Progress on the Engine, bugs etc - Questions
fmakawa
Member Posts: 565
Hi Folks,
Its been a while. I haven't used GS in over a year and a half and would like to return but I had a few questions regarding the state of GS and was curious to see if things had changed. I work as a programmer so I could use other engines but I have a soft spot for GS and would rathe use it. So:
- How stable is the engine now? Regarding big projects, lots of assets and models, large tables? Does it still feel like moving through morass when you are editing scenes that are large?
- Did GS ever fix the start up loading speed issue for Android? I have a Galaxy S10+ that I am testing some of my old apps and even for it things are too slow. I am wondering if its worth updating my apps and if this will fix it. Because simply being dependent on the better processing of modern devices isn't ideal (not everyone has a new device).
- Remember the load screen tilt bug on Android where the loading image changes to portrait but was not centered? Was that fixed?
- Did we ever add native Facebook integration?
- Was HTML5 eventually sorted out?
- Is Mantu's level editor still the best level editing option we have?
- Does the editor now allow for merging of projects? Crucial if you are using templates in your games.
Comments
Hello I apologize if I answer you with a question and not with real answers, what is Mantu's level editor?
ps I don't answer the questions because I don't have big jobs behind me, surely others can give more precise answers.
https://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/92256/free-level-editor
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Thanks @Armelline , interesting, even if from the name I hoped it would allow you to change the layer of the actors in game: D
I guess that answers that then....
there was an app floating around i think deep blue apps made that allowed you to merge projects. down side of it is that if you are using in app purchases, it keeps all purchase tables from merged projects, and i don’t think those tables can be deleted.
i think i still have it somewhere.
Yes DBA applications like Project Merger and Scene Merger they are very nice to merge two project or scenes inside one project, but as you told, they don't remove the tables.
Unfortunately these tools has been not more update from years.
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I assume you mean creator. I think it's better, depending on when you last used it.
Nope. We haven't addressed any loading issues on android specifically. I know the source of at least one of the loading issues, but it's going to take a bit to implement and test a fix. That's gonna be behind loading from expansion files, though if I can get a handle around how to fix the issue we may be able to do it at the same time.
Mostly fixes. It still happens sometimes, but locking image changes works much better now.
Nope. We've implemented native sharing instead.
There are still differences but it's the HTML5 engine is way better now (as part of the effort to make HTML5 Creator preview a better experience)
I still haven't tried it in a while but a few items that Creator 2 has include Scene and Actor copy paste (use hotkeys), multi-select actor editing (move and rotate), and layer hiding. For smaller projects, it's gotten a long way towards being a better layout experience. Creator 2.5 is in the works and should ad a few more improvements to scene layout editing (ability to edit layout outside the scene boundary, grids, etc)
Nope, but Creator 2 (the HTML5 one) can do scene and actor copy paste. So you can run through that for your starter templates, export it, and do the rest of the work on the native creator if you prefer.
@adent42 thanks for the run down. Considering the recent survey that had 80% of devs here developing for Android as well some Android love would be nice. I think I am back for the time being. Test out the new improvements and see what I can come up with. Been using another platform but I miss GS and the community
After adding Google Play Expansion file support and learning more about loading, we did cut down loading times some, but I still feel it's pretty bad. Sadly, it's due to Android's nature. iOS app packages are directories. Android APKs are zip files.
So on android, you almost always have to deal with loading with the overhead of the zip file along with the other issues we normally deal with in loading.
The only way around that is to unzip the files to user storage and load from there, which I assume some games do. Basically a big up-front for first time loading with better loading later on. (Or, more likely, slightly slower loading while the unzip happens in the background and faster loading once that's done).
Either way, it's not a decision I want to make for users yet so we'll need to implement a way to do that. Unfortunately, we're going to need to work on android builds for a post-apk world using Android app bundles. Because that transition is happening at google this year, we'll need to handle that first.
Hi, @adent42. I wanted to follow up on this thread. Have there been any updates regarding Android's transition to app bundles? One of my app is currently still using expansion files and the user experience is unbearable. If there's no update yet, then I may have to pull the app to avoid any issues.