State of GameSalad on 10-26-2016

2

Comments

  • smurftedsmurfted Member, PRO Posts: 570

    @mshannon said:
    Anyway, gamesalad has no future as a business because of mismanagement combined with under capitalization. This education focused initiative is just a bogus Hail Mary to stay alive. And don't come at me with some bullshit education ethical garbage, as gamesalad is a for profit business. They are just trying to sell it to schools because the dev community refused to be used by the corporate shill that gamesalad was becoming.

    There used to be good devs on this platform, but gamesalad mismanaged the **** out of their product and everyone left in droves. I doubt that even 1% of devs using gamesalad as their primary tool make even 1k per month. Highly doubt.

    Peace out.

    Can't help but think there is some truth to this..

  • AlchimiaStudiosAlchimiaStudios Member Posts: 1,069
    edited November 2016

    There is two sides though. I don't think it helps a company for bitter developers to berate them over the choices they make as a business, when they themselves do not control or have a stake in them beyond using the product.

    I could rant for days about the terrible games the companies using GS have made over the years, and the terrible/jump-on-the-bandwagon decisions they make.

    Is that productive to helping them improve the quality of games they make? Maybe, probably not though.

    Being a realist, I just want GS to survive. So I think cautious optimism on the forums is better then, and excuse my terminologies, crapping all over them.

    It's like kicking a dog while it's down. I'm sure GS staff is aware of the perception and often choose to stay away from the forums because let's face it, there are times when people are purely hostile to the staff and company and make demands that can't be met.

    Keeping expectations realistic is important if you plan on staying.

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  • IceboxIcebox Member Posts: 1,485

    @ForumNinja Any chance we can get a darker ui option ? I don't know if its easy to do. It's not important but it would be nice to add the option with the zoom/snap to grid features coming up.

  • JapsterJapster Member Posts: 672
    edited November 2016

    @Icebox said:
    @ForumNinja Any chance we can get a darker ui option ? I don't know if its easy to do. It's not important but it would be nice to add the option with the zoom/snap to grid features coming up.

    ...I must say, I'm really excited about the prospect of zoom and snap-to-grid on the editor, the levels on my latest game are huge when viewing in the Creator @ 1:1 ratio! :smiley:

  • BigDaveBigDave Member Posts: 2,239
    edited November 2016

    "Increasing Staff: "

    "we have open positions for an Inside Sales Rep, a Director of Sales, and a Customer Service Rep"

    since you got money now, which is great.
    whats about instead of hiring nice to have roles, hire some additional coders, to get actual things done.

  • IceboxIcebox Member Posts: 1,485

    The android misalign bug have been there for over a year , it happened before october 2015 , still no fix. Snap to grid and zoom features where announced june 2016 , nothing till now. The last features we got were in april 2016 . You got the best community for sticking around all this time . Even if your focus is on education , which is great , but some bugs need to be fixed and features need to come faster, atleast the ones that will benefit both education and developers. I hope as bigdave said , you hire more coders .. at this rate we will die waiting :)

  • ChunkypixelsChunkypixels Member Posts: 1,114

    @icebox snap to grid and zoom have been promised numerous times over the years, along with a whole host of creator UI improvements, then quietly dropped off the radar... its definitely not the first time they've been promised.

    If they actually happen within the next 2 years, I'll be surprised.

  • colandercolander Member Posts: 1,610
    edited November 2016

    @BigDave said:
    "Increasing Staff: "

    "we have open positions for an Inside Sales Rep, a Director of Sales, and a Customer Service Rep"

    since you got money now, which is great.
    whats about instead of hiring nice to have roles, hire some additional coders, to get actual things done.

    If they do that they will just end up in the same place they always have in the past. An improved creator but no where near enough sales to sustain it and another round of lay-offs. They will just keep shrinking like they have been until they disappear.

    At least by concentrating on sales they may eventually have enough money to hire more coders and improve the software. I wouldn't hold your breath though this lot are on the edge and my go over the cliff if this doesn't work. If the education push doesn't work who in their right mind would put more money into it with the track record they have. Over six years and still no success and a pretty dodgy code base to show for it.

  • UncloudedStudioUncloudedStudio NetherlandsMember Posts: 285

    @Chunkypixels said:
    @icebox snap to grid and zoom have been promised numerous times over the years, along with a whole host of creator UI improvements, then quietly dropped off the radar... its definitely not the first time they've been promised.

    If they actually happen within the next 2 years, I'll be surprised.

    I've played around with the zoom function and it worked great. I got to test it out because GS accidentally uploaded the wrong build when I was updating to the latest version. So i'm hoping it's added to the upcoming build.

  • JapsterJapster Member Posts: 672
    edited November 2016

    @colander said:

    @BigDave said:
    "Increasing Staff: "

    "we have open positions for an Inside Sales Rep, a Director of Sales, and a Customer Service Rep"

    since you got money now, which is great.
    whats about instead of hiring nice to have roles, hire some additional coders, to get actual things done.

    If they do that they will just end up in the same place they always have in the past. An improved creator but no where near enough sales to sustain it and another round of lay-offs. They will just keep shrinking like they have been until they disappear.

    A balance would be good, 1 extra coder would have had us stoked (but NONE, and THREE sales positions? - kind of ALL sell, NO fix, as opposed to MUCH MORE Sell, & MORE fix), and hey, it'd be double the coding manpower once he/she is up to speed...

    In all honesty, and I've said this before, and tbh, at this point I'm through worrying about the 'defenders' of GS being upset - I would NEVER kick a dog when it's down, but tbh, it wouldn't be the dog's fault that it's down, whereas this (seemingly) IS, and it's a constantly recurring one. I honestly cannot comprehend how the company is always 'on the edge'/on hard times/needs to re-model, etc (Well, other than the gold hat and morning champagne or tantrums tales/indications/examples of excess), as Pro subs are NOT cheap, then multiply that by how many PRO subscribers we are, and really, I'm guessing it's a LOT of recurring revenue to p*ss away (alright, fine, let's re-word that - to not be helping the company to survive, let alone THRIVE)...

    ...and while we're at it - here's a piffling feature I'd like (hell, we'd ALL like it), and that NOT having it pretty much makes dev in GS 10x more time-consuming/troublesome - MERGING... I simply cannot comprehend how this is STILL missing (I had a quick check just now, to avoid embarrassment, but no, seems it's still none-existent, other than DBA's Merge tool, which has unfortunately stopped working for me a while ago)...

    Given there's now a sanctioned, and aggressively pushed (ie. to the exclusion/banning of all others) marketplace for assets and project snippets to do X,Y,Z, it seems CRAZY/downright neglectful to still not have a mechanism to freely merge and export this PURCHASED 'merchandise', and also that freely given/created by altruistic others - scene, actor, etc data between ourselves? (The cynical part of me honestly wonders about who this inter-project import/export functionality omission benefits the most) - and Education? - In a school environment especially, wouldn't it make sense to show students how painless (not painFUL) collaboration can be? - one student makes a cool ship control, bullet, etc, another a scene, another a cool menu, or another asks help on how to do something, someone posts an example project, and wait... ...yes, it seems we have to rebuild all of the clever rules and work we did, etc into one project by.... hand, laboriously, manually?! - ...when the code is sitting right in front of me, running in the Creator?! ...seriously guys - it's 110% important to a professional developer, let alone to kids who want to be turned ON to this, not OFF?...

    Honestly, even just for the sake of professionalism compared to others, this NEEDS to be implemented ASAP - it's becoming a major bone of contention, and it COULD be implemented easily, given a session on how best to implement it - it's simply splicing data into an existing project, at the end of the day?

    We have a great community of users here, always trying to help each other out, but the code and examples that people take so much time and intelligence to create, to help others, have to either be manually copied from scratch, or 'fudged' by opening up both projects and dragging, THEN rebuilding any AUTOMATICALLY WIPED code that used custom attributes? (from scratch normally, as GS 'helpfully' wipes the entire expression - even not doing that would be something? - ie. leave a textual copy in the field for reference, at least?) - surely if the actor etc ID's are unique ID's, then just bring them in and add them, and if not, dynamically internally re-assign and re-reference/replace ID's for existing conflicting asset's ID's to keep those working, and not to break the content being imported? - we already have images, sound, fonts, etc, why not an Open/Import (and possibly export) for Actors / scenes / Attributes?

    Well, I'll probably get moaned at again, but surely, I'm not the only one who is getting highly frustrated at this ridiculous omission in functionality, for a 'professional' game dev product?

    And I'll add a very important disclaimer - I LOVE GS, I LOVE all of the things it DOES do right, rapid prototyping/dev, real-time testing and playtesting, etc,etc, and then the work done on custom fonts, colliders, etc, is SUPERB, so I'm honestly NOT kicking it or it's creators, but really? - there's no shame in pointing out where things STILL need urgently improving for both GS's and their paying user's sakes, and when they honestly hurt my relationship with a product I love, and WANT to see thrive?... ...Please, sort some sort of merging solution out guys?.... :tired_face:

  • ArmellineArmelline Member, PRO Posts: 5,327
    edited November 2016

    @Japster I'll respond to a few bits here, but I don't really want to get too into this all again. This whole discussion is biannual thing, not sure anything new really gets said.

    A balance would be good, 1 extra coder would have had us stoked (but NONE, and THREE sales positions? - kind of ALL sell, NO fix, as opposed to MUCH MORE Sell, & MORE fix), and hey, it'd be double the coding manpower once he/she is up to speed...

    1 coder costs roughly the same as three sales positions, I'd bet. More, probably.

    ...and while we're at it - here's a piffling feature I'd like (hell, we'd ALL like it), and that NOT having it pretty much makes dev in GS 10x more time-consuming/troublesome - MERGING... I simply cannot comprehend how this is STILL missing

    Honestly, I'm not sure either. I've been having a real nag at GS to implement this as it's something so easy to implement and something so hugely, hugely beneficial to educational users and non-educational user alike. I even offered suggestions for stop-gap implementations that would be literally seconds of time for GameSalad to implement. I honestly can't comprehend how this would take more than a day to implement properly. It's really not complicated.

    • Copy attributes
    • Check for conflicts, reassign IDs if any are found
    • Copy actors/scenes/tables etc.
    • Done

    I have so many things sitting on my HDD that I haven't bothered to polish up and release due to the difficulty in putting them into projects. I've even gone to the trouble of writing an AppleScript to include with my keyboard that will merge it into your project for you. They'd have a flood of new "plug and play features" released if they implemented merging.

    Given there's now a sanctioned, and aggressively pushed (ie. to the exclusion/banning of all others)

    No marketplaces are banned or excluded. Advertising of templates on other marketplaces is, to some extent, but there is absolutely nothing stopping people from running other marketplaces.

    (The cynical part of me honestly wonders about who this inter-project import/export functionality omission benefits the most)

    I honestly think it's just that they haven't found the time to do it, rather than they're deliberately avoiding doing it.

  • JapsterJapster Member Posts: 672
    edited November 2016

    Huge thanks @Armelline - ever the calm voice of reason to my rants... :wink:

    Some really good points there, and I'm really pleased we agree on the merging side of things - sounds like we both followed the exact same thought process too, including conflicting ID's, so I'm actually quite pleased that we've both came to the same simple and foolproof process, which begs the question even more forcefully - WHY hasn't it been done?

    I'm sure you're right about the actual reasoning Armelline, but seriously, like ourselves, EVERYONE who has a coder's mindset knows how quickly/easily this should be to implement, but especially for those versed in the internal workings of how GS allocates, references and assigns these ID's for assets... I'm guessing that even GS Marketplace 'bolt-in's' could be ran though and (one-time) re-assigned ID's that definitely do NOT conflict with personally-created ones (ie. within a unique range for Marketplace ones - it's probably easy to implement to avoid re-allocation of ID's to a major extent, simplifying the process for merging/importing Marketplace-bought content....

    I'm in the exact same position regarding code that works GREAT, in my other projects, but it is so traumatic, time-consuming and downright convoluted to somehow shoehorn into my new projects I end up either re-inventing the wheel (alright, re-creating another identical wheel from scratch when there's a perfectly good one already sitting in the garage, or a friend's garage... :wink: ), or just ditching adding them, costing tbh, anyone in this position, in terms of features for the app, potential retention/sales figures, possibly doing some harm to the reputation of GS in general (when a game isn't as full-featured or engaging as they'd like it to be because of the b*ll-ache of re-creating cool features they've done in the past, in the latest game), high score tables, clever touches, etc, etc...

    I honestly think it is indirectly hurting GS (ESPECIALLY with the push to education) NOT to have this most basic requirement in place, and yeah, I think it's crazy.... ...not to mention pretty unfair not to provide this most basic functionality to loyal (and almost certainly struggling/costing wasted time and effort, because of these omissions) users...

    ...and of course, if the creator gets all these features (zoom, grid, merge, etc), surely that equates to MUCH faster development of apps by subscribers not banging their head on a brick wall to manually re-create stuff that really, really shouldn't need to be re-created or re-entered from scratch? - it's a win-win!

    Ps - "They'd have a flood of new "plug and play features" released if they implemented merging."

    • Absolutely spot-on, would be so easy to insert missing or beneficial functionality/logic into your project (or, given a chance to expand upon this functionality at a later time even have your favourites set up and maintained in your configuration of GS, maybe selectable or not in a new/existing project too), but the end result even for having simple merging available would be much happier, satisfied users (great for us!), with a lot less to complain about (great for GS! :wink: )
  • ArmellineArmelline Member, PRO Posts: 5,327

    I agree @Japster, I think this is the thing doing most damage to GameSalad right now. Other engines make it much easier to move code from one project to another. It should have really been a day 1 feature. I would love to know GameSalad actual reasoning for not finding the time to do it. I'll give them a pass if it's that the rewriting of Mac GameSalad has proved much, much more extensive than anticipated and they've literally not had 1 second to work on anything else. Which is probably the case. Then the logic probably goes "Well if we're reworking GameSalad to be web-based, we'll just add it in when we do that." But we want it noooooooow :D

  • blobblob Member, PRO Posts: 229
    edited November 2016

    @Japster @Armelline ....

    I imagine @ForumNinja saying : "hey guys we have a broken, uncompetitive product, and all the users paying us monthly are getting penalized with 1 star rating because of us" and with 1 update a year, we are falling even more behind."

    GameSalad CEO and Share Holders: " OK! We know just what to do! ....Let's hire an Inside Sales Rep, a Director of Sales, and a Customer Service Rep and try to sell more of this broken product" :( :( :(

    When greed and short sight take over the thirst for quality!...

    First you build a quality product then they will come!
    A quality product is the best Sales Rep one can ever hire.

    But for that quality oriented mentality and drive, you need someone in control of the company who actually cares.

    Gil Amelio (brief CEO of Apple) was to Apple what the current management of GameSalad inc is to GameSalad

    Amelio stated, "Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water, and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction."

    euh and the hole????

    I have very very very very very very very little faith in GS management to ever truly flip their mentality towards a software and sales growth business model that would truly make GS competitive. as the education push appears to be a sign of defeat in product feature growth and competitiveness....

    But i do have faith in a community making up for the lack of software growth via Hybrid open source format with subscription.
    Where people could actually help develop GS and create plugins or contribute to the main code base with community submitted improvements via github, like they do at Unreal Engine.

    Considering what appears to be a fundamental lack of vision and business intelligence at the top, this dream scenario is also unlikely.
    However. hybrid conditional open source seems to be the only way GS can truly become great as opposed to, barely survive for few more years before closing shop.

  • johnnymagnejohnnymagne NorwayMember Posts: 112

    I totally agree with @Japster and @Armelline about the merge projects/import code - it really is code plugins/snippets right out of the tin, if they implemented this. I still do use the DBA merger to get code from one project to another, but for how long will it work?. This should be implemented in GS asap if you ask me....and as said here - especially if they are heading down the educational road....

  • PhilipCCPhilipCC Encounter Bay, South AustraliaMember Posts: 1,390

    @johnnymagne said:
    I totally agree with @Japster and @Armelline about the merge projects/import code - it really is code plugins/snippets right out of the tin, if they implemented this. I still do use the DBA merger to get code from one project to another, but for how long will it work?. This should be implemented in GS asap if you ask me....and as said here - especially if they are heading down the educational road....

    Ditto! I agree too. I still use DBA Merger, but as good as it is that capability should be part of GS?

  • fmakawafmakawa Member Posts: 565

    @PhilipCC does DBA merger also run on Windows? If so, where can I get it since DBA is now defunct

  • smurftedsmurfted Member, PRO Posts: 570

    It is OS X only, so you would have to convert the project files to the mac format, merge them on a mac, then deconstruct them again.

    This is something that GS really needs to implement into the main program wouldn't you agree @ForumNinja

  • ForumNinjaForumNinja Key Master, Head Chef, Member, PRO Posts: 554

    @smurfted said:
    This is something that GS really needs to implement into the main program wouldn't you agree @ForumNinja

    I heavily agree. It's a very valuable feature for both education users and developers alike.

  • vikingviking Member, PRO Posts: 322

    Quick question @ForumNinja... is CodeWizzard still doing contract work for GS?

  • smurftedsmurfted Member, PRO Posts: 570

    Are tables finally going to get their own group in the attribute browser?

  • ultimaultima Member, PRO Posts: 1,207

    the splash screen is very distorted.

  • smurftedsmurfted Member, PRO Posts: 570

    Another small fix could be...

    The ability to change the position of attributes in the list?

  • KevinCrossKevinCross London, UKMember Posts: 1,894

    @smurfted said:
    Another small fix could be...

    The ability to change the position of attributes in the list?

    Like sorting alphabetically? It took a developer to create a third party tool to do that ages ago so don't hold your breath.

    You can do this yourself by re-ordering them in the XML files in anyway you like, but as always it's recommended you make a back up of your project in case you corrupt it.

  • jamie_cjamie_c ImagineLabs.rocks Member, PRO Posts: 5,772

    @smurfted, below is a tutorial I did that shows you how to re-order things in the XML file like @KevinCross mentions if you want to check it out.

  • ClockClock Member Posts: 308

    that would drive me crazy. only in gamesalad!!!

  • IceboxIcebox Member Posts: 1,485

    I have many questions in my mind right now @ForumNinja its been a month so I will just throw everything out.

    Any update on whats happening ? will the next release be coming anytime soon ? will it have snap to grid feature ? A web version of GS sounds great , does that mean more love will be given to html5, (fixing its performance/loading times) ? Will google service be in the next build ? Is there a roadmap coming anytime soon?

    Thanks

  • ToqueToque Member Posts: 1,187

    @Icebox said:
    I have many questions in my mind right now @ForumNinja its been a month so I will just throw everything out.

    Any update on whats happening ? will the next release be coming anytime soon ? will it have snap to grid feature ? A web version of GS sounds great , does that mean more love will be given to html5, (fixing its performance/loading times) ? Will google service be in the next build ? Is there a roadmap coming anytime soon?

    Thanks

    A lot of people are thinking the same thing....

  • ClockClock Member Posts: 308

    any update? everything seem to be very slow.

  • Nabbo (ReflectiveByte)Nabbo (ReflectiveByte) Member Posts: 278
    edited November 2016

    @Clock ZZzzz too much slow... I believe there was only one update this year and that was to fix the long hanging/pending issue and then full stop. Just promises left.

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