The way I see it, it's like an egg, but we don't know what kind of egg it is, it might a dinosaur egg or it might be a rabbit egg or even a car or something like that, or maybe not an egg but a wine glass or a pair of shoes or whatever, and the only way we know if the shoes are going to 'fit' us in the future is if we crack it open, or in the case of shoes if we crack them open and actually look inside the egg/shoes, but the only way we (or 'them' or 'her') can look inside the shoes is if we know the 'chicken who laid them' (GameSalad I think), but at the moment as it stands, with an emphasis being placed (or 'put') on the egg and not the chicken or the rabbit, the only way we can see inside the shoes is by putting them on and hoping that they fit.
@marionwood said: @Japster Enjoy the updates, I am!
Respect, and I'll raise a glass with you to anyone else who remembers good ol' assembly language
I also agree that crushing the devs who were supporting GS was an all time low; so low that I can't quite believe no-one learned the lessons from it. I just hope that collaboration (sharing projects, exporting code etc) as mentioned way way earlier in this thread will be part of the future roadmap - for devs, educators and students alike.
@marionwood - Hear hear mate, likewise! - and on that note, I'm going to play with the new release, and thanks to yourself, @Socks, @blob, @Armelline, @Adrenaline and the rest, for the lively and thought-provoking discussion/clearing the air/voicing both sides of the argument, and I just hope that the GS guys have made it this far, to get an idea of the feeling here - it's not all bad, just guarded and wary of where this is going to head us, and whether we are secure/safe in both spending another year or 5 developing projects in GS, and having fixes and features not only beneficial from an educational standpoint, but from the viewpoint of the paying user's livelihood!...
@marionwood said: @Japster Enjoy the updates, I am!
Respect, and I'll raise a glass with you to anyone else who remembers good ol' assembly language
I also agree that crushing the devs who were supporting GS was an all time low; so low that I can't quite believe no-one learned the lessons from it. I just hope that collaboration (sharing projects, exporting code etc) as mentioned way way earlier in this thread will be part of the future roadmap - for devs, educators and students alike.
Yeah that's one feature i'm sure almost everyone can get behind. Modular GS code would be amazing for dev teams and students/teachers alike.
@blob said: @Armelline
YES YOUR RIGHT but i still find myself doing 85% of the text in Illustrator
I get what you're saying, but to me it seems pretty reasonable that fancy text with special effects has to be pre-rendered. The custom fonts are useful for things that don't require fancy effects and are difficult to render - dialogue boxes, level descriptions, stats tables etc. Those are the things people clamoured for custom fonts for - not static text elements, but ones that frequently change or are too numerous to realistically pre-render them. The custom fonts we now have are more than adequate for things like that. What you seem to want is quite different - text styling, I guess - and massively more difficult for GameSalad to implement. Even if they did implement it, they could never do it in a way that satisfied everyone, as they'd end up with a huge chunk of Illustrator in their app before they were done.
One last thing before I call it a day, after getting my head around the fact that custom fonts can now be used and abused! - This might work guys? - outline fonts, and a complimenting 'inner/standard' font? - yes, it's double the display behaviours/overheads, but colour could be set independently, ie - black/white outline font display behaviour, then whatever colour for the complementary 'inner' (or standard) font... That would make a viable third option for @Blob 's scenario, and indeed some of mine...
ie. in Catflap, I used a cartoony font, filled in, 2 colours, as most people probably have done at times - for this, I had to make all of the routines for self-made custom fonts - the new custom fonts wouldn't help me in this scenario, but trying the above should give what Blob wants, and what I'd need to repeat that with much less work, so I'll have a play and see what happens.
Just need to see if there's an easy way/tools to generate outline fonts from standard ones, or a good selection of fonts with both outline and standard ones available.....
@Japster said:
Just need to see if there's an easy way/tools to generate outline fonts from standard ones, or a good selection of fonts with both outline and standard ones available.....
A quick way is to outline them in Illustrator . . . hold on example coming . . .
@marionwood said: @Japster Enjoy the updates, I am!
Respect, and I'll raise a glass with you to anyone else who remembers good ol' assembly language
I also agree that crushing the devs who were supporting GS was an all time low; so low that I can't quite believe no-one learned the lessons from it. I just hope that collaboration (sharing projects, exporting code etc) as mentioned way way earlier in this thread will be part of the future roadmap - for devs, educators and students alike.
@marionwood - Hear hear mate, likewise! - and on that note, I'm going to play with the new release, and thanks to yourself, @Socks, @blob, @Armelline, @Adrenaline and the rest, for the lively and thought-provoking discussion/clearing the air/voicing both sides of the argument, and I just hope that the GS guys have made it this far, to get an idea of the feeling here - it's not all bad, just guarded and wary of where this is going to head us, and whether we are secure/safe in both spending another year or 5 developing projects in GS, and having fixes and features not only beneficial from an educational standpoint, but from the viewpoint of the paying user's livelihood!...
@Japster said:
Just need to see if there's an easy way/tools to generate outline fonts from standard ones, or a good selection of fonts with both outline and standard ones available.....
A quick way is to outline them in Illustrator . . . hold on example coming . . .
@Japster said:
Just need to see if there's an easy way/tools to generate outline fonts from standard ones, or a good selection of fonts with both outline and standard ones available.....
A quick way is to outline them in Illustrator . . . hold on example coming . . .
. . . . .
EDIT
This is cool I know @Socks, but I'm thinking more to be able to use them dynamically, using the built-in display behaviour... Unless I'm missing something about Illustrator? - am I being daft, and it can import/export fonts? - please say yes!...
EDIT - Yep, I see where you're coming from mate - Just googled it, and I'm taking it you can export as a font once you've applied outline.... this should prove VERY useful, cheers!...
@Japster - Yes, if you have two versions of the same font, one with the outline only, and one with the fill, as long as both are the same sizes, you could presumably just display two display texts, and achieve the outlined effect.
@Armelline said: @Japster - Yes, if you have two versions of the same font, one with the outline only, and one with the fill, as long as both are the same sizes, you could presumably just display two display texts, and achieve the outlined effect.
....exactly! - simple, but should prove very effective for those times it might be needed, plus it should save having to create (and take up project space) with loads of custom text gfx... Of course, I'm assuming display processing overheads are higher than a single actor instance, but I could be wrong...
...either way, I think this'll work fine - looks like a bit of work with either FontSelf or FontForge if creating your own outline fonts, but it looks straightforward enough...
I'd even be happy just to hear something like:" hey guys we will tackle loading time and Facebook integration in November until then we are doing the school stuff.."
As opposed to ,," this is on the back burner indefinitely ",,,,,
AS the new CEO @bdusing .. it is a opportunity the change the communication style and bring hope to your users........roadmap roadmap roadmap.
If they say that and they dont end up doing it we will probably rage on them so its better to take it step by step , i like the way its going now , get GS to schools , fix GS , create a roadmap in the near future as mentioned earlier.
@bdusing said:
One of our new hires (Carlos) will be working with other staff members in the near future to create a Roadmap that will be visible for you guys. The two biggest priorities right now are:
@Japster said:
....exactly! - simple, but should prove very effective for those times it might be needed, plus it should save having to create (and take up project space) with loads of custom text gfx... Of course, I'm assuming display processing overheads are higher than a single actor instance, but I could be wrong...
...either way, I think this'll work fine - looks like a bit of work with either FontSelf or FontForge if creating your own outline fonts, but it looks straightforward enough...
Absolutely! Here's a few quick examples using just random fonts I pulled off dafont.com. With a bit of time spent adapting your chosen font to your exact needs, you could come up with some great effects!
@Japster said:
....exactly! - simple, but should prove very effective for those times it might be needed, plus it should save having to create (and take up project space) with loads of custom text gfx... Of course, I'm assuming display processing overheads are higher than a single actor instance, but I could be wrong...
...either way, I think this'll work fine - looks like a bit of work with either FontSelf or FontForge if creating your own outline fonts, but it looks straightforward enough...
Absolutely! Here's a few quick examples using just random fonts I pulled off dafont.com. With a bit of time spent adapting your chosen font to your exact needs, you could come up with some great effects!
Wow! - You don't waste time @Armelline - great example of it!
@Armelline said:
Absolutely! Here's a few quick examples using just random fonts I pulled off dafont.com. With a bit of time spent adapting your chosen font to your exact needs, you could come up with some great effects!
this should not be too hard to implant at the bottom of the display box
FEATURE REQUEST.........! HIGH SCHOOL WILL LOVE IT LOL
@Japster said:
This is cool I know @Socks, but I'm thinking more to be able to use them dynamically, using the built-in display behaviour...
Yes, that's the idea, you grab a font, type out the letters/numerals, add a suitable stroke (outline) and then use something like glyphter.com to generate a TT font of the stoked version alongside the original version in GameSalad.
A display text window you write your text once but have and clickable optional second twin font with a size parameter and visibility parameter so we can make blinking effects too.....
@Armelline said: @Japster - Yes, if you have two versions of the same font, one with the outline only, and one with the fill, as long as both are the same sizes, you could presumably just display two display texts, and achieve the outlined effect.
The 'outline' version would actually be filled too - that is to say it wouldn't look my example image above (that was just to illustrate the effect) - the 'outline' version of the font would simply be the font with a stroke applied - doing it this way avoids aliasing issues where the edge of the original font meets the inner edge of an outlined font.
the visibility/ opacity parameter can be use for shadows too...so make it 2 twin fonts option on the bottom of the main font within the same window......1 for outline 1 for shadow....
@Japster said:
....exactly! - simple, but should prove very effective for those times it might be needed, plus it should save having to create (and take up project space) with loads of custom text gfx... Of course, I'm assuming display processing overheads are higher than a single actor instance, but I could be wrong...
Fonts place a higher strain on a target device's processor than images, in fact in all the testing I've done fonts have come out as one of the most processor intensive processes, personally I never use the Display Fonts behaviour for this reason, I'm sure in most many situations they are actually fine, but if you are pushing a device to its limits the Display Fonts behaviour might be something to avoid (or at least not use 80 instances !).
You'll often hear of people avoiding timers in the interests of efficiency, but rarely of people avoiding the Display Fonts behaviour, but I'd certainly place the the Display Fonts behaviour ahead of timers when it comes processor strain.
Fonts place a higher strain on a target device's processor than images, in fact in all the testing I've done fonts have come out as one of the most processor intensive processes, personally I never use the Display Fonts behaviour for this reason, I'm sure in most many situations they are actually fine, but if you are pushing a device to its limits the Display Fonts behaviour might be something to avoid (or at least not use 80 instances !).
I hear you but school student learning logic don't care much about processor intensive issues.
So a extra tab for shadow and outline in the" display tex module" could be cool to have
@blob said:
Student will get it for free.from the school. .it 's very unlikely that they buy a second copy....and if ever the 0.3% of student in this class want to become programmer, some guy in their class will tell them: "dude you get unity or etc they go so much features and it s free,,,,,etc...
your scenario is a pipe dream.
The following equation might suggest differently;
"Percentage students who will go on to write games professionally or as a hobby - (Percentage of students who are capable of higher level coding - those capable but either lazy or impatient or want to make a quick prototype) = Possible paying GS subscriptions"
In my limited experience the percentage of people who have the brain wiring and drive to become coders is very small where as the percentage of people who would love to write a game is much higher. GS is targeting this market which i think is a good thing it might keep them alive and in time it might provide the funds to give us everything we want.
"Percentage students who will go on to write games professionally or as a hobby - (Percentage of students who are capable of higher level coding - those capable but either lazy or impatient or want to make a quick prototype) = Possible paying GS subscriptions"
When you are lazy and impatient and 14 years old which is your suggested market. you play with game salad for a month then you realize it 's actually real work to make a game as oppose to just making a scene where you click on the button and the square jumps up"
then you get a snapchat message get distracted and you give and go play battlefield
and don't renew your subscription. because the easy fun part is over.
Unity is almost done working on their own visual scripting tool....as for no coding plugins : there's playmaker and Gameflow , the later being very similar to gamesalad built for unity...
ALL the game engine companies are realizing the potential from hobbyist and are getting on that wagon. the kid who will be persevering beyond his own laziness will acquire skills and eventually ask himself why this and that feature or not in gamesalad and will move onto other packages. which by the way are completely free.. which is another thing that makes a difference........ so i do believe beside school buying game salad the actual kid getting too is very very minute %
@blob said:
When you are lazy and impatient and 14 years old which is your suggested market. you play with game salad for a month then you realize it 's actually real work to make a game as oppose to just making a scene where you click on the button and the square jumps up"
then you get a snapchat message get distracted and you give and go play battlefield
and don't renew your subscription. because the easy fun part is over.
You made me believe its true, I love how you predict stuff
@blob said:
I meant adding an outline (doubling font) option in the display text module would not make anything worse for those already using the text module,
Generally speaking using two behaviours would place twice the strain on the processor than using one behaviour.
@Icebox said:
You made me believe its true, I love how you predict stuff
i can predict much more like ..(please erase this message after reading, before anyone try to bring me down for it.)
For ex: bdusing, who is a very religious christian wth a calling, (nothing wrong with that, as it usually provides a great code of conduct), will be an interim CEO:
This guy has a higher calling a sense of mission in life, gamesalad is not part of his mission to spread faith and the good message around the world
His passion is elsewhere judging from the profile and articles I read about him.
He might be great for their transition but i don;t think he will stay more than a year
he has an higher calling..
Laugh now then retweet me in a year..you ll see: hushed:
Comments
The way I see it, it's like an egg, but we don't know what kind of egg it is, it might a dinosaur egg or it might be a rabbit egg or even a car or something like that, or maybe not an egg but a wine glass or a pair of shoes or whatever, and the only way we know if the shoes are going to 'fit' us in the future is if we crack it open, or in the case of shoes if we crack them open and actually look inside the egg/shoes, but the only way we (or 'them' or 'her') can look inside the shoes is if we know the 'chicken who laid them' (GameSalad I think), but at the moment as it stands, with an emphasis being placed (or 'put') on the egg and not the chicken or the rabbit, the only way we can see inside the shoes is by putting them on and hoping that they fit.
@marionwood - Hear hear mate, likewise! - and on that note, I'm going to play with the new release, and thanks to yourself, @Socks, @blob, @Armelline, @Adrenaline and the rest, for the lively and thought-provoking discussion/clearing the air/voicing both sides of the argument, and I just hope that the GS guys have made it this far, to get an idea of the feeling here - it's not all bad, just guarded and wary of where this is going to head us, and whether we are secure/safe in both spending another year or 5 developing projects in GS, and having fixes and features not only beneficial from an educational standpoint, but from the viewpoint of the paying user's livelihood!...
G'night all!
Yeah that's one feature i'm sure almost everyone can get behind. Modular GS code would be amazing for dev teams and students/teachers alike.
Follow us: Twitter - Website
One last thing before I call it a day, after getting my head around the fact that custom fonts can now be used and abused! - This might work guys? - outline fonts, and a complimenting 'inner/standard' font? - yes, it's double the display behaviours/overheads, but colour could be set independently, ie - black/white outline font display behaviour, then whatever colour for the complementary 'inner' (or standard) font... That would make a viable third option for @Blob 's scenario, and indeed some of mine...
ie. in Catflap, I used a cartoony font, filled in, 2 colours, as most people probably have done at times - for this, I had to make all of the routines for self-made custom fonts - the new custom fonts wouldn't help me in this scenario, but trying the above should give what Blob wants, and what I'd need to repeat that with much less work, so I'll have a play and see what happens.
Just need to see if there's an easy way/tools to generate outline fonts from standard ones, or a good selection of fonts with both outline and standard ones available.....
A quick way is to outline them in Illustrator . . . hold on example coming . . .
. . . . .
EDIT
OK everyone...group hug.
This is cool I know @Socks, but I'm thinking more to be able to use them dynamically, using the built-in display behaviour...
Unless I'm missing something about Illustrator? - am I being daft, and it can import/export fonts? - please say yes!... 
EDIT - Yep, I see where you're coming from mate - Just googled it, and I'm taking it you can export as a font once you've applied outline.... this should prove VERY useful, cheers!...
@Japster - Yes, if you have two versions of the same font, one with the outline only, and one with the fill, as long as both are the same sizes, you could presumably just display two display texts, and achieve the outlined effect.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
....exactly! - simple, but should prove very effective for those times it might be needed, plus it should save having to create (and take up project space) with loads of custom text gfx...
Of course, I'm assuming display processing overheads are higher than a single actor instance, but I could be wrong...
...either way, I think this'll work fine - looks like a bit of work with either FontSelf or FontForge if creating your own outline fonts, but it looks straightforward enough...
GROUP HUG anytime with the community but not with the GS management team at this very moment except for @ForumNinja who is in a tough position.
I'd even be happy just to hear something like:" hey guys we will tackle loading time and Facebook integration in November until then we are doing the school stuff.."
As opposed to ,," this is on the back burner indefinitely ",,,,,
AS the new CEO @bdusing .. it is a opportunity the change the communication style and bring hope to your users........roadmap roadmap roadmap.
If they say that and they dont end up doing it we will probably rage on them so its better to take it step by step , i like the way its going now , get GS to schools , fix GS , create a roadmap in the near future as mentioned earlier.
Absolutely! Here's a few quick examples using just random fonts I pulled off dafont.com. With a bit of time spent adapting your chosen font to your exact needs, you could come up with some great effects!
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Wow! - You don't waste time @Armelline - great example of it!
this should not be too hard to implant at the bottom of the display box
FEATURE REQUEST.........! HIGH SCHOOL WILL LOVE IT LOL
Yes, that's the idea, you grab a font, type out the letters/numerals, add a suitable stroke (outline) and then use something like glyphter.com to generate a TT font of the stoked version alongside the original version in GameSalad.
A display text window you write your text once but have and clickable optional second twin font with a size parameter and visibility parameter so we can make blinking effects too.....
The 'outline' version would actually be filled too - that is to say it wouldn't look my example image above (that was just to illustrate the effect) - the 'outline' version of the font would simply be the font with a stroke applied - doing it this way avoids aliasing issues where the edge of the original font meets the inner edge of an outlined font.
Hope that makes sense !
the visibility/ opacity parameter can be use for shadows too...so make it 2 twin fonts option on the bottom of the main font within the same window......1 for outline 1 for shadow....
Should take 4 hours to put together.....
Fonts place a higher strain on a target device's processor than images, in fact in all the testing I've done fonts have come out as one of the most processor intensive processes, personally I never use the Display Fonts behaviour for this reason, I'm sure in most many situations they are actually fine, but if you are pushing a device to its limits the Display Fonts behaviour might be something to avoid (or at least not use 80 instances !).
You'll often hear of people avoiding timers in the interests of efficiency, but rarely of people avoiding the Display Fonts behaviour, but I'd certainly place the the Display Fonts behaviour ahead of timers when it comes processor strain.
I hear you but school student learning logic don't care much about processor intensive issues.
So a extra tab for shadow and outline in the" display tex module" could be cool to have
beside isn't the font rasterized at run time? outlined or not would be the same no?
The following equation might suggest differently;
"Percentage students who will go on to write games professionally or as a hobby - (Percentage of students who are capable of higher level coding - those capable but either lazy or impatient or want to make a quick prototype) = Possible paying GS subscriptions"
In my limited experience the percentage of people who have the brain wiring and drive to become coders is very small where as the percentage of people who would love to write a game is much higher. GS is targeting this market which i think is a good thing it might keep them alive and in time it might provide the funds to give us everything we want.
Universal Binary Template - Universal Binary Template Instructions Rev 4 (Short) - Custom Score Display Template
What is this idea based on ?
Yes, fonts are rasterized at run time, but I'm not sure what your question is asking ?
When you are lazy and impatient and 14 years old which is your suggested market. you play with game salad for a month then you realize it 's actually real work to make a game as oppose to just making a scene where you click on the button and the square jumps up"
then you get a snapchat message get distracted and you give and go play battlefield
and don't renew your subscription. because the easy fun part is over.
Unity is almost done working on their own visual scripting tool....as for no coding plugins : there's playmaker and Gameflow , the later being very similar to gamesalad built for unity...
ALL the game engine companies are realizing the potential from hobbyist and are getting on that wagon. the kid who will be persevering beyond his own laziness will acquire skills and eventually ask himself why this and that feature or not in gamesalad and will move onto other packages. which by the way are completely free.. which is another thing that makes a difference........ so i do believe beside school buying game salad the actual kid getting too is very very minute %
You made me believe its true, I love how you predict stuff
I meant adding an outline (doubling font) option in the display text module would not make anything worse for those already using the text module,
Generally speaking using two behaviours would place twice the strain on the processor than using one behaviour.
i can predict much more like ..(please erase this message after reading, before anyone try to bring me down for it.)
For ex: bdusing, who is a very religious christian wth a calling, (nothing wrong with that, as it usually provides a great code of conduct), will be an interim CEO:
This guy has a higher calling a sense of mission in life, gamesalad is not part of his mission to spread faith and the good message around the world
His passion is elsewhere judging from the profile and articles I read about him.