can elaborate a little more but it's the culmination of several weeks of finding & fixing long-running memory leaks that were plaguing larger projects.

AlchimiaStudios

@Braydon_SFX said:
Love the updated icons! It's the simple UI changes that really get me excited!

+1 The little UI changes are starting to add up!

@dgackey said:

Thanks!

Braydon_SFX

@BlackCloakGS - I'm finding that the animate behavior does not fire in a timer with the "every" condition selected. I think I remember seeing this reported a while ago. This bug is still present in this latest version.

dgackey

@Braydon_SFX is this in Bugzilla?

The closest one I could see was: http://bugs.gamesalad.com/show_bug.cgi?id=901 but wanted to make sure. If this looks like your issue, could you attach a sample project that reproduces the bug?

Braydon_SFX

@dgackey said:
Braydon_SFX is this in Bugzilla?

The closest one I could see was: http://bugs.gamesalad.com/show_bug.cgi?id=901 but wanted to make sure. If this looks like your issue, could you attach a sample project that reproduces the bug?

Don't think that's the issue - my animation behavior won't even run in the "every" timer.
I'll create a new bug and attack a demo project.

dgackey

@Braydon_SFX thanks!

Socks

@Braydon_SFX said:
Don't think that's the issue - my animation behavior won't even run in the "every" timer.

• @dgackey

It works if you wrap the animation behaviour in an 'After 0 seconds' timer - of the two versions below, the top one runs as expected, the bottom one doesn't work at all (like Braydon_SFX says).

GeorgeGS

@AlchimiaStudios said:
I just meant more specific. Such as what behaviours ended up causing/what ended up being fixed. I know tables were thought to be the culprit, but I read they seemed to be fixed a couple of iterations ago.

Tables weren't any part of the problem. It's possible they were in the past, but I didn't see any issues with them now.

The biggest problem was that actors weren't always being cleaned up completely when the scene changed. If you had a lot of actors or they were large for some reason like they had a lot of attributes then the leftover memory accumulated faster until eventually you ran out and the app was closed by the operating system on the device.

We use Lua in our engine which uses a garbage collector to clean things up when they aren't referenced anymore, so the fix was to make sure all of the references were broken or that they were "weak" so that they wouldn't stop something from being cleaned up.

The flipside is that we then needed to fix some things to not unload unexpectedly inside Creator for the Mac or in the native previewers which delayed things a couple of days.

I'm hoping that this fixes all of the memory issues you guys have been seeing, but if you think you've got a memory problem in the future we're happy to look into it.

BlackCloakGS

Why do you need to run an animation in an 'every' timer? What kind of effect are you trying create?

RossmanBrothersGames

All my images are blurry in this version as well.

Approw

Looking great guys!

RossmanBrothersGames

@GeorgeGS I tested this version in Memory Allocations through Xcode. So far it tests the same as a version published from previous builds. First level game is using about 24mbs and then goes up 1 MB after every scene change. I do not however know if this means anything since it is testing over a short period of time.
My issue of choppiness always came after long long play periods where the app never shut down on the device. Hopefully I won't notice any of those issues now.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

@RossmanBrothersGames said:
GeorgeGS I tested this version in Memory Allocations through Xcode. So far it tests the same as a version published from previous builds. First level game is using about 24mbs and then goes up 1 MB after every scene change. I do not however know if this means anything since it is testing over a short period of time.
My issue of choppiness always came after long long play periods where the app never shut down on the device. Hopefully I won't notice any of those issues now.

That is nothing as to memory. If you are not preloading images that would be a reasonable increase as when the scene changes those images will be loaded.

Socks

I like the new icons, very nice, it's a small change, but it looks much cleaner / more modern !!

What would really make a difference to the interface (visually at least) would be able to better see your image assets than we currently can . . . the way GameSalad works encourages the use of white image assets, white image assets can be recoloured within GameSalad, so if you want flashing colours or user defined coloured fonts or any graphic elements that take advantage of GS's colour capabilities - like a painting app where you would import the brush shapes as white images on a transparent B/G and allow the user to select the colour they paint in - (and so on), for all this stuff you need to author your assets in white . . . it's a great system, it works really well, and allows a ton of flexibility where white authored actors can be manipulated in all sorts of useful ways . . . . but, the problem is you can't see white image assets in the Image assets window, if the Image assets window background colour could be changed to something more forgiving (for example a pale neutral grey) users would be able to visually scan through their image assets, at the moment if you are taking advantage of GS's capabilities with white image assets you are effectively limited to a text display as the images disappear, which makes locating images in a large project very difficult - it's hard enough not having folders, but then having your images invisible only compounds the issue !!

See my images below, you can see the difference changing the background colour would have.

Current:

Neutral Grey:

The_Gamesalad_Guru

@Socks said:
I like the new icons, very nice, it's a small change, but it looks much cleaner / more modern !!

What would really make a difference to the interface (visually at least) would be able to better see your image assets than we currently can . . . the way GameSalad works encourages the use of white image assets, white image assets can be recoloured within GameSalad, so if you want flashing colours or user defined coloured fonts or any graphic elements that take advantage of GS's colour capabilities - like a painting app where you would import the brush shapes as white images on a transparent B/G and allow the user to select the colour they paint in - (and so on), for all this stuff you need to author your assets in white . . . it's a great system, it works really well, and allows a ton of flexibility where white authored actors can be manipulated in all sorts of useful ways . . . . but, the problem is you can't see white image assets in image assets window, if the image assets window background colour could be changed to something more forgiving (for example a pale neutral grey) users would be able to visually scan through their image assets, at the movement if you are taking advantage of GS's capabilities with white image assets you are effectively limited to a text display as the images disappear, which makes locating images in a large project difficult - it's hard enough not having folders, but then having your images invisible only compounds the issue !!

See my images below, you can see the difference changing the background colour would have.

Current:

Neutral Grey"

Me likey!

Approw

@Socks really really good point! Having white or bright images in the image library can be really annoying, same goes for the animate and change image behavior. A grayish tinted background would be a great solution.

Braydon_SFX

@Socks - Like it!

I've actually really been itching for a complete UI re-design for GS. Darker, more modern and game/scene level options available wherever you are inside GS. Much like Adobe products.

*Runs behind cover

Socks

@Lost_Oasis_Games said:
Me likey!

@Approw said:
Socks really really good point! Having white or bright images in the image library can be really annoying, same goes for the animate and change image behavior. A grayish tinted background would be a great solution.

Agreed, the Change Image behaviour actually already does have a pale grey background, but it's so subtle as to be barely distinguishable from white, but yes all the places where images are displayed would really benefit from a background that allows users to see white image assets.

The Actors window is another example, drag a white image asset in there and it effectively disappears into the white B/G.