@Lost_Oasis_Games Yes they are working on the load issues,but every time they introduce new feature it is affecting loading times...i hope this is not the case from next version......
@NimbleBug said: @Lost_Oasis_Games Yes they are working on the load issues,but every time they introduce new feature it is affecting loading times...i hope this is not the case from next version......
Don't we all? What's the point of that statement? Is it to say the staff at GS aren't trying their best?
Here is how I see it and I expect to get some hate and that's okay. Every day I read, about someone saying we need this feature now! Yet we all know Gs has few staff. I want all the features too but I am realistic knowing that 5 coders can not do that. I know,as I have contact with the staff, as well as other veterans here who help provide them info, sample projects et..on the issues, that they want the creator to be great and are working hard and doing their best. If you want it done right then stop asking every five minutes, "Are we there yet?" When we are there they will release it. There is an old saying "you can have it right, you can have it fast, you can have it cheap but you can only pick two options."
I know all the arguments. We need this too sell, we rely on it to make money, we pay for it. I get that totally but I also realize the reality. I realize it take time to sort through thousand of lines of code to find the issues. This takes time. More ranting does not speed up or change the process. Complaining doesn't make the team work or try harder. Nobody cares more about this product than them, heck their livelihoods depend on it too.
All of you should want 2 following important features for every app business:
AdMediation support (for example Heyzap) for all ad providers in one session (banners, interstitials, rewarded video, one dashboard, one SDK, critical eCPM improvement)
Google Analytics (I absolutely don't know nothing about user engagement to this day, none of us). Appformative is not useful. They want 25$ for each 25.000 datapoints. So do I want to pay 25$ every five days? No.
I have approx. 60.000 MAU and still know nothing about my players and still can't monetize them deeply (no rewarded ads, no Applovin (the best eCPM for the long time), bad fillrate because no more than one network works at one session)).
GS is powerful game creation software, really powerful and I love it, but it is still very poor in marketing (analytics) and monetizing (ads). Facebook integration sounds nice but it will DO NOT help your business these days. Custom fonts? OK, but you can still use multiplatform "Arial" font or use graphic fonts (unpleasantly but possible).
GameSalad should choose between 2 ways... 1) Be a cool game creator for kids or 2) Be a professional tool for appreneurs. I think that GS could be definitely both!
I agree with @Bitvork and would add two more essential features: notifications and a working server based system that let developers keep key data on the server side. (Think Candy Crush where the number of lives are stored online and then the player is notified when all five lives have been restored. )
All this talk of loading times is pointless and as @Lost_Oasis_Games says a bit insulting to GameSalad. I've nagged and nagged about loading times in the past, but they've clearly, unequivocally and openly stated they are focusing right now on Android speed issues and loading times. They are actively working on loading times. It is one of their primary focuses right now. There's really not much more they can do about it than work specifically on it.
When the next build comes out, check the loading times. They complain or not. But right now they're giving us everything we've been demanding and still we're complaining. Holy crap that must be demoralising.
I absolutely do not want to demoralize anyone, especially GS staff members. They are doing awesome job. I have just talked about future priorities. Many people want potentially "sexy" features but they are all useless when you can't ensure the best possible ARPU (average revenue per user -> ad monetization) and especially LTV (life time value -> analytics). When you can't optimize these two things... multiplayer, facebook, fonts... everything is nice but not necessary. I absolutely understand the difficulty of the GS situation. That is why I am sometimes writing about focusing on real priorities when I see they are bombed by many pointless demands.
BTW: Shorter loading times? I agree that android performance is now an issue number one but loading times? I have never found this problem to this day. If someone loads 50 different scenes every while or using PAUSE SCENE 30 times per minute... that is really his own problem.
@viking said:
I agree with @Bitvork and would add two more essential features: notifications and a working server based system that let developers keep key data on the server side. (Think Candy Crush where the number of lives are stored online and then the player is notified when all five lives have been restored. )
I forbade notifications in all games I have ever downloaded. Many users do not want to be spammed every while by 20 games. Keeping data on the server side... so much programming for GS, very small amount of users will use it (hard to understand and deploy). ;-) GS can make 10 small but powerful things or 1 long-term feature which requires tons of programming and testing and then almost no one will use it.
AdMediation - 1 SDK -> GS will no longer waste their time with AdMob, Chartboost, RevMob, Upsight separately -> Big marketing advantage for GS. https://www.heyzap.com/mediation
Analytics - OK, this is only for those who are serious about the app business, but who isn't?
The things you're asking for are undoubtedly useful features, but I think you're looking at a fairly small subsection of GameSalad users. Most GameSalad users are hobbyist game makers - making games for fun or in case they strike it rich. People very serious about the monetisation of their games are probably less likely to be using GameSalad in the first place. For several years GameSalad hopped from one advertising model to another and was jamming in advertising SDKs as often as possible. The general, overwhelming consensus was that they should focus on the core product and feature set rather than chasing whichever advertising kit is the flavour of the month. I really hope they don't go back to that philosophy, as the highest earning advertising service changes constantly (wasn't that long ago it was RevMob, or AdMob, or ... etc.) AdMediation might be the hot ticket right now, but for how long?
I think you'll find the vast majority of GameSalad users aren't kids, but are hobbyist adults, who aren't serious about the app business, they're just wanting to bring their cool ideas to life. Analytics are long overdue, but I think you'll find very few people who would have picked them over custom collisions or custom fonts.
Anyone know what happened to the sort order for images in Mac GS Creator image list view?
Seemed in versions before 1.24 it was based on when they were added.
I am happy you brought this up @Bitvork, it allows me to stress how we designed APPFormative, including the pricing model, to be the cheapest, fairest and safest, compared to every other solution out there.
Wall of Text incoming, but please read carefully.
You brought up Google. Do you know that with your volume you would be paying $150 000/year at Google? The free version gives you only 5 events to track, then mushes them into a useless summary.
Every other analytics provider costs you about $1000/per month.
AWS or Azure is also not an option at volume, the prices ramping up to also in the thousands at your volume. The cheap solutions throttle the data throughput, leading to completely skewed data and even a bad user experience. Trapping you into paying if you don't want to aggravate your hard acquired users.
Or host your own servers, at volume needing infrastructure, maintenance, development, etc. for three or more servers. Probably way more than a thousand a month.
Renting a cheap virtual server from some provider is out of the question. The concurrent use limit and the data through put limit prohibits this from being a solution.
At APPFormative we are well aware of our target audience, and designed this as a free, fair, and easy solution, without the danger of ever hurting the experience of your users.
We give you 25000 analytics data points for free, which to most, is enough to get an indication of the early trends. Those who wish to take it further have the OPTION of extending access to the data. No obligation. All the extra free services are unaffected and stay free. This makes it a safe and affordable solution for indies and hobbyists.
Developers with high volumes have special volume agreements with us anyway.
For indies APPFormative is the best solution, analytics being only one aspect of it.
We offer many more FREE useful solutions like
Messaging,
Triggers,
A/BTesting,
Daily Rewards/Offline timers,
Formated Emails, and
User Feedback systems.
My plee to the indie and hobby developers here: Please understand the value of understanding user behavior. Value your development time and make the most of your app by measuring how your app is used and make educated adjustments. But when making a choice for an analytics tool, read the fine print carefully and don't get trapped into expensive subscriptions or data limits which will hurt your user base down the line. APPFormative on the other hand, is for the community, we have the advantage of existing manpower and infrastructure which we dedicate to supporting developers using GameSalad.
I think what people forget is this is a community. We all have needs for what we are doing and each has a different priority. To somehow claim the moral high ground on my needs mean more or I supposedly speak for the majority of users is preposterous.
People get to vote their voice on what comes next. There were many votes for custom collisions and custom fonts so they worked on that. The loadtimes were an issue many, many people begged them to fix and they're doing that. I imagine what comes next will be based in part on feasibility and votes. You can see what feature requests have what votes in the bug system. No matter what GS does, taking things like server stuff will always require knowledge beyond drag and drop. Developing games takes knowledge. You need to know about devices and how they work aka aspect ratio, screen resolution, processing power, ram usage et... anyone who is more than a hobbit in this knows you need lots of knowledge and there are tons of places to get this knowledge online. To do server you're going to have to know some mysql and PHP as you need to setup your server and every server interface, godaddy, Amazon ect... is a bit different. There are many threads and instructions that get the ball rolling for you. All you have to do is what those do who provide this info for you..STUDY. all these people that provide these tutorial, templates ect.. have to study and test and search and learn. It doesn't just appear in ones head like the matrix.
@Bitvork Like you wrote, if GS wants to be more than a hobby tool, certain features are necessary. Advertising and metrics are important for sure, but look at the top grossing titles on the AppStore and a high % of them use notifications and online data to avoid cheating as their main components to drive retention and user engagement. Many of the top 100 grossing titles rely on inApp purchases for their revenues, not advertising.
Remember, spam is only spam if it is unwanted information. It's our job as designers to make notifications appear as a positive element of the game play experience.
In any event, it is my opinion that GameSalad needs professionally made games and success stories on the AppStore to attract a wider audience of "hopefull" hobby developers. Maybe not every developer need, or know how to use online functionality, but it is a key requirement I believe to make games that can compete in a crowded marketplace.
I think this discussion begins with my message. Sorry for that, I spoke like an aggressive person (because of my bad english)
I know they are small team and I know it is not as easy as it looks.
I wanted to mean priorities. From 1.23, they are working performance improvement-loading times (finally, I am grateful ) but why this did not start two years ago?
Even if the majority of users use gamesalad for hobby, gamesalad needs more professional developers to attract hobby developers (or pro) to continue their successfull path, we all want to see them as successfull company,right?
Was Unity owned by a company and they sold it, or did they grow with the apps that has been made by Unity on the Market? When I see a cool game on the appstore, I wonder which engine they use it and this is most important part for gamesalad not for us, actually. (they already know that but I wanted to explain myself)
@viking said: @Bitvork Like you wrote, if GS wants to be more than a hobby tool, certain features are necessary. Advertising and metrics are important for sure, but look at the top grossing titles on the AppStore and a high % of them use notifications and online data to avoid cheating as their main components to drive retention and user engagement. Many of the top 100 grossing titles rely on inApp purchases for their revenues, not advertising.
Remember, spam is only spam if it is unwanted information. It's our job as designers to make notifications appear as a positive element of the game play experience.
In any event, it is my opinion that GameSalad needs professionally made games and success stories on the AppStore to attract a wider audience of "hopefull" hobby developers. Maybe not every developer need, or know how to use online functionality, but it is a key requirement I believe to make games that can compete in a crowded marketplace.
The tools are already there to get metrics and provide in game notifications. See @Hopscotch services.
@onelasttime said:
I wanted to mean priorities. From 1.23, they are working performance improvement-loading times (finally, I am grateful ) but why this did not start two years ago?
The CEO was recently replaced and the company shifted directions fairly swiftly when that happened. 2 years ago these things weren't considered important, now they are.
@Lost_Oasis_Games i am not saying the staff at GS aren't trying their best? After CEO replaced GameSalad is awesomely moving forward,and i like how they are giving priority to the new features and performance improvement ,i was waited for 8 months without pro membership, after new CEO came into action and saw good progress,without second thought i renewed for annual pro membership.And i will continues this to support my Favourite Game Engine tool..
Without Gamesalad i am not a game developer at all,GAMESALAD makes my dream comes true..... Thank u Gamesalad ,Gamesalad team and all the other supporters with excellent tutorials....and help.
@Lost_Oasis_Games In-game messages and email notifications are available through AppFormative, which is great, but not as effective as pop-up notifications.
@viking said: @Lost_Oasis_Games In-game messages and email notifications are available through AppFormative, which is great, but not as effective as pop-up notifications.
I imagine pop ups will come when the reintroduce playtogether as the playstogether api does have popups. Gamesalad bought playstogether about a year ago.
1- Shorter Loading Time
2- Shorter Loading Time
3- Facebook Integration
4- Just for Android ( GooglePlayService)
What should we want?
1- Shorter Loading Time
2- Charboost Reward Video
3- Google Play Service
4- Facebook Integration
Gamesalad already doing great many things but if loading times are too long(first&changescene), what is the point of having them?
I've been here almost 2 years and I have never seen a game with short loading time that means problem is not because of us.
When will this problem be solved?
For now, I just want shorter loading time, not collison shape not custom font.
Yes please shorter loading times is the main issue with high speed mobiles and tablets...no one want to see loading wheels in there small games now a days.
I play many games on my iphone. Made by gamesalad developers and made by some of the worlds best companies. I as a user understand that a game needs to take a moment to load. What are you defining as "LONG" load times?
If im playing a game made by game salad. I usually see a load wheel spin at the most 3 revolutions.
Three revolutions when changing scenes is a long load time. 10+ seconds when launching the game is a very long load time. On modern devices, load times should be much shorter than that.
Think the big oversight GS makes is that we cannot control loading at all. Spinner and load process cannot be overwritten by developers and that's usability problem.
GS should at least allow developers to change the spinner (location or shown) or allow developers to inject a static screen. Using the excuse that games might not be allowed in the appstore doesn't hold water any longer.
@FINNBOGG said:
I play many games on my iphone. Made by gamesalad developers and made by some of the worlds best companies. I as a user understand that a game needs to take a moment to load. What are you defining as "LONG" load times?
There is a statistic about that.
The first is app loading time. The study showed 68 percent of consumer respondents, who have left a brand because of poor loading times, desire apps to load in six seconds or less. More than half of those respondents demand a load time of less than three seconds. If an app fails to load within that time, consumers are likely to abandon the app, or a brand altogether.
@teamdkl said:
Think the big oversight GS makes is that we cannot control loading at all. Spinner and load process cannot be overwritten by developers and that's usability problem.
GS should at least allow developers to change the spinner (location or shown) or allow developers to inject a static screen. Using the excuse that games might not be allowed in the appstore doesn't hold water any longer.
Injecting a static screen is possible, at least in effect. Can't get rid of that loading wheel though. (Well you can get rid of the wheel, but not the box.)
@FINNBOGG said:
Sooo how is that lil birdie doing? The one that gave you hope that custom fonts might be in store for christmas. Is that birdie still looking like a pretty reliable birdie?
Pretty reliable. I've got them working on Windows, Android, and iOS. Mac should be pretty easy to add. The only issue is accessing system fonts on iOS, due to Apple's sandboxing restrictions (basically, it's really hard/impossible to access data outside your own program's package).
system fonts? You mean the location where most fonts get saved for use in like Adobe products. They access the font folder that's default on the Mac. Can you use that folder to access. Or can you create a seperate location within GS creator? We Install to there and access only fonts from there? If needed copy paste system fonts to there as well. Seperate access point.
First of all… I am also sorry for my English. I am not native speaker. ;-)
CUSTOMERS (@Armelline) - “Kids” was a wrong word. “Hobbyist” is right. But I am not sure that hobbyist will pay GS bills in long term. For example I have moved to Unity this summer (it is really not nuclear engineering) because I need to escalate my games to more professional level but I have moved back because working with Tables (for example) is just awesome and I can handle even big project with 12.000 boxes here (I always try to move boundaries and make bigger and bigger games). GS is so close to be a professional software also for advanced appreneurs. I just would like to say… why not try to make few steps to be more than software for hobbyist and target wider audience (good point @viking)? I have created everything I ever imagined (potentially easy way) with GS and that is why I will stay, but sometimes I have to say some opinion. ;-) It is a little bit frustrating if you have so many active players and you are not able to maximize revenue to make that game better and better. You wrote: “People very serious about the monetization of their games are probably less likely to be using GameSalad in the first place.” I think it is worth to change that philosophy because GS is so close to be very useful also for serious appreneurs. As you can see there is no only hobbyists in this community (I believe many of us are making living with GS and these people rather stay anonymous) and it could be a revenue problem for GS in the future if GS will look like “it is primarily for hobbyists”. We can create almost everything with GS the easy way. I should move to Unity for monetization and optimization reasons but I don’t want to because I love GS for years and its simplicity. This software definitely deserves much better market share. ;-)
AD MEDIATION - I am not 100% sure that ad mediation requires only one SDK. However, if it is true, GS guys will no longer waste their time with things like “whichever advertising kit is the flavour of the month”. I am suggesting brand new system which definitely could save a lot of time to everyone especially GS staff. I am not talking about ad provider of the month or hot tickets. There are more ad mediation providers but let's talk about Heyzap… That 1 SDK should ensure correct displaying, because their SDK uses also big brands and Heyzap can’t afford to mess it up. I think it requires less testing effort than importing new ad providers one by one. Yes, even Heyzap could go into the bankruptcy in the future but I trust their references (Crossy Road etc.). They do this right at this time. Second thing, of course it is not good to be dependent only on Heyzap (one provider solves everything) but it could be the best new separate option at this time (almost everyone wants rewarded video, imagine the possibilities with this system (especially fill rate)).
FEATURE REQUESTS (@Lost_Oasis_Games) - Agree, many people would love custom collisions instead of analytics. I understand. However, GS voting system is a copy of Unity voting system, but these two worlds are absolutely different. People do not want analytics or ad mediation there because they can download an existing plugin. There are only serious core problems mentioned but creating a feature request in GS’s Bugzilla is pointless for me because I know in advance that facebook integration, nuclear waste, or “explode the device” feature will overtake any necessary (and sometimes “easy” to integrate) requests. Just joking. The issue is... How many of us know about ad mediation system and its advantages? I discovered it by accident because it is new. And that is why there is no sense to create Feature Request in Bugzilla. There are tons of requests and nobody has time to open every ticket. By the way… What everyone's perception of “facebook integration”? “Like” button inside the game could be awesome, but how many players spam their friends every while or post their success on their walls these days? Also agree that we all want something different and it is not easy to integrate everything within a month.
ANALYTICS (@Hopscotch) - I have to admit I have overshot an importance of Analytics. iTunes Connect has good analytics and I see that GPlay Developer Console too (that is pretty new). Some numbers also could be extracted from Chartboost dashboard. I just see analytics in every webpage, “every” app, every product so I though it could be helpful to integrate GA or Flurry to GS. As you said… everyone should understand their players. Yes, APPFORMATIVE is very useful for many things. I am just not sure if I want to track data points daily and get stressed everytime I see number 24.978. ;-) Maybe could be nice to have some “data points convertor”. I will pay 100$ and it could automatically gives me 100K data points (charge system). Because every month is different (app usage). After all I think that Flurry or GA both don’t want money for data points. Don’t they charging for a special features or more events to track only? I was requested basic data, nothing special. BTW: Really good work with your new tutorials on your website. Definitely helpful.
LONG LOADING TIMES - I think it will always depend on the particular project or programmer skills. Some tips I always try to integrate… 1) Turn off “Preload Art” if the object changes images during session. 2) Use tile rendering with small textures whenever is possible. 3) Do not use huge textures at the landing scene. 4) Do not let GS load anything unnecessary. Use your own black screen (object) over the scene on the beginning and constrain its Alpha to 0 after everything is OK (it takes mili-seconds then). 5) Be prudent with Change Scene and Pause Scene behaviors (use 4000 pixels scene size and just switch the camera between Main Menu, Options, Store when it is necessary etc.). Working with GS usually requires some workaround job. And last tip… have awesome splash screen to attract eyeballs - do not let them quit your game.
@Bitvork said:
GS is so close to be a professional software also for advanced appreneurs. I just would like to say… why not try to make few steps to be more than software for hobbyist and target wider audience (good point @viking)?
I absolutely agree that there are steps that can be taken to make the software more professional. I posted several times about what I think these steps should be. But I definitely think getting core features like custom collisions and custom fonts in is even more important. These are huge features that hold GameSalad back far more than any ad/metrics etc. features.
AD MEDIATION - I am not 100% sure that ad mediation requires only one SDK. However, if it is true, GS guys will no longer waste their time with things like “whichever advertising kit is the flavour of the month”.
I think you'll find a lot of users are wary of any "best new ad solution" claims. We've been down this road a bunch of times in the past 6 years. Hopefully there's a good solution they can use, but we're not lacking in choice of ad networks right now. I would hate to see this given too high a priority.
However, GS voting system is a copy of Unity voting system, but these two worlds are absolutely different. People do not want analytics or ad mediation there because they can download an existing plugin. There are only serious core problems mentioned but creating a feature request in GS’s Bugzilla is pointless for me because I know in advance that facebook integration, nuclear waste, or “explode the device” feature will overtake any necessary (and sometimes “easy” to integrate) requests. Just joking.
Perhaps if the features you want get much fewer votes than the top voted features, they're not as desired and you're reading the situation wrong? It used to feel pointless adding feature requests, for sure, as nothing ever got done, but they're tearing through the feature requests now, so even if yours isn't the most popular they'll hopefully get to it sooner rather than later!
By the way… What everyone's perception of “facebook integration”?
They had first steps towards FaceBook integration in a previous nightly, not sure what happened to it, though.
LONG LOADING TIMES - I think it will always depend on the particular project or programmer skills.
Unfortunately this has simply not been true. There has been an unavoidable loading time - even longer if you game includes music - that no amount of developer skill will prevent. A far longer than acceptable one. They're working on that now, though, so hopefully it's shorter in the next builds! The initial load time has been a particularly bad culprit.
Comments
@Lost_Oasis_Games Yes they are working on the load issues,but every time they introduce new feature it is affecting loading times...i hope this is not the case from next version......
Don't we all? What's the point of that statement? Is it to say the staff at GS aren't trying their best?
Here is how I see it and I expect to get some hate and that's okay. Every day I read, about someone saying we need this feature now! Yet we all know Gs has few staff. I want all the features too but I am realistic knowing that 5 coders can not do that. I know,as I have contact with the staff, as well as other veterans here who help provide them info, sample projects et..on the issues, that they want the creator to be great and are working hard and doing their best. If you want it done right then stop asking every five minutes, "Are we there yet?" When we are there they will release it. There is an old saying "you can have it right, you can have it fast, you can have it cheap but you can only pick two options."
I know all the arguments. We need this too sell, we rely on it to make money, we pay for it. I get that totally but I also realize the reality. I realize it take time to sort through thousand of lines of code to find the issues. This takes time. More ranting does not speed up or change the process. Complaining doesn't make the team work or try harder. Nobody cares more about this product than them, heck their livelihoods depend on it too.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
All of you should want 2 following important features for every app business:
I have approx. 60.000 MAU and still know nothing about my players and still can't monetize them deeply (no rewarded ads, no Applovin (the best eCPM for the long time), bad fillrate because no more than one network works at one session)).
GS is powerful game creation software, really powerful and I love it, but it is still very poor in marketing (analytics) and monetizing (ads). Facebook integration sounds nice but it will DO NOT help your business these days. Custom fonts? OK, but you can still use multiplatform "Arial" font or use graphic fonts (unpleasantly but possible).
GameSalad should choose between 2 ways... 1) Be a cool game creator for kids or 2) Be a professional tool for appreneurs. I think that GS could be definitely both!
I agree with @Bitvork and would add two more essential features: notifications and a working server based system that let developers keep key data on the server side. (Think Candy Crush where the number of lives are stored online and then the player is notified when all five lives have been restored. )
All this talk of loading times is pointless and as @Lost_Oasis_Games says a bit insulting to GameSalad. I've nagged and nagged about loading times in the past, but they've clearly, unequivocally and openly stated they are focusing right now on Android speed issues and loading times. They are actively working on loading times. It is one of their primary focuses right now. There's really not much more they can do about it than work specifically on it.
When the next build comes out, check the loading times. They complain or not. But right now they're giving us everything we've been demanding and still we're complaining. Holy crap that must be demoralising.
Also tagging @Hopscotch so he can respond to @Bitvork.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
I absolutely do not want to demoralize anyone, especially GS staff members. They are doing awesome job. I have just talked about future priorities. Many people want potentially "sexy" features but they are all useless when you can't ensure the best possible ARPU (average revenue per user -> ad monetization) and especially LTV (life time value -> analytics). When you can't optimize these two things... multiplayer, facebook, fonts... everything is nice but not necessary. I absolutely understand the difficulty of the GS situation. That is why I am sometimes writing about focusing on real priorities when I see they are bombed by many pointless demands.
BTW: Shorter loading times? I agree that android performance is now an issue number one but loading times? I have never found this problem to this day.
If someone loads 50 different scenes every while or using PAUSE SCENE 30 times per minute... that is really his own problem. 
I forbade notifications in all games I have ever downloaded. Many users do not want to be spammed every while by 20 games. Keeping data on the server side... so much programming for GS, very small amount of users will use it (hard to understand and deploy). ;-) GS can make 10 small but powerful things or 1 long-term feature which requires tons of programming and testing and then almost no one will use it.
AdMediation - 1 SDK -> GS will no longer waste their time with AdMob, Chartboost, RevMob, Upsight separately -> Big marketing advantage for GS.
https://www.heyzap.com/mediation
Analytics - OK, this is only for those who are serious about the app business, but who isn't?
The things you're asking for are undoubtedly useful features, but I think you're looking at a fairly small subsection of GameSalad users. Most GameSalad users are hobbyist game makers - making games for fun or in case they strike it rich. People very serious about the monetisation of their games are probably less likely to be using GameSalad in the first place. For several years GameSalad hopped from one advertising model to another and was jamming in advertising SDKs as often as possible. The general, overwhelming consensus was that they should focus on the core product and feature set rather than chasing whichever advertising kit is the flavour of the month. I really hope they don't go back to that philosophy, as the highest earning advertising service changes constantly (wasn't that long ago it was RevMob, or AdMob, or ... etc.) AdMediation might be the hot ticket right now, but for how long?
I think you'll find the vast majority of GameSalad users aren't kids, but are hobbyist adults, who aren't serious about the app business, they're just wanting to bring their cool ideas to life. Analytics are long overdue, but I think you'll find very few people who would have picked them over custom collisions or custom fonts.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Anyone know what happened to the sort order for images in Mac GS Creator image list view?
Seemed in versions before 1.24 it was based on when they were added.
Thank you for tagging @Armelline!
I am happy you brought this up @Bitvork, it allows me to stress how we designed APPFormative, including the pricing model, to be the cheapest, fairest and safest, compared to every other solution out there.
Wall of Text incoming, but please read carefully.
You brought up Google. Do you know that with your volume you would be paying $150 000/year at Google? The free version gives you only 5 events to track, then mushes them into a useless summary.
Every other analytics provider costs you about $1000/per month.
AWS or Azure is also not an option at volume, the prices ramping up to also in the thousands at your volume. The cheap solutions throttle the data throughput, leading to completely skewed data and even a bad user experience. Trapping you into paying if you don't want to aggravate your hard acquired users.
Or host your own servers, at volume needing infrastructure, maintenance, development, etc. for three or more servers. Probably way more than a thousand a month.
Renting a cheap virtual server from some provider is out of the question. The concurrent use limit and the data through put limit prohibits this from being a solution.
At APPFormative we are well aware of our target audience, and designed this as a free, fair, and easy solution, without the danger of ever hurting the experience of your users.
We give you 25000 analytics data points for free, which to most, is enough to get an indication of the early trends. Those who wish to take it further have the OPTION of extending access to the data. No obligation. All the extra free services are unaffected and stay free. This makes it a safe and affordable solution for indies and hobbyists.
Developers with high volumes have special volume agreements with us anyway.
For indies APPFormative is the best solution, analytics being only one aspect of it.
We offer many more FREE useful solutions like
Messaging,
Triggers,
A/BTesting,
Daily Rewards/Offline timers,
Formated Emails, and
User Feedback systems.
My plee to the indie and hobby developers here: Please understand the value of understanding user behavior. Value your development time and make the most of your app by measuring how your app is used and make educated adjustments. But when making a choice for an analytics tool, read the fine print carefully and don't get trapped into expensive subscriptions or data limits which will hurt your user base down the line. APPFormative on the other hand, is for the community, we have the advantage of existing manpower and infrastructure which we dedicate to supporting developers using GameSalad.
Regards,
Roland
MESSAGING, X-PLATFORM LEADERBOARDS, OFFLINE-TIMER, ANALYTICS and BACK-END CONTROL for your GameSalad projects
www.APPFORMATIVE.com
I think what people forget is this is a community. We all have needs for what we are doing and each has a different priority. To somehow claim the moral high ground on my needs mean more or I supposedly speak for the majority of users is preposterous.
People get to vote their voice on what comes next. There were many votes for custom collisions and custom fonts so they worked on that. The loadtimes were an issue many, many people begged them to fix and they're doing that. I imagine what comes next will be based in part on feasibility and votes. You can see what feature requests have what votes in the bug system. No matter what GS does, taking things like server stuff will always require knowledge beyond drag and drop. Developing games takes knowledge. You need to know about devices and how they work aka aspect ratio, screen resolution, processing power, ram usage et... anyone who is more than a hobbit in this knows you need lots of knowledge and there are tons of places to get this knowledge online. To do server you're going to have to know some mysql and PHP as you need to setup your server and every server interface, godaddy, Amazon ect... is a bit different. There are many threads and instructions that get the ball rolling for you. All you have to do is what those do who provide this info for you..STUDY. all these people that provide these tutorial, templates ect.. have to study and test and search and learn. It doesn't just appear in ones head like the matrix.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
@Bitvork Like you wrote, if GS wants to be more than a hobby tool, certain features are necessary. Advertising and metrics are important for sure, but look at the top grossing titles on the AppStore and a high % of them use notifications and online data to avoid cheating as their main components to drive retention and user engagement. Many of the top 100 grossing titles rely on inApp purchases for their revenues, not advertising.
Remember, spam is only spam if it is unwanted information. It's our job as designers to make notifications appear as a positive element of the game play experience.
In any event, it is my opinion that GameSalad needs professionally made games and success stories on the AppStore to attract a wider audience of "hopefull" hobby developers. Maybe not every developer need, or know how to use online functionality, but it is a key requirement I believe to make games that can compete in a crowded marketplace.
I think this discussion begins with my message. Sorry for that, I spoke like an aggressive person (because of my bad english)
I know they are small team and I know it is not as easy as it looks.
I wanted to mean priorities. From 1.23, they are working performance improvement-loading times (finally, I am grateful ) but why this did not start two years ago?
Even if the majority of users use gamesalad for hobby, gamesalad needs more professional developers to attract hobby developers (or pro) to continue their successfull path, we all want to see them as successfull company,right?
Was Unity owned by a company and they sold it, or did they grow with the apps that has been made by Unity on the Market? When I see a cool game on the appstore, I wonder which engine they use it and this is most important part for gamesalad not for us, actually. (they already know that but I wanted to explain myself)
Check out my games on the App Store!
Wordgraphy / Polycolor / 20 Seconds / Minimal Maze
The tools are already there to get metrics and provide in game notifications. See @Hopscotch services.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
The CEO was recently replaced and the company shifted directions fairly swiftly when that happened. 2 years ago these things weren't considered important, now they are.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
@Lost_Oasis_Games i am not saying the staff at GS aren't trying their best? After CEO replaced GameSalad is awesomely moving forward,and i like how they are giving priority to the new features and performance improvement ,i was waited for 8 months without pro membership, after new CEO came into action and saw good progress,without second thought i renewed for annual pro membership.And i will continues this to support my Favourite Game Engine tool..
Without Gamesalad i am not a game developer at all,GAMESALAD makes my dream comes true..... Thank u Gamesalad ,Gamesalad team and all the other supporters with excellent tutorials....and help.
@Lost_Oasis_Games In-game messages and email notifications are available through AppFormative, which is great, but not as effective as pop-up notifications.
I imagine pop ups will come when the reintroduce playtogether as the playstogether api does have popups. Gamesalad bought playstogether about a year ago.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
I play many games on my iphone. Made by gamesalad developers and made by some of the worlds best companies. I as a user understand that a game needs to take a moment to load. What are you defining as "LONG" load times?
If im playing a game made by game salad. I usually see a load wheel spin at the most 3 revolutions.
@FINNBOGG this is funny if there is no problem in loading times why Gamesalad team is spending time to improve loading times
Three revolutions when changing scenes is a long load time. 10+ seconds when launching the game is a very long load time. On modern devices, load times should be much shorter than that.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Think the big oversight GS makes is that we cannot control loading at all. Spinner and load process cannot be overwritten by developers and that's usability problem.
GS should at least allow developers to change the spinner (location or shown) or allow developers to inject a static screen. Using the excuse that games might not be allowed in the appstore doesn't hold water any longer.
There is a statistic about that.
http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/study-consumers-will-abandon-apps-with-greater-than-six-second-load-times-infographic/616318
Check out my games on the App Store!
Wordgraphy / Polycolor / 20 Seconds / Minimal Maze
I haven't come across slot of GS made games that go over 6 secs. That I've played.
If it is not small/mini game, I have come across lots of them. Not just first loading screen, changescene is also important.
Like; (By the way, all of them are great,congrats again:) )
https://gamesalad.com/featured-games/get-fiquette
https://gamesalad.com/featured-games/heavy-sword
https://gamesalad.com/featured-games/milo-me
Check out my games on the App Store!
Wordgraphy / Polycolor / 20 Seconds / Minimal Maze
Injecting a static screen is possible, at least in effect. Can't get rid of that loading wheel though. (Well you can get rid of the wheel, but not the box.)
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Pretty reliable. I've got them working on Windows, Android, and iOS. Mac should be pretty easy to add. The only issue is accessing system fonts on iOS, due to Apple's sandboxing restrictions (basically, it's really hard/impossible to access data outside your own program's package).
system fonts? You mean the location where most fonts get saved for use in like Adobe products. They access the font folder that's default on the Mac. Can you use that folder to access. Or can you create a seperate location within GS creator? We Install to there and access only fonts from there? If needed copy paste system fonts to there as well. Seperate access point.
First of all… I am also sorry for my English. I am not native speaker. ;-)
CUSTOMERS (@Armelline) - “Kids” was a wrong word. “Hobbyist” is right. But I am not sure that hobbyist will pay GS bills in long term. For example I have moved to Unity this summer (it is really not nuclear engineering) because I need to escalate my games to more professional level but I have moved back because working with Tables (for example) is just awesome and I can handle even big project with 12.000 boxes here (I always try to move boundaries and make bigger and bigger games). GS is so close to be a professional software also for advanced appreneurs. I just would like to say… why not try to make few steps to be more than software for hobbyist and target wider audience (good point @viking)? I have created everything I ever imagined (potentially easy way) with GS and that is why I will stay, but sometimes I have to say some opinion. ;-) It is a little bit frustrating if you have so many active players and you are not able to maximize revenue to make that game better and better. You wrote: “People very serious about the monetization of their games are probably less likely to be using GameSalad in the first place.” I think it is worth to change that philosophy because GS is so close to be very useful also for serious appreneurs. As you can see there is no only hobbyists in this community (I believe many of us are making living with GS and these people rather stay anonymous) and it could be a revenue problem for GS in the future if GS will look like “it is primarily for hobbyists”. We can create almost everything with GS the easy way. I should move to Unity for monetization and optimization reasons but I don’t want to because I love GS for years and its simplicity. This software definitely deserves much better market share. ;-)
AD MEDIATION - I am not 100% sure that ad mediation requires only one SDK. However, if it is true, GS guys will no longer waste their time with things like “whichever advertising kit is the flavour of the month”. I am suggesting brand new system which definitely could save a lot of time to everyone especially GS staff. I am not talking about ad provider of the month or hot tickets. There are more ad mediation providers but let's talk about Heyzap… That 1 SDK should ensure correct displaying, because their SDK uses also big brands and Heyzap can’t afford to mess it up. I think it requires less testing effort than importing new ad providers one by one. Yes, even Heyzap could go into the bankruptcy in the future but I trust their references (Crossy Road etc.). They do this right at this time. Second thing, of course it is not good to be dependent only on Heyzap (one provider solves everything) but it could be the best new separate option at this time (almost everyone wants rewarded video, imagine the possibilities with this system (especially fill rate)).
FEATURE REQUESTS (@Lost_Oasis_Games) - Agree, many people would love custom collisions instead of analytics. I understand. However, GS voting system is a copy of Unity voting system, but these two worlds are absolutely different. People do not want analytics or ad mediation there because they can download an existing plugin. There are only serious core problems mentioned but creating a feature request in GS’s Bugzilla is pointless for me because I know in advance that facebook integration, nuclear waste, or “explode the device” feature will overtake any necessary (and sometimes “easy” to integrate) requests. Just joking.
The issue is... How many of us know about ad mediation system and its advantages? I discovered it by accident because it is new. And that is why there is no sense to create Feature Request in Bugzilla. There are tons of requests and nobody has time to open every ticket. By the way… What everyone's perception of “facebook integration”? “Like” button inside the game could be awesome, but how many players spam their friends every while or post their success on their walls these days? Also agree that we all want something different and it is not easy to integrate everything within a month.
ANALYTICS (@Hopscotch) - I have to admit I have overshot an importance of Analytics. iTunes Connect has good analytics and I see that GPlay Developer Console too (that is pretty new). Some numbers also could be extracted from Chartboost dashboard. I just see analytics in every webpage, “every” app, every product so I though it could be helpful to integrate GA or Flurry to GS. As you said… everyone should understand their players. Yes, APPFORMATIVE is very useful for many things. I am just not sure if I want to track data points daily and get stressed everytime I see number 24.978. ;-) Maybe could be nice to have some “data points convertor”. I will pay 100$ and it could automatically gives me 100K data points (charge system). Because every month is different (app usage). After all I think that Flurry or GA both don’t want money for data points. Don’t they charging for a special features or more events to track only? I was requested basic data, nothing special. BTW: Really good work with your new tutorials on your website. Definitely helpful.
LONG LOADING TIMES - I think it will always depend on the particular project or programmer skills. Some tips I always try to integrate… 1) Turn off “Preload Art” if the object changes images during session. 2) Use tile rendering with small textures whenever is possible. 3) Do not use huge textures at the landing scene. 4) Do not let GS load anything unnecessary. Use your own black screen (object) over the scene on the beginning and constrain its Alpha to 0 after everything is OK (it takes mili-seconds then). 5) Be prudent with Change Scene and Pause Scene behaviors (use 4000 pixels scene size and just switch the camera between Main Menu, Options, Store when it is necessary etc.). Working with GS usually requires some workaround job. And last tip… have awesome splash screen to attract eyeballs - do not let them quit your game.
I absolutely agree that there are steps that can be taken to make the software more professional. I posted several times about what I think these steps should be. But I definitely think getting core features like custom collisions and custom fonts in is even more important. These are huge features that hold GameSalad back far more than any ad/metrics etc. features.
I think you'll find a lot of users are wary of any "best new ad solution" claims. We've been down this road a bunch of times in the past 6 years. Hopefully there's a good solution they can use, but we're not lacking in choice of ad networks right now. I would hate to see this given too high a priority.
Perhaps if the features you want get much fewer votes than the top voted features, they're not as desired and you're reading the situation wrong? It used to feel pointless adding feature requests, for sure, as nothing ever got done, but they're tearing through the feature requests now, so even if yours isn't the most popular they'll hopefully get to it sooner rather than later!
They had first steps towards FaceBook integration in a previous nightly, not sure what happened to it, though.
Unfortunately this has simply not been true. There has been an unavoidable loading time - even longer if you game includes music - that no amount of developer skill will prevent. A far longer than acceptable one. They're working on that now, though, so hopefully it's shorter in the next builds! The initial load time has been a particularly bad culprit.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support