ForumNinjaKey Master, Head Chef, Member, PROPosts: 554
Your guys' upset is understandable, and I wish I had better stuff to report as far as tool development goes.
Even though the current update we've been working on is being put on hold, the web tool isn't purely for education users. It means a lot of good things for you guys as well, most notably it will:
Consolidate the codebases, which will make future updates easier.
Be built with a lot of your requested features in mind, so that things that would be difficult to add to Creator will be a lot simpler to implement in the web tool.
Have improved workflow.
I've got a list of a lot of previously requested features / improvements to keep in mind while production is going on, but more requests are always welcome.
I still feel that 1.25.77 in its current state is an improvement to work in, as long as you're aware of what the known bugs are.
@ForumNinja said:
Your guys' upset is understandable, and I wish I had better stuff to report as far as tool development goes.
Even though the current update we've been working on is being put on hold, the web tool isn't purely for education users. It means a lot of good things for you guys as well, most notably it will:
Consolidate the codebases, which will make future updates easier.
Be built with a lot of your requested features in mind, so that things that would be difficult to add to Creator will be a lot simpler to implement in the web tool.
Have improved workflow.
I've got a list of a lot of previously requested features / improvements to keep in mind while production is going on, but more requests are always welcome.
I still feel that 1.25.77 in its current state is an improvement to work in, as long as you're aware of what the known bugs are.
It sounds like the web version is still pretty early, but do you intend to have full compatibility between projects made in the other creators, so if needed we could import old projects?
@ForumNinja Does the .77 version fix the weird looking loading image rotating around during startup bug? This bug makes it almost impossible to ship a game on this platform because loading times are too long to have just a black screen while loading to hide this bug.
Also, is @CodeWizzard still doing contract work for GS?
Consolidate the codebases, which will make future updates easier.
Be built with a lot of your requested features in mind, so that things that would be difficult to add to Creator will be a lot simpler to implement in the web tool.
So that confirms that the web version its planned to be the only once is done? and discard the creator? sounds like that.
for me this sound like a graphene type of thing, i hope its not a waste of time and it works at the end. But as @jamie_c said, i don't have a high opinion on a web based software.
But overall, its good to being aware of whats going on, thanks for the info update!
@ForumNinja said:
Your guys' upset is understandable, and I wish I had better stuff to report as far as tool development goes.
Even though the current update we've been working on is being put on hold, the web tool isn't purely for education users. It means a lot of good things for you guys as well, most notably it will:
Consolidate the codebases, which will make future updates easier.
Be built with a lot of your requested features in mind, so that things that would be difficult to add to Creator will be a lot simpler to implement in the web tool.
Have improved workflow.
I've got a list of a lot of previously requested features / improvements to keep in mind while production is going on, but more requests are always welcome.
I still feel that 1.25.77 in its current state is an improvement to work in, as long as you're aware of what the known bugs are.
@ForumNinja its really sad to see another promise to built web engine entirely from scratch and trust your team again as it is still 8-12 months away!!
Other points are not useful at all unless your main web version is online!!
So, indirectly you are saying after 8-12 months you will start implementing features on web version (all again promises), until then no features, great..
I would expect Creator to receive maintenance priority for any unexpected iOS requirements etc, yep. We're also looking into having a 3rd party group come in and work on updates for Creator while we're working on the web tool, though we haven't reached a major decision on that front yet.
Thanks for getting back quickly. @ForumNinja I know you are just the messenger, so sorry that you have to take the brunt of frustration, I know I have expressed mine recently. The frustration on the forums is definitely reasonable, my request to you would be to continue to communicate it to the higher ups, and make sure we are taken care of as far as the current features continuing to be supported that we rely on: iOS, android, Game Center, IAP, chart boost, etc.
To be honest that is definitely owed to us as customers working on long term projects and paying for pro accounts. I know some people are mad saying that we are paying for the creator so it should get updated with new features. While I would love new features, truly we are paying for features that are already in it... may greatest fear is losing those when we have already paid for them. I know a lot of guys here have big projects to finish, or other ones to maintain on the app store.
I'll be here till I finish my current project. And even if I move on to something else after that, I hope to keep paying for Gamesalad so that I can maintain my published games that I have made with it.
@ForumNinja I'm thankful for your part of the GS team (I really believe you want the developers to have their needs met, but its not completely up to you) but I am disappointed with the Gamesalad leadership, business is business but developers are people, I really think we should have heard from Brent about how he plans to look out for his customers. Keep being our voice to the rest of the GS team, for many of us leaving GS makes sense for future projects (unless the web version ends up proving us wrong), but for current and published projects I hope we haven't been deceived on what kind of support to expect.
ForumNinjaKey Master, Head Chef, Member, PROPosts: 554
@RossmanBrothersGames Thank you for your understanding words. I will definitely continue voicing your guys' feeling to the team. I 100% agree that maintaining the current version should take priority over the web tool.
I think everyone's feelings about web tools in general makes sense, and I can assure you that performance of the tool is something we'll be keeping a close eye on (given the nature of web tools in general).
I don't understand this approach. A commitment to quality is key in every aspect of your company. The little things matter. A lot.
I imagine that if the GS webpage was flickering and rotating wildly every time some prospective customer arrived there you would fix it, right?
It's the same thing with the loading screen.
Not only is it bad for your current user base of game developers who are, for the moment anyway, paying your bills and your salaries, but the apps made with GS look terrible and it will have a negative effect on your reputation as an app development tool.
Even if you didn't care about your loyal users, the negative first impression every teacher and education professional out there have when evaluating their first GS app on their device makes this a high-priority fix in my opinion.
Everyone wants to see their app logo starting up on the device. We don't want to see it doing spastic flickers and weird rotations. It's embarrassing that this has not been a high priority fix a long time ago.
anipowteamEase In or Ease OutIndonesiaMember, PROPosts: 15
edited December 2016
i just a month using gamesalad, and received this news. Why don't continuously fix this very good "game software" in mac and windows? I know GS company have very genius team to fix and develop it. why not develop GS for MAC, GS for Windows, and GS for web base, running in 3 system? Don't leave your great pyramid that just 1 block of cone stone to cover the top, or we leave it. I have use construct 2, unity, game maker studio, but finally i find GameSalad although more focus to MAC ( i use windows OS), i love it, in GS i find what i cannot to find in construct 2, unity or game maker studio. my words soundly rough but my soul is good (i just on fire, but after read this news i disappointed)
I have good new friends in forum to help me, like @jamie_c@Toque@tatiang
in another forum, they don't help me wholeheartedly.
I have a hope that GameSalad will "beat" another good "game software" just thinking how make it happend.
I'm not much around here since I have more questions than answers and lack the full grasp of coding in general (which make GS ideal) but I've been coming up short due to GS's limitations a couple of times. I have 3 projects I have in various stages of completion, 2 basically at 95% and 1 that I've sorting out the final kinks. I'll finish those and then I'm out. Been picking up javascript so I'm going to be heading over to Unity. I would much prefer to stay and have never said anything but positive things about GS but ergh, this last post was more than just a wet blanket - GS simply does not care. So long and thanks for all the fish I suppose.
I jumped the gamesalad ship along time ago(2 years and went to corona sdk which is has a great free plan). I pop by every once and while and check out to see how things are going. This is just sad.
Well I'm releasing my game in January and then another in March then I'm out too! May use GS for my game design school to teach the fundamentals of game design etc but for my personal games I'm going to have to move because of the lack of update support! Dam!
To be honest though there's quite a few really good drag and drop code engine out now so you all shouldnt worry, 2 weeks solid tutorials with them and you'll be back in the game you'll have to google search for what they are though as I can't tell you in the forums.
This is all a shame as I really love the simplicity of the coding and the level I have attained with GS, I can think of any type of game and able to throw it together very quickly,
Let's see how this goes but I better ramp up my OTHER engine knowledge pretty quickly,
Well this seems to be the final nail. It feels like being dumped when the girl says 'we can still be friends!'
I've invested huge amounts of time and grown to love the speed at which I can work with GameSalad but it's time to stop kidding myself, it's time to look elsewhere.
These forums have been fantastic and I only hope other engines have a similar collection of dedicated and amazingly helpful users.
It's close to the end of the year so my priority next year, I'm sad to say, will be looking around for a new engine.
@ForumNinja is only the messenger and is in a very difficult position. But I urge @ForumNinja to take this message to the senior managers;
The way your dedicated user base of game developers is being treated is an outrage. Now is the time to put your cards on the table and give total clarity about the future for your users. If your future focus does not include them then do the honorable thing and come clean now. You are damaging your reputation irrevocably by continually stringing people along with hollow promises.
adent42Key Master, Head Chef, Executive Chef, Member, PROPosts: 3,059
edited December 2016
Hi everyone! Just gonna put in my bit of spin on the announcement.
HTML5 Rocks
The technical team has been wanting to make this move for a while now and a few things have come to pass to make this possible:
The aforementioned Chromebook market in education.
The explosion in Javascript technology improvements and frameworks and their massive performance improvements.
HTML5/Javascript is cross platform.
So yes, things are going to slow down in terms of the current native Mac and Windows tools until the HTML5 tool is done. We won't be removing the current native tools until we get all of the functionally built into the new tools. But once we finish it, it's going to replace the two other tools as our main code base for tooling and this is an awesome thing:
Updates are going to happen much faster since we don't have to do everything twice.
New OS releases won't require us to do massive updates (think this years long update cycle due to macOS memory management updates).
Tutorial videos will only have to be filmed once!
The tool will be backwards compatible with the existing game engine, because we don't want to rewrite the existing game engine at the same time as building a new tool.
We also have the opportunity to build in a few things that are required of a web tool that will be immensely helpful in your development.
I'm looking at ways of storing your games on our servers that will let see the entire undo or save history (I'm still working out the storage and performance implications of how fine grained that storage will be). This means you get something akin to online source control for your games.
Since your game changes are being incrementally uploaded and saved online, you'll also no longer need to wait to upload your games during publishing, they'll be available to our servers immediately!
And while it won't be available in initial release, the manner in which we'll be streaming changes to the server will hopefully allow us to do google docs style simultaneous editing. I'm not gonna promise that one because editing a "word" doc is very different from editing a game, but it's one of the possibilities I'm most excited about.
A web based tool opens so many interesting opportunities for GameSalad Creator.
Engine Updates -- Still a thing
The freeze in existing tool development doesn't mean we'll stop working on the game engine. The HTML5 engine is going to get a lot more love because it's going to be your main "preview" engine. So it's going to have to match the "native" engines.
As for the "native" engines, we'll be able to add certain types of features that don't require a tool updates. For instance, Google Play Services support can be added (I'm working on that now on the weekends).
These kind of updates will be slower as the team focuses on the new tool, but engine maintenance and under the cover features will continue to happen.
Bugs that result from new versions of iOS and Android will be looked at. Anything that doesn't require us to change the tool like loading time improvements, ad networks (unlikely but it's the kind of thing that's possible) will be looked at as well.
Graduating from GameSalad
Even with all of that said, I know some of you will and need to graduate from GameSalad. As time has passed, the ecosystem for game development has changed and grown.
GameSalad started as a rapid prototyping tool, moved on to be an awesome way to make mobile games, and is now starting life as the best way to keep kids excited about learning computer science.
GameSalad is an awesome (we think it's the best) starting point for your game creation career.
If it's just your hobby and you're happy with what it does, stick around, it will keep getting better (just a bit more slowly for a while).
If you're a PRO that has a project that need a quick turn-a-round, GameSalad has a lot to offer.
But if you're ambitions start to outgrow GameSalad, it may be time to look for the right tools for your job.
Take what you've learned from GameSalad and grow and be awesome. We've seen a lot of professional studios grow out of GameSalad and graduate to use Unity3D or similar engines. With GameSalad, you've already learned to program, whether you know it or not. It's just a skip and a step to learning to code!
Just remember that we're still around if you need us for something quick and fun. Or if you need to show your team a quick prototype. Point more beginners our way. And check back on us once in a while, because we'll still be here making awesome things for you.
ForumNinjaKey Master, Head Chef, Member, PROPosts: 554
edited December 2016
Reading back over the update, I think I worded things pretty poorly
I updated it to include Tans info as he made things a little more clear. Note to self: Finish your coffee, re-read, THEN post.
@adent42 Thank you for finally giving us a better understanding of the future. That is what most of us have been hoping for. We understand that business models have to adapt sometimes. We are all just worried obviously that all of our years of working in GS will be dropped and wont matter. I absolutely agree that GS is a great tool, it's the only one i would love to ever stick with, but as business models tend to change, so do the tools needed for your jobs. I am just happy to know that as somethings wont really update for another year, that what i'm currently working on will not be all for nothing. I know that the zoom feature is a huge advantage that I would like to see before next school year for sure and along with some bug fixes, but overall as it stands now its not a bad maker... I still feel the price is a bit steep for what it is, I believe it would be nice to see a drop in the prices at least some to better suit the "not investing much time" into the current state of the game....when the game is fixed and updated then of course higher prices are expected then and thats OK. Please continue to listen to the community as, we are one of the main reasons GS has been so great. Not downing all your hard work, but without a loyal customer/fan/dev base. You dont no business would do well.
Thanks @adent42 for the update, but its really bad that we have to beg for answers and its when we all agree that we need to move when we starting getting answers, and sorry to sound rude but i see this news update is to only get us quiet and waiting, again.
What im afraid its the web version wont be never finished and will be only a waste of time like other occasions. And also im really not liking the idea of a web based tool.
For me the constantly changes of plans, that really affect us, is the reason i dont think to use GS in the future, not because i want to graduate or that i have bigger ambitions, i didnt want to drop gamesalad.
im not graduating, gamesalad its chaning focus form us developers to teachers and students, and im afraid that in some point education will be the only focus.
and also its sad to see that our customer opinions did not count on your future plans, this really affect a product, not listening to who use it.
I know gamesalad its the best for begginers, but it was also for professionals, who i see make great games. But in the last lines of your comment, you answer my question, gamesalad its not looking to improve for us, or implement what we ask.
@adent42
The tool will be backwards compatible with the existing game engine, because we don't want to rewrite the existing game engine at the same time as building a new tool.
I just have these 3 questions
I didnt understand everything you said sorry ... If i work on my game now with GS , in 8 months you will replace the engine and i will no longer be able to publish my game or continue working on it , or will it work well with the new engine ?
With this new html5 engine does it mean better loading time without the circle wheel and will include snap to grid + other features ?
Isnt html5 (even though being popular at the moment) is really limited ? I mean no matter how much it is improved it will never run as fast as native code right?
adent42Key Master, Head Chef, Executive Chef, Member, PROPosts: 3,059
In case you're curious about our schedule:
We're looking to finish the first release of the web based tool by July (I'm committing a mortal software development sin by announce a date publicly, but I'm feeling pretty confident in this schedule).
The idea is to build enough of this tool by then to enable our classroom creators to follow our tutorials and curriculum and let new hobbyist users build basic tutorial games.
We also need hit that schedule so we can update curriculum materials in the fall and get training started during the summer.
While that's happening, we'll be spending the summer finishing off the tool with the rest of the behaviors the current tool has as well as things like snap to grid and a cleaner matching look in our portfolio / publishing system.
I didnt understand everything you said sorry ... If i work on my game now with GS , in 8 months you will replace the engine and i will no longer be able to publish my game or continue working on it , or will it work well with the new engine ?
The tool will be backwards compatible with the existing game engine, because we don't want to rewrite the existing game engine at the same time as building a new tool.
adent42Key Master, Head Chef, Executive Chef, Member, PROPosts: 3,059
edited December 2016
Looks like some questions popped up while I was typing.
@hybrid we definitely gonna finish this, it's vital for our future ability to update the tool (it's not cheap supporting and updating two code bases). In the mean time, I'm going to be spending my "spare" time making improvements to the engine to ensure that those of you using GameSalad professionally will continue to get some bang for your buck. While we do change directions a bit more than is ideal, I wouldn't say it's constant. Apple threw us a big curve ball when they disabled Garbage Collection and we had to spends much of 2016 reacting to that. Before that we got out a release with a whole lot of new stuff! One of the goals with this HTML5 tool is to prevent that from ever happening again.
1) We will not be replacing the engine. We will be improving it in place and we'll make sure it's compatible with the current one, just better.
2) So you're asking about two different things. The HTML5 engine will be improved to work more like the native engine. There are some notable difference between the two engines, so we'll be fixing those. The one that comes to mind is the notable difference in text rendering. Snap to grid is a Creator feature, and we'll be building the new web based tool with those features in mind.
3) Yes, HTML5 is not as fast as native code, but I will point out a few things. Unity3D has a version of their engine running in HTML5. LightTable and Atom are two programming IDEs that use HTML5 for their code bases. We'll also benefit from improved architecture, so we believe the tool will be more than fast enough to work with. We also benefit from the google and the mozilla foundation have put into making memory management and performance in javascript so much faster!
@adent42 thanks for the update, still not ideal but does sound better.
My biggest fear is finishing my game then wanting to update it a year down the road and gamesalad not supporting things that I have built into it like reward ads, or Game Center and such, because they don't fit the education model. As long as you keep up the current features Im not to worried
Comments
@Kevinw026, I'm glad to hear my tutorials helped you get started! Thanks for the kind words.
http://jamie-cross.net/posts/ ✮ Udemy: Introduction to Mobile Games Development ✮ Learn Mobile Game Development in One Day Using Gamesalad ✮ My Patreon Page
Your guys' upset is understandable, and I wish I had better stuff to report as far as tool development goes.
Even though the current update we've been working on is being put on hold, the web tool isn't purely for education users. It means a lot of good things for you guys as well, most notably it will:
I've got a list of a lot of previously requested features / improvements to keep in mind while production is going on, but more requests are always welcome.
I still feel that 1.25.77 in its current state is an improvement to work in, as long as you're aware of what the known bugs are.
It sounds like the web version is still pretty early, but do you intend to have full compatibility between projects made in the other creators, so if needed we could import old projects?
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@ForumNinja Does the .77 version fix the weird looking loading image rotating around during startup bug? This bug makes it almost impossible to ship a game on this platform because loading times are too long to have just a black screen while loading to hide this bug.
Also, is @CodeWizzard still doing contract work for GS?
So that confirms that the web version its planned to be the only once is done? and discard the creator? sounds like that.
for me this sound like a graphene type of thing, i hope its not a waste of time and it works at the end. But as @jamie_c said, i don't have a high opinion on a web based software.
But overall, its good to being aware of whats going on, thanks for the info update!
Its time to move on..
I have now started learning a new engine as it really broke my heart to hear this update..
I am planning to move all my projects there as we can see how GS responded to us .. again with broken promise!!
Current Projects I am working on: Stupid Duck, Zango's Shark Adventure, AoD: Age of Dragons, Rocket Jump: The Pixel Invaders
Facebook: https://facebook.com/reflectivebytegamestudios
Web: reflectivebyte.com
@ForumNinja its really sad to see another promise to built web engine entirely from scratch and trust your team again as it is still 8-12 months away!!
Other points are not useful at all unless your main web version is online!!
So, indirectly you are saying after 8-12 months you will start implementing features on web version (all again promises), until then no features, great..
Current Projects I am working on: Stupid Duck, Zango's Shark Adventure, AoD: Age of Dragons, Rocket Jump: The Pixel Invaders
Facebook: https://facebook.com/reflectivebytegamestudios
Web: reflectivebyte.com
Thanks for getting back quickly. @ForumNinja I know you are just the messenger, so sorry that you have to take the brunt of frustration, I know I have expressed mine recently. The frustration on the forums is definitely reasonable, my request to you would be to continue to communicate it to the higher ups, and make sure we are taken care of as far as the current features continuing to be supported that we rely on: iOS, android, Game Center, IAP, chart boost, etc.
To be honest that is definitely owed to us as customers working on long term projects and paying for pro accounts. I know some people are mad saying that we are paying for the creator so it should get updated with new features. While I would love new features, truly we are paying for features that are already in it... may greatest fear is losing those when we have already paid for them. I know a lot of guys here have big projects to finish, or other ones to maintain on the app store.
I'll be here till I finish my current project. And even if I move on to something else after that, I hope to keep paying for Gamesalad so that I can maintain my published games that I have made with it.
@ForumNinja I'm thankful for your part of the GS team (I really believe you want the developers to have their needs met, but its not completely up to you) but I am disappointed with the Gamesalad leadership, business is business but developers are people, I really think we should have heard from Brent about how he plans to look out for his customers. Keep being our voice to the rest of the GS team, for many of us leaving GS makes sense for future projects (unless the web version ends up proving us wrong), but for current and published projects I hope we haven't been deceived on what kind of support to expect.
www.rossmanbrosgames.com
Its over.
@RossmanBrothersGames Thank you for your understanding words. I will definitely continue voicing your guys' feeling to the team. I 100% agree that maintaining the current version should take priority over the web tool.
I think everyone's feelings about web tools in general makes sense, and I can assure you that performance of the tool is something we'll be keeping a close eye on (given the nature of web tools in general).
@ForumNinja Loading screen bug?
@viking That's not currently fixed. I believe it would require engine changes, so we wouldn't need to increment the GameSalad version at all.
There's a lot of other improvements though. Off the top of my head:
I don't understand this approach. A commitment to quality is key in every aspect of your company. The little things matter. A lot.
I imagine that if the GS webpage was flickering and rotating wildly every time some prospective customer arrived there you would fix it, right?
It's the same thing with the loading screen.
Not only is it bad for your current user base of game developers who are, for the moment anyway, paying your bills and your salaries, but the apps made with GS look terrible and it will have a negative effect on your reputation as an app development tool.
Even if you didn't care about your loyal users, the negative first impression every teacher and education professional out there have when evaluating their first GS app on their device makes this a high-priority fix in my opinion.
Everyone wants to see their app logo starting up on the device. We don't want to see it doing spastic flickers and weird rotations. It's embarrassing that this has not been a high priority fix a long time ago.
i just a month using gamesalad, and received this news. Why don't continuously fix this very good "game software" in mac and windows? I know GS company have very genius team to fix and develop it. why not develop GS for MAC, GS for Windows, and GS for web base, running in 3 system? Don't leave your great pyramid that just 1 block of cone stone to cover the top, or we leave it. I have use construct 2, unity, game maker studio, but finally i find GameSalad although more focus to MAC ( i use windows OS), i love it, in GS i find what i cannot to find in construct 2, unity or game maker studio. my words soundly rough but my soul is good
(i just on fire, but after read this news i disappointed)
I have good new friends in forum to help me, like @jamie_c @Toque @tatiang
in another forum, they don't help me wholeheartedly.
I have a hope that GameSalad will "beat" another good "game software" just thinking how make it happend.
Thinking Simple, Do Perfect
I'm not much around here since I have more questions than answers and lack the full grasp of coding in general (which make GS ideal) but I've been coming up short due to GS's limitations a couple of times. I have 3 projects I have in various stages of completion, 2 basically at 95% and 1 that I've sorting out the final kinks. I'll finish those and then I'm out. Been picking up javascript so I'm going to be heading over to Unity. I would much prefer to stay and have never said anything but positive things about GS but ergh, this last post was more than just a wet blanket - GS simply does not care. So long and thanks for all the fish I suppose.
@fmakawa go c# instead
@UncloudedStudio This made me laugh
awesome
I jumped the gamesalad ship along time ago(2 years and went to corona sdk which is has a great free plan). I pop by every once and while and check out to see how things are going. This is just sad.
Well I'm releasing my game in January and then another in March then I'm out too! May use GS for my game design school to teach the fundamentals of game design etc but for my personal games I'm going to have to move because of the lack of update support! Dam!
To be honest though there's quite a few really good drag and drop code engine out now so you all shouldnt worry, 2 weeks solid tutorials with them and you'll be back in the game
you'll have to google search for what they are though as I can't tell you in the forums.
This is all a shame as I really love the simplicity of the coding and the level I have attained with GS, I can think of any type of game and able to throw it together very quickly,
Let's see how this goes but I better ramp up my OTHER engine knowledge pretty quickly,
Good luck everyone
Start a thread in non- GS news about what to go to now when they dont support us anymore
Homepage: freneticgamez.eu/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=FreneticGamez
Well this seems to be the final nail. It feels like being dumped when the girl says 'we can still be friends!'
I've invested huge amounts of time and grown to love the speed at which I can work with GameSalad but it's time to stop kidding myself, it's time to look elsewhere.
These forums have been fantastic and I only hope other engines have a similar collection of dedicated and amazingly helpful users.
It's close to the end of the year so my priority next year, I'm sad to say, will be looking around for a new engine.
@ForumNinja is only the messenger and is in a very difficult position. But I urge @ForumNinja to take this message to the senior managers;
The way your dedicated user base of game developers is being treated is an outrage. Now is the time to put your cards on the table and give total clarity about the future for your users. If your future focus does not include them then do the honorable thing and come clean now. You are damaging your reputation irrevocably by continually stringing people along with hollow promises.
Hi everyone! Just gonna put in my bit of spin on the announcement.
HTML5 Rocks
The technical team has been wanting to make this move for a while now and a few things have come to pass to make this possible:
So yes, things are going to slow down in terms of the current native Mac and Windows tools until the HTML5 tool is done. We won't be removing the current native tools until we get all of the functionally built into the new tools. But once we finish it, it's going to replace the two other tools as our main code base for tooling and this is an awesome thing:
The tool will be backwards compatible with the existing game engine, because we don't want to rewrite the existing game engine at the same time as building a new tool.
We also have the opportunity to build in a few things that are required of a web tool that will be immensely helpful in your development.
I'm looking at ways of storing your games on our servers that will let see the entire undo or save history (I'm still working out the storage and performance implications of how fine grained that storage will be). This means you get something akin to online source control for your games.
Since your game changes are being incrementally uploaded and saved online, you'll also no longer need to wait to upload your games during publishing, they'll be available to our servers immediately!
And while it won't be available in initial release, the manner in which we'll be streaming changes to the server will hopefully allow us to do google docs style simultaneous editing. I'm not gonna promise that one because editing a "word" doc is very different from editing a game, but it's one of the possibilities I'm most excited about.
A web based tool opens so many interesting opportunities for GameSalad Creator.
Engine Updates -- Still a thing
The freeze in existing tool development doesn't mean we'll stop working on the game engine. The HTML5 engine is going to get a lot more love because it's going to be your main "preview" engine. So it's going to have to match the "native" engines.
As for the "native" engines, we'll be able to add certain types of features that don't require a tool updates. For instance, Google Play Services support can be added (I'm working on that now on the weekends).
These kind of updates will be slower as the team focuses on the new tool, but engine maintenance and under the cover features will continue to happen.
Bugs that result from new versions of iOS and Android will be looked at. Anything that doesn't require us to change the tool like loading time improvements, ad networks (unlikely but it's the kind of thing that's possible) will be looked at as well.
Graduating from GameSalad
Even with all of that said, I know some of you will and need to graduate from GameSalad. As time has passed, the ecosystem for game development has changed and grown.
GameSalad started as a rapid prototyping tool, moved on to be an awesome way to make mobile games, and is now starting life as the best way to keep kids excited about learning computer science.
GameSalad is an awesome (we think it's the best) starting point for your game creation career.
If it's just your hobby and you're happy with what it does, stick around, it will keep getting better (just a bit more slowly for a while).
If you're a PRO that has a project that need a quick turn-a-round, GameSalad has a lot to offer.
But if you're ambitions start to outgrow GameSalad, it may be time to look for the right tools for your job.
Take what you've learned from GameSalad and grow and be awesome. We've seen a lot of professional studios grow out of GameSalad and graduate to use Unity3D or similar engines. With GameSalad, you've already learned to program, whether you know it or not. It's just a skip and a step to learning to code!
Just remember that we're still around if you need us for something quick and fun. Or if you need to show your team a quick prototype. Point more beginners our way. And check back on us once in a while, because we'll still be here making awesome things for you.
Reading back over the update, I think I worded things pretty poorly
I updated it to include Tans info as he made things a little more clear. Note to self: Finish your coffee, re-read, THEN post.
@adent42 Thank you for finally giving us a better understanding of the future. That is what most of us have been hoping for. We understand that business models have to adapt sometimes. We are all just worried obviously that all of our years of working in GS will be dropped and wont matter. I absolutely agree that GS is a great tool, it's the only one i would love to ever stick with, but as business models tend to change, so do the tools needed for your jobs. I am just happy to know that as somethings wont really update for another year, that what i'm currently working on will not be all for nothing. I know that the zoom feature is a huge advantage that I would like to see before next school year for sure and along with some bug fixes, but overall as it stands now its not a bad maker... I still feel the price is a bit steep for what it is, I believe it would be nice to see a drop in the prices at least some to better suit the "not investing much time" into the current state of the game....when the game is fixed and updated then of course higher prices are expected then and thats OK. Please continue to listen to the community as, we are one of the main reasons GS has been so great. Not downing all your hard work, but without a loyal customer/fan/dev base. You dont no business would do well.
Thanks @adent42 for the update, but its really bad that we have to beg for answers and its when we all agree that we need to move when we starting getting answers, and sorry to sound rude but i see this news update is to only get us quiet and waiting, again.
What im afraid its the web version wont be never finished and will be only a waste of time like other occasions. And also im really not liking the idea of a web based tool.
For me the constantly changes of plans, that really affect us, is the reason i dont think to use GS in the future, not because i want to graduate or that i have bigger ambitions, i didnt want to drop gamesalad.
im not graduating, gamesalad its chaning focus form us developers to teachers and students, and im afraid that in some point education will be the only focus.
and also its sad to see that our customer opinions did not count on your future plans, this really affect a product, not listening to who use it.
I know gamesalad its the best for begginers, but it was also for professionals, who i see make great games. But in the last lines of your comment, you answer my question, gamesalad its not looking to improve for us, or implement what we ask.
"we wont change, you have to go"
I just have these 3 questions
I didnt understand everything you said sorry ... If i work on my game now with GS , in 8 months you will replace the engine and i will no longer be able to publish my game or continue working on it , or will it work well with the new engine ?
With this new html5 engine does it mean better loading time without the circle wheel and will include snap to grid + other features ?
Isnt html5 (even though being popular at the moment) is really limited ? I mean no matter how much it is improved it will never run as fast as native code right?
In case you're curious about our schedule:
We're looking to finish the first release of the web based tool by July (I'm committing a mortal software development sin by announce a date publicly, but I'm feeling pretty confident in this schedule).
The idea is to build enough of this tool by then to enable our classroom creators to follow our tutorials and curriculum and let new hobbyist users build basic tutorial games.
We also need hit that schedule so we can update curriculum materials in the fall and get training started during the summer.
While that's happening, we'll be spending the summer finishing off the tool with the rest of the behaviors the current tool has as well as things like snap to grid and a cleaner matching look in our portfolio / publishing system.
I think this answers that:
it will work
www.rossmanbrosgames.com
Looks like some questions popped up while I was typing.
@hybrid we definitely gonna finish this, it's vital for our future ability to update the tool (it's not cheap supporting and updating two code bases). In the mean time, I'm going to be spending my "spare" time making improvements to the engine to ensure that those of you using GameSalad professionally will continue to get some bang for your buck. While we do change directions a bit more than is ideal, I wouldn't say it's constant. Apple threw us a big curve ball when they disabled Garbage Collection and we had to spends much of 2016 reacting to that. Before that we got out a release with a whole lot of new stuff! One of the goals with this HTML5 tool is to prevent that from ever happening again.
@Icebox
1) We will not be replacing the engine. We will be improving it in place and we'll make sure it's compatible with the current one, just better.
2) So you're asking about two different things. The HTML5 engine will be improved to work more like the native engine. There are some notable difference between the two engines, so we'll be fixing those. The one that comes to mind is the notable difference in text rendering. Snap to grid is a Creator feature, and we'll be building the new web based tool with those features in mind.
3) Yes, HTML5 is not as fast as native code, but I will point out a few things. Unity3D has a version of their engine running in HTML5. LightTable and Atom are two programming IDEs that use HTML5 for their code bases. We'll also benefit from improved architecture, so we believe the tool will be more than fast enough to work with. We also benefit from the google and the mozilla foundation have put into making memory management and performance in javascript so much faster!
@adent42 thanks for the update, still not ideal but does sound better.
My biggest fear is finishing my game then wanting to update it a year down the road and gamesalad not supporting things that I have built into it like reward ads, or Game Center and such, because they don't fit the education model. As long as you keep up the current features Im not to worried
www.rossmanbrosgames.com