State of GameSalad on 7-10-2013

2»

Comments

  • tylerglessnertylerglessner Member Posts: 246
    edited July 2013
    @CodeWizard any word on stretch?
  • artfishartfish Member, PRO Posts: 369
    If your game relies heavily on frequent scene switching, load times are a HUGE issue. How about an improvement to the way a scene loads? Like maybe some sort of caching/preloading of any scenes that are linked to the current scene? Does that even make sense?(Well at least I know what I meant. Lol)
  • Braydon_SFXBraydon_SFX Member, Sous Chef, Bowlboy Sidekick Posts: 9,273
    I always look forward to reading these updates every week. Nice work guys!
  • artfishartfish Member, PRO Posts: 369
    @FryingBaconStudios All of my art is preloaded. Any other suggestions?
  • RPRP Member Posts: 1,990
    edited July 2013
    @artfish Optimize. Deep Blue Apps has a project optimizer that may help (saves time on optimizing files individually/manually).
  • jamies15-3jamies15-3 Member Posts: 94
    I'd much rather lose backwards compatibility but gain speed and performance before new features are added. I feel that GS has nailed core features needed to make great games, I would now like to see the polish come out so I can get my games silky smooth :).
  • The_Gamesalad_GuruThe_Gamesalad_Guru Member Posts: 9,922
    Silky smooth? The creator still crashed stuff still gets corrupted on a regular basis and a host of other issues. they are doing the right thing in making it stable and bug free before they add more stuff. @artfish without seeing your code I couldn't tell you.
  • jamies15-3jamies15-3 Member Posts: 94
    Yeah that what I said, I would rather see a polished creator with faster and smoother apps coming out at the end before more features are added.
  • artfishartfish Member, PRO Posts: 369
    edited July 2013
    Thank you.
  • The_Gamesalad_GuruThe_Gamesalad_Guru Member Posts: 9,922
    @codewizard will the work on the saving do a solid overwrite of the file so that no ghosts are left behind? Sometimes I find deleted images, sounds and even deleted code gets left intact but not visible in creator. But they can be seen in the corresponding folders in the project file.
  • CodeWizardCodeWizard Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 1,143
    @FryingBaconStudios
    Nah. This work is just cleaning up some terrible code that's been stinking up the place for a while. No material fixes except some stuff required for async multiplayer support.
  • DaveinpublicDaveinpublic Member Posts: 37
    Wow I can believe we're still talking about LUA Free. This was discussed adnosium when codewizard was hired. In short it was discussed that there will be no LUA free engine. Code wizard said he believed LUA when coded right would work just as well. I'm not sure if those threads still exist maybe a search but it was well documented and throughout discussed and point out there will be no LUA free creator.
    I've followed the threads for a while. It was never really clear whether they would get rid of Lua or not. What codewizard did say, was that they would change the way they deliver the changes, which would now be iterative instead of all at once. I just looked at some of the old threads, and I spotted some of your comments saying the same things, but none of codewizards or others said that. Whether or not they make it completely lua free or not, I'm sure there's reason for both, but I wouldn't get upset because someone wanted to clarify. There was a long period where lua free was communicated as the main goal, so there will be many who need to ask.
  • The_Gamesalad_GuruThe_Gamesalad_Guru Member Posts: 9,922
    edited July 2013
    "The good news is that we’ve made a lot of progress toward improving the engine through this work. Sadly, we’ve run into some issues that are making us rethink how we’ll roll these changes out to you. We need to be extra careful so that we don’t break your existing games and in-progress work.

    To that end, we’re refocusing our efforts on bringing the various improvements to you in a more iterative way. By that, I mean we’ll be optimizing the existing Lua-based engine using what we’ve learned while working on the native engine. When possible, we’ll also bring over any applicable native engine work directly." Codewizard

    If you read carefully he is saying their going to take what they learned trying to do a LUA free engine and use that build a LUA JIT engine. They did switch from a LUA engine to a LUA JIT. I believe he answered with more info in other questions in threads. I think most people who were part of those discussions understood there would be no LUA free engine.

    What I don't understand is the obsession which a mystical engine that was shown once in a video and now has become the holy grail of gamesalad lore.
  • CodeWizardCodeWizard Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 1,143
    We're not getting rid of Lua. We're just making the engine better across the board.
  • tylerglessnertylerglessner Member Posts: 246
    @codewizard Im not going to pretend like I know a darn thing about coding, but how difficult would it be to have an option to set the aspect ratio within different scenes within a project?
  • CodeWizardCodeWizard Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 1,143
    @tgdesign
    Can you be more specific? I don't know what that would look like. :)
  • tylerglessnertylerglessner Member Posts: 246
    @codewizard well similar to how in each scene you can set screen height and width to you likings. Have an option like that, but the ability to set the aspect ratio of said scene, that way we wouldn't have to adjust for multiple devices
  • CodeWizardCodeWizard Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 1,143
    @tgdesign
    Hmm. I can see that. The problem is that it would likely look horrible -- especially if we scaled the artwork to fit the aspect ratio.

    Here's how I think we should handle multiple resolutions nicely:

    1. You provide artwork at a ridiculous size (iPad 3 resolution).

    2. We scale the artwork down to various smaller resolutions (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc).

    3. The engine picks the correct artwork for the current device resolution and uses that.

    High bar would allow you to provide various sizes of your artwork for #2 so you can fully control what it looks like and can compensate for scaling artifacts.

    This system would require that you design your game with backgrounds that fill the entire screen at various sizes. Not too difficult. I've used this kind of system successfully many times.

    Auto scaling artwork in-game is pretty terrible looking and suffers some pretty bad performance issues. So, I don't see us providing dynamic support for changing up aspect ratio. :)
  • tylerglessnertylerglessner Member Posts: 246
    Forgive me if I just blew off everything you just typed (Im a speed reader) but for my current project, I have my entire game in one scene, and there are two copies if the scene. One for Legacy, one for iPhone 5, and the last for iPad. The only problem Im having now is aspect ratios, so I was just curious!
  • CodeWizardCodeWizard Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 1,143
    No worries. I type for a living. :D
  • ChimoruChimoru Member, PRO Posts: 137
    edited July 2013
    @CodeWizard Is it on the roadmap to add the option for expansion files when we generate games for android over 50mb? That way we can upload games over 50mb to Google Play. If not, I'd like to request it as I'd love to be able to upload bigger games to Google Play

    Thanks!
  • CodeWizardCodeWizard Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 1,143
    Hmm. No, but I'm adding it for future review.
  • hdeandahdeanda Member, PRO Posts: 55
    @CodeWizard I would love to have a simple play video behavior. I really need it for a kid's game with videos that play at certain times...
  • FajlajpFajlajp Member Posts: 666
    Waiting for the update :D Super excited :)
  • CodeWizardCodeWizard Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 1,143
    @hdeanda
    Yeah, that would be handy. Adding it to the list for review.
Sign In or Register to comment.