Release 0.10.5 Stable Windows Now Available

BlackCloakGSBlackCloakGS Member, PRO Posts: 2,250
edited June 2014 in GameSalad Kitchen

It has been a long time coming, but we are happy to announce a new version of GameSalad Windows Creator 0.10.5.

Features:

  • New optimized Preview for Windows Creator. This version should give a better representation of your project as well as run more smoothly.
  • Revamp of the way Windows Creator handles project saving:
    • All file related operations have been given a retry mechanic and UI feedback for failures which allow the user to correct and retry the operation.
    • Project backups are now located in a subfolder of the game project called .gsbackup
    • The project backup only contains files that will be updated / overwritten during save. This stops all images and sounds from being copied multiple times during save.
    • If creator opens a project that has a valid backup (due to a power failure or whatnot) then it will prompt the user to restore the backup.
    • The disk copy of images and sounds is synced to the in-memory view of the project now. This was not being done before which caused deleted images and sounds to be saved forever (even when not being used).

Fixes:

  • Removed the timeout for uploading projects to Web Publishing (was previously 100 seconds). This should resolve issues with large projects and/or slow connection speeds.
  • Fixed an issue where the Key condition was not allowing manual typing of commands which prevented users from making a Tizen back condition.
  • Fixed issues with Desktop Scaling and Creator. Setting Desktop Scaling to 125 or 150% will no longer cause the Attribute Browser or Expression Editor to be hidden from view. Preview will also now scale properly and will no longer cause tablet-sized projects to be cut off at the bottom.
  • Fixed an issue with strings in expressions not preserving whitespace when publishing Windows built projects on a Mac. This was a two-part fix so it also requires the latest version of Mac Creator.
  • Fixed an issue with asset name confusion when loading Mac projects. You should now more reliably be able to import projects from the Mac version of creator provided the versions match. NOTE: You will not be able to import projects from Mac Creator 0.11.x into Windows 0.10.5. However, you should be able to import from Mac 0.10.4.1 and below.
  • Fixed hard-coded directory paths that causes Creator to crash if run from a drive other than C:
  • Fixed potential crash on start if the web listener is disposed on clean-up.
  • Fixed a crash that would occur if Windows Creator was run from a directory with a space in the name.
  • Fixed a crash when selecting multiple actors with either CTRL or Shift.

Note:Due to stability issues, the Dashboard has been intentionally removed from this version.

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Comments

  • SnapFireStudiosSnapFireStudios Member Posts: 1,603

    Glad to hear! Can't wait for that cross-platform creator :)

    -- Thomas

  • Braydon_SFXBraydon_SFX Member, Sous Chef, PRO, Bowlboy Sidekick Posts: 9,271

    Excellent, GS Team! Thanks!

  • Gamelover456Gamelover456 Member Posts: 378

    Great Update Like Always, GameSalad Team :)

  • DuesDues Member Posts: 1,159

    @SnapFireStudios said:
    Glad to hear! Can't wait for that cross-platform creator :)

    -- Thomas

    As long as it doesn't have the windows interface :)

  • jamie_cjamie_c ImagineLabs.rocks Member, PRO Posts: 5,772
  • jigglybeanjigglybean Member Posts: 1,584

    I like the Windows UI. Maybe because I am used to it but using the Macs is just strange and isn't always logical in its work flow.

    Like Balls? Then click here! We've 100 coming soon

  • DuesDues Member Posts: 1,159

    Mac v.s Windows 1-1
    Lets end that discussion here :)

  • Nabbo (ReflectiveByte)Nabbo (ReflectiveByte) Member Posts: 278

    Unfortunately, this version crashes upon simulating. I tried every thing to run it. I had to revert back :(.. I submitted the request ticket. hopefully it gets fixed.

  • ReMasteredGamesReMasteredGames Member Posts: 101

    Fantastic news!

  • FrantoFranto Member Posts: 779
    edited June 2014

    Great News on the windows update!

  • ycanycan Member, PRO Posts: 207
  • ReMasteredGamesReMasteredGames Member Posts: 101

    @ycan said:
    Waiting for Mac Update !

    You just got 11!

  • ReMasteredGamesReMasteredGames Member Posts: 101

    This update has made a lot of my images invisible in the preview, but not in the creator. Anyone else experiencing this?

  • NimbleBugNimbleBug Member Posts: 483
    edited June 2014

    @ReMasteredGames Yes ,we got 11,but with bugs,Chartboost ,Revmob,Gamecenter are not working as expected .Because of these Apple is rejecting and in Android scene loading time with Ad Network is super slow and showing blackscreens ,so submit your apps before Gamesalad release 11 for windows.

  • ReMasteredGamesReMasteredGames Member Posts: 101

    @madhanlab said:
    ReMasteredGames Yes ,we got 11,but with bugs,Chartboost ,Revmob,Gamecenter are not working as expected .Because of these Apple is rejecting and in Android scene loading time with Ad Network is super slow and showing blackscreens ,so submit your apps before Gamesalad release 11 for windows.

    I see. Will do. Even 10.5 just broke my current project, might just revert back to 10.4.

  • ookami007ookami007 Member Posts: 581

    Looks like I'm having the same problem.... when I try to run the project, it crashes GameSalad completely.

    The same project will run (with multiple issues) in the Nightly Build however. Of course, the Nightly Build has it's own issues - sound issues, music issues and freezing completely on game pause and not showing the pause screen.

  • aaronforsteraaronforster Member Posts: 28

    How do you download the upgrade? Is there a link?

  • gajaklukaszgajaklukasz Member, PRO Posts: 110

    Creator/Download/Other Releases :)

  • RedRoboRedRobo Member, PRO Posts: 680

    @jigglybean said:
    I like the Windows UI. Maybe because I am used to it but using the Macs is just strange and isn't always logical in its work flow.

    I totally agree about not starting up a whole mac versus pc negative bashing debate as I use both. I must say though that the ability to detach the backstage window in the pc version and drag it to another monitor means that I tend to prefer creating on the pc and only moving over to the mac when I need version 11 features.

  • JapsterJapster Member Posts: 672

    @aaronforster said:
    How do you download the upgrade? Is there a link?

    Personally, I'm not sure it's even worth trying - Aaarrgh! - I've downloaded this 3 times, on 3 separate machines, all of which run 10.4, albeit with the usual issues, but I have to be honest, after being excited that FINALLY an update to the Windows Creator has been released, I'm feeling pretty deflated, and wondering just what was the point of this release, especially given other devs problems that they've encountered already.

    Seriously guys, I have to ask just WHAT level (if any?!) of testing was done on this 'stable' release?! - all 3 machines I've tried - different OS's, different CPU types, specs, etc, crash when loading ANY project on it. YES, I even updated to the latest ATI / NVIDIA drivers where appropriate, YES, I even completely uninstalled the older version first when the initial install of 10.5 didn't run my projects, PLUS I even loaded up GS with an empty blank project, hit run, and BANG! - STILL crashes... (Well, hangs in all cases (as usual when GS crashes, then flagged up as hung once you click on the window...) ...Sometimes with a dark grey screen, but most of the time just stuck on a white/grey one...

    I understand that this update MUST work on some configs for you guys to have felt that it was releasable, but this is worryingly shoddy QA - and I REALLY wanted this 'release' to work fine, as I've spent the last month wrestling with the bugs / quirks of the existing Windows version, all of the time hitting issues that really shouldn't exist - like the spawning issues - I mean, my very simple spawner simply would NOT spawn a cell actor - I finally (after tearing my hair out) duplicated the behaviours (by copying and modifying attributes to EXACTLY match a manual duplicate of my none-spawnable actor, and surprise, it started spawning the new one fine (and I double/triple checked - ALL of the rules and behaviours were EXACT/IDENTICAL, barring the new actor name!? - bugs like this really ought to be fixed ASAP, and not at the expense of bringing in crippling bugs in an apparently already unbelievably buggy system... :(

    Don't get me wrong guys, I do LOVE the idea of GameSalad, and love what you're trying to achieve here, but there is NO WAY I can justify investing either time/effort in this product, OR money to go Pro (which I ultimately NEED to, in order to monetize and attempt to make my projects help pay the bills) given its currently productivity-crushing bug-ridden state, and I'm honestly gutted that it's in such a mess, when it could be so much better...

    I honestly was over the moon to hear about the update, but now I've had to begrudgingly revert to the (buggy as hell) 10.4 version, complete with the spawning issues, attribute/expression windows moving off screen and hence uneditable until you resize the GS window, GS crashing, occasional (but infuriating) table corruption, and annoying filter/AA effects that exponentially get worse/blurrier the deeper your nesting level, where you can't even make out the text in your actor's behaviours without serious eye strain! - WTH? (and no, it doesn't occur on EVERY PC of mine (just my NVIDIA-equipped desktop), and YES, I've updated my Nvidia drivers, forced AA/ANI etc OFF globally, but it seems it's something GS does internally - Why?! - My laptop's NVIDIA equipped too, but it doesn't happen on that?

    Please guys - can you not fix these enthusiasm-destroying, time-wasting and frankly, plain nasty, dev-alienating bugs before they lose you potential developers?!

    Apologies if I sound harsh, but after raising my hopes, with a new build at last - I definitely feel this 'release' is a complete waste of time for me at least - I mean, it simply will not run ANYTHING, even a blank project, and I would be VERY interested to know if myself and the poster above are the the only ones affected - and across multiple hardware configs/OS's, which I find hard to believe...

    Den.

  • Xveriun_Uln_24Xveriun_Uln_24 Member Posts: 9

    So is the update the same download as the link from the main page, or do I need to navigate to the page manually?

  • stevejstevej Member, PRO, Chef Emeritus Posts: 435

    @Japster‌ : The build was tested thoroughly in-house, and runs fine. So far no one here has been able to reproduce the issues people are seeing, but we are gathering as much info as we can from users to try and find out what the problem is. If you could please submit a bug report with your system info from dxdiag, plus any additional info crashes you are seeing, it would help us a great deal.

  • JapsterJapster Member Posts: 672

    @Xveriun Uln 24 said:
    So is the update the same download as the link from the main page, or do I need to navigate to the page manually?
    @stevej said:
    Japster‌ : The build was tested thoroughly in-house, and runs fine. So far no one here has been able to reproduce the issues people are seeing, but we are gathering as much info as we can from users to try and find out what the problem is. If you could please submit a bug report with your system info from dxdiag, plus any additional info crashes you are seeing, it would help us a great deal.

    Thanks for the prompt response Steve - I'll run a DXDiag report and get it sent on - apologies for the long post, but I was just incredibly frustrated after trying ALL of my machines, and it not working on mine - didn't work on a dev mate's either... I honestly got to the point where I downloaded a few alternatives to GS last night in sheer frustration, to look into!...

    Of course, I'd rather not, as I do like GS - but again, no-one suffers from the blurring effect, etc? - While I submit the report - I'd also like to propose that the Expression dialog is expanded to encompass more of the expression, as it's a nightmare working out bugs at the moment!! - That, or the ability to copy in such a way as to be able to copy/paste the expression into an alternative editor, Excel, etc? - this would greatly improve the debugging process for everyone, I'm sure! :)

    Ps - Xveriun Uln - Here's the link to .10.5 mate:-

    http://gs.releases.x.s3.amazonaws.com/win-creator/0.10.5/GameSalad-Creator-Setup.zip

  • myke66myke66 Member Posts: 74

    I havent been having any problems with the new creator. Loaded my projects fine. I do like that the preview window will resize to screen size now, i was getting tired of my portrait apps being cutoff in the preview!

  • dgackeydgackey Austin, TXInactive, PRO, Chef Emeritus Posts: 699

    Not to minimize or discount anyone's issues, but PC compatibility testing is probably the most frustrating and difficult platform to get right, and this is coming from a guy who shipped 2D and 3D games on PC's from Windows 95 through Win 7.

    It's basically impossible to hit every permutation of OS, hardware config, driver conflicts, etc., so you do the best you can to cover the bases and rely on bug reports to fill in the gaps.

    It's worth remembering that GS is a small company. We have 18 people. Only a handful of them are in QA, and they test our releases on almost every mobile and desktop device known to man, several variations of different operating systems, and a bunch of different hardware manufacturer's test and production environments.

    That's a lot of variables to account for. We do the best we can, and apologize if that wasn't enough to catch the issue that you're experiencing. We are taking ongoing development of the PC version very seriously and will continue to make improvements and feature parity a top priority. We thank you for your support and patience along the way.

    Dan

    Dan Magaha · COO · GameSalad, Inc · danm@gamesalad.com

  • stevejstevej Member, PRO, Chef Emeritus Posts: 435

    If you are seeing crashes in preview, one thing you might want to try if you are running with Windows 7 is to install .NET 4.5. That seems to help in some cases.

  • DanielDesignerDanielDesigner Member Posts: 16

    @stevej said:
    If you are seeing crashes in preview, one thing you might want to try if you are running with Windows 7 is to install .NET 4.5. That seems to help in some cases.

    THANK YOU!!! THAT SOLVE THE PROBLEM!!!

  • JapsterJapster Member Posts: 672

    @stevej said:
    If you are seeing crashes in preview, one thing you might want to try if you are running with Windows 7 is to install .NET 4.5. That seems to help in some cases.

    Awesome! - Thanks Steve, that did the trick... :) Apologies for getting vexed, but it was so frustrating! - great advice though - now working really, REALLY well!...

    Just gotta see if the anti-aliasing/blurriness etc are still an issue, and I notice anything other than 100% view size runs like a dog on my dev LT (but will try this on my desktop too)... ...but I'm VERY happy that I can now run this updated version guys - thanks!

  • GunBrothersGamingGunBrothersGaming Member, PRO Posts: 6
    edited July 2014

    @Japster said:

    It's just very frustrating indeed. You pay for a yearly subscription only to find out that if you are a Windows user you are really using a version more akin to an after thought. It's highly disappointing to see a program touted as Windows and Mac when it's really a mac platform with Windows as an after thought.

    I am sure we'll get 11 by 2016 though... maybe.

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