Mac Creator Release 1.25.80 is Available

124

Comments

  • blobblob Member, PRO Posts: 229
    edited April 2017

    @Toque

    No-one has to match it. Small pledges add up to big numbers too, if many are willing
    to participate.

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    @Socks said:
    I think quoting that article makes a perfectly valid point, that is the perception of GameSalad from the outside [...] we're talking about how it's perceived by the general SDK world

    @blob said:
    Absolutely! ...That's the point!.

    My point with the article is that I don't think that one poorly researched article which seems to have an inbuilt bias by the author really represents how it's perceived by the general SDK world.

    Can GameSalad do a lot better? Of course! Especially now that GameMaker is getting ready to release their latest Studio 2 product for Mac, there is a reason to worry (for them).

    @Socks said:
    I don't see the two things as connected in anyway. RossmanBrothersGames are great and GameSalad are allowing a once vibrant community to die off (posts down 80% in just 3 years ! that's a pretty rapid rate of decline).

    Are GameSalad the only ones to blame here, though? Of course they carry chunk of the responsibility (likely a big one). But the community was something that held the people together, users for users. That's what always made it vibrant, I feel, not GameSalad's involvement in it. To be honest, as far as I can remember, people were to some extent complaining about GS being too quiet and giving us almost nothing apart from bloatware promises, even at times when, compared to now, it was a shower of info. :smiley: But then there was a time when suddenly nearly everything became about this. The Forum went from a positive helpful place where people shared knowledge and helped each other to a venting ground. I think that was a cue for a lot of people to leave as well. I went on a hiatus myself. Some of those people might still be using GameSalad, but just don't get involved here anymore.

    @Socks said:
    If GameSalad folds people like RossmanBrothersGames (and all the others making great games) will be effected as much as the people voicing their concerns.

    True. But I don't think this is likely to happen. I think they are doing quite well in the education sector -- I remember them saying so somewhere, but am too lazy to look for it. If this is what is keeping them afloat, then until they start taking away features or don't support an important platform, I am willing to accept that. GameSalad currently has pretty much all I need to make games. There could be more, of course, but if you get familiar with the limitations and learn to work around them, it serves you really well.

    @Socks said:
    RossmanBrothersGames are great (with and without wigs), but I still think this is a sort of separate issue, the argument seems to be 'you cannot (or should not) complain about GameSalad's lack of engagement because someone is making a great game'
    [...]
    General Bashing (3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment) is not such a terrible thing ! People complaining is not a terrible thing, it's an opportunity for GameSalad to know what their user base actually thinks, I've never really understood the 'it's better to not complain' thing ?
    Anyhow, this is all academic, these things come up from time to time, complaining or not complaining doesn't seem to make much difference either way :)

    I would recommend complaining through the blue chat button. I always get a response from the team there. Exactly because complaining doesn't seem to make much difference on the Forum do I see it as a fruitless exercise. I'm just not convinced it's an opportunity for GameSalad to know what their user base actually thinks, since there is no interaction or reaction here, usually. When it does come, it is usually because they are prodded to do so elsewhere. Complaining here just seems to me like aimless venting -- for the time being. Of course, if this was an active platform for the GS team to communicate with us, this would not be the case.

    @blob said:
    Personally i never bash GS aimlessly.
    Like many others before me, I proposed an hybrid open source format with subscriptions. a plugin system
    I tried to gather all these communications in a voting thread.
    I pretentiously o:) try to educate GS team because I knowwww with all my heart they are not operating the best way possible considering their situation...

    I admire your input and involvement. The aimlessness of the bashing is not because of you, but because of the fact that the Forums simply don't seem to be the right platform. If you hate the taste of Coke Zero, you need to write to the company, not shout it at passers by in a city square. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

    I like your idea for a hybrid open source approach to a SDK with GameSalad-style capabilities, but I think the only way you will get it is to start your own company to do it. GameSalad is very unlikely to change their business model.

    I pledge to reward GameSalad $1000 in bonuses, if they reduce the average loading time by a factor of 3 and fix the crooked splash screen within the next 2 month.
    Then no more workforce, time and budget excuses.

    Their main issue isn't workforce, time and budget excuses. As they noted previously, pretty much all their resources are currently being focused on the new cross-platform HTML5 rewrite of the Creator tool. They are very unlikely to focus on any (from their perspective) smaller issues before that is done.

    The loading screen issue is very unfortunate (and I hope it gets fixed soon), but it hasn't stopped polycolor from being featured by Apple and reaching deep into the top 100 paid games on the iOS App Store.

    P.S.
    I wouldn't be surprised if there was an update with news on the progress of the HTML5 rewrite sometime soon.

  • blobblob Member, PRO Posts: 229
    edited April 2017

    @pHghost
    Their main issue isn't workforce, time and budget excuses. As they noted previously, pretty much all their resources are currently being focused on the new cross-platform HTML5 rewrite

    Yes, but the main reason why they're doing it, is money to be made pursuing that direction. So if we pledge enough dollars, they may do something about these issues..
    Hence my call for pledges.....
    (I know... wishful thinking...)

    The loading screen issue is very unfortunate (and I hope it gets fixed soon), but it hasn't stopped polycolor from being featured by Apple and reaching deep into the top 100 paid games on the iOS App Store.

    This is the first review that pops up on the top in the App Store for polycolor:

    Customer Reviews
    Clever game

    by Kevin Ballard
    This game has a unique concept and is pretty fun, but I don't understand why it has such long load times. Also, when I went home and then back into the level, the sound effects stopped playing (but the background music continued). Rather annoying.>

  • The_Gamesalad_GuruThe_Gamesalad_Guru Member Posts: 9,922

    It seems they are stickly focused on the HTML version of creator. From our limited slack discussions with them, the reason is Tran is an expert at HTML but not much of a coder. I'm not even sure codewizard is doing anything now. I don't believe they have any coders. I myself let my subscription expire and just stop by to check in. It seems the focus is all on education. In my opinion if you a serious indi developer it may be time to move on.

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    @blob said:
    Yes, but the main reason why they're doing it, is money to be made pursuing that direction. So if we pledge enough dollars, they may do something about these issues..
    Hence my call for pledges.....
    (I know... wishful thinking...)

    I would really love it if this worked, but $1000 (or even if more people pitch in, say $2500) is a drop in the ocean of the running costs of a company. It won't cover even a sizeable fraction of one month's expenses. So even if we were able to put together an extra $2500 every month, it would probably make no difference.

    @blob said:
    This is the first review that pops up on the top in the App Store for polycolor:

    Customer Reviews
    Clever game

    by Kevin Ballard
    This game has a unique concept and is pretty fun, but I don't understand why it has such long load times. Also, when I went home and then back into the level, the sound effects stopped playing (but the background music continued). Rather annoying.>

    Yes, I see the review. At the same time, he gave the game 4 stars, so unless you go read the reviews, that won't necessarily affect your purchase intent. Maybe it's different for others, but I only read individual reviews if the star score is lower than 4. In that case I want to know what issues people experience, to make a decision. If I like a game from the video/screenshots and it has 4+ stars, I just buy it.

    Loading times are a big problem, I agree -- much bigger than the start-up screen, if you ask me. The way I get around it is building projects in one scene. Or if not one scene, a greatly limited amount of them, to reduce the amount of time spent on loading. As far as I'm concerned, there's absolutely no reason to have one scene per each menu and setting page. It's a workaround, yes, but a pretty painless one.

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    @The_Gamesalad_Guru said:
    It seems they are stickly focused on the HTML version of creator. From our limited slack discussions with them, the reason is Tran is an expert at HTML but not much of a coder. I'm not even sure codewizard is doing anything now. I don't believe they have any coders. I myself let my subscription expire and just stop by to check in. It seems the focus is all on education. In my opinion if you a serious indi developer it may be time to move on.

    It might be time to move on soon. Especially if the new GameMaker becomes a serious option on the Mac. But for now, as I said, unless it looks like GameSalad is going under, or the workflow gets busted (slightly apprehensive about that with the HTML5 tool, but giving them the benefit of the doubt until I see it) or they start stripping functions or publishing platforms away, there's no reason to abandon ship. There's a lot less to motivate new users to get involved, I'll give you that, but if you have in-progress projects that work with the current features, what would the motivation to leave be?

  • SocksSocks London, UK.Member Posts: 12,822

    @pHghost said:
    My point with the article is that I don't think that one poorly researched article which seems to have an inbuilt bias by the author really represents how it's perceived by the general SDK world.

    Inbuilt bias ? There's no evidence for that at all, from what I can see ?

    The central points of the review were that GameSalad was 1) an old game engine 2) few people use it 3) it is now targeted at education rather than than developers and 4) you can build games without having to learn coding.

    None of that is wrong from what I can see, it's pretty accurate overview.

    @pHghost said:
    Are GameSalad the only ones to blame here, though?

    I'd say yes, the slow decline of the forum is because of the lack of engagement, it's corrosive, it damages confidence.

    @pHghost said:
    True. But I don't think this is likely to happen. I think they are doing quite well in the education sector -- I remember them saying so somewhere, but am too lazy to look for it.

    :)

    @pHghost said:
    I would recommend complaining through the blue chat button. I always get a response from the team there. Exactly because complaining doesn't seem to make much difference on the Forum do I see it as a fruitless exercise.

    Agreed, it's unlikely to achieve anything, but we're social animals and discuss things with each other.

    I think the blue chat button was one of GameSalad's worst ideas ! They may as well have made the forum private, with none of the posts being readable by anyone other than the two parties involved, best way to stymie the spread of information ever ! :smile:

    @pHghost said:
    I'm just not convinced it's an opportunity for GameSalad to know what their user base actually thinks, since there is no interaction or reaction here, usually.

    That's a valid point, I suppose what I should have said was that this is usually how it works, or how it should work, but you're right, it probably doesn't apply in this particular scenario. Still . . . nothing wrong with a good bit of venting in my opinion ! :smile:

  • SocksSocks London, UK.Member Posts: 12,822
    edited April 2017

    @pHghost said:

    I would really love it if this worked, but $1000 (or even if more people pitch in, say $2500) is a drop in the ocean of the running costs of a company. It won't cover even a sizeable fraction of one month's expenses. So even if we were able to put together an extra $2500 every month, it would probably make no difference.

    Agreed, it's a nice idea, but it probably wouldn't even register on the balance sheet.
    (although if any money is raised send it to me and I will use it for good* and not for evil)

    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .

    *red wine.

  • vikingviking Member, PRO Posts: 322

    @ForumNinja You have not commented on this forum for three weeks now. Are you still working for GS?

  • IceboxIcebox Member Posts: 1,485

    They might be taking a break , holiday or something , i think they haven't been active even with the blue bubble it says "active 2 days ago" and "over one week ago" , not sure though

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    @Socks said:

    Inbuilt bias ? There's no evidence for that at all, from what I can see ?

    The central points of the review were that GameSalad was 1) an old game engine 2) few people use it 3) it is now targeted at education rather than than developers and 4) you can build games without having to learn coding.

    None of that is wrong from what I can see, it's pretty accurate overview.

    This might be a bit tentative of course, but to me it seems that with most other engines etc. he sticks to simple analysis and general information about the product.

    My exception is with points 1) and 2).

    1) seems to simply be a judgement call, a negative point which is based on what? What does he mean by old? It simply isn't an objective analysis of the software. If I read 'old' as a potential user, I imagine it doesn't support newer devices etc., which is simply false. It might mean there aren't that many games published lately with this software, which is also false. Why doesn't he mention Roll Turtle at all in notable releases? It's featured on a screenshot on the main page of the webpage, second in the Featured Games section, stickied three (!) times on the Forums. It almost seems like an omission on purpose. The games he mentions are all old and no longer being updated. There are also further better choices (like Orcs).

    If he said it's not updated regularly lately, it would be a fair point, but that's not what he says.

    2) is possible, though I'd like to see where he gets his numbers. And more importantly it's also a completely non-consequential statement, in itself. If few people use it, why, for what reason, is that in itself a bad thing? What's the point of the statement?

    @Socks said:

    I think the blue chat button was one of GameSalad's worst ideas! [...] They may as well have made the forum private.

    I completely disagree. I really see the benefit of the Forums being users communicating with each other as a community, not to chat to the GS team. Before the Blue Button, the main way to get a particular thing noticed was submitting a bug/feature request. This often led nowhere, with little reaction. The GS team wasn't that great at communicating
    through regular Forum posts, as far as I remember, ever.

    The Blue Button for me has so far been very successful, as I mentioned, with generally good response times. And there I nothing stoping you from asking them questions there and then sharing their response with everyone else yourself.

    I still think the general vitriol at certain points on the Forums contributed to the decline of the community here a lot and the blame cannot be placed squarely at the feet of the GS team.

  • blobblob Member, PRO Posts: 229

    @blob said:
    @adent42 @ForumNinja @LearnBasicBusinessSkills

    WHEN WILL YOU GUYS LEARN THAT SAYING HI ON THE FORUM AND UPDATING US REGULARLY ON THE THINGS YOU'RE WORKING ON IS BENEFICIAL FOR YOU AND US!!!?!?!!?!?

    IT'S SO SIMPLE.......

    EVERY THURSDAY, WRITE SOMETHING HERE SO WE CAN UNDERSTAND, STAY CONNECTED, NOT PANIC, PLAN, KEEP BEING ON YOUR SIDE AND ROOT FOR YOU.

  • blobblob Member, PRO Posts: 229
    edited April 2017

    WE'D RATHER BAD NEWS THAT NO NEWS AT ALL.. THANK YOU "TEAM" GS

  • freneticzfreneticz SwedenMember, PRO Posts: 774

    Hope they are back from easter soon....... need a sign

  • fmakawafmakawa Member Posts: 565

    @blob good luck with getting a response (I'll tag em too just for luck @adent42 @bdusing @ForumNinja) . I learnt a while back that they dont really care, they'll do what they want, when they want. Work with what you got and improve your otehr skills for the eventual migration to another platform even if you don't ever want to leave.

  • fmakawafmakawa Member Posts: 565
    edited April 2017

    On a different note, is GS's code base written in Python? I've been picking up python and its been so easy to get into because a lot of it reminds me of GS.

  • birdboybirdboy Member Posts: 284
    edited April 2017

    I'm a bit annoyed right now. No new features is something I've come to accept but leaving a bug like the phone call crash in the engine for months isn't acceptable while charging a realtively high amount for "pro". I didn't expect an answer over the easter days but this bug has existed for much longer.

  • BazookaTimeBazookaTime Member Posts: 1,274

    Well it is Tuesday, so I am thinking we will get an update any minute now...

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    @fmakawa said:
    Work with what you got and improve your otehr skills for the eventual migration to another platform even if you don't ever want to leave.

    Agreed, every word of it.

  • grahameckersleygrahameckersley Member Posts: 81

    Can just pull the conversation back to the beginning for a moment,

    We've been getting reports of Google reaching out to users who have apps on Google Play without privacy policies. This update removes one of the permissions we request access to in order to prevent you guys from having to create privacy policies for your apps.

    There's a way for us to not have to have a privacy policy?

  • JapsterJapster Member Posts: 672
    edited April 2017

    @Socks said:

    I think the blue chat button was one of GameSalad's worst ideas! [...] They may as well have made the forum private.

    @pHghost said:
    I completely disagree. I really see the benefit of the Forums being users communicating with each other as a community, not to chat to the GS team. Before the Blue Button, the main way to get a particular thing noticed was submitting a bug/feature request. This often led nowhere, with little reaction. The GS team wasn't that great at communicating
    through regular Forum posts, as far as I remember, ever.

    The Blue Button for me has so far been very successful, as I mentioned, with generally good response times. And there I nothing stoping you from asking them questions there and then sharing their response with everyone else yourself.

    I still think the general vitriol at certain points on the Forums contributed to the decline of the community here a lot and the blame cannot be placed squarely at the feet of the GS team.

    I have to agree with @Socks on this one - While the Blue Button DOES allow answering of queries that are general, everyday things (questions with membership, other general issues, and the people who do man it have helped me out too in that respect) - really, they are NEVER (nor do they probably have the sanctioning/approval from GS to be) going to take on board and run with, on our behalf, annoyances / feature / fix suggestions etc - and as Socks said - it means a LOT of queries and concerns will just simply cease to publicly/visibly exist if everyone used the big blue button, with again (IMO) no resolution of actions on them from GS. Everything seems SO much more rosier in that scenario, and only one entity benefits from it.

    Likewise, the forum - Seriously, I 100% agree that it's GS's fault. Alienate, ignore (for months!), and treat your loyal users as a no-longer needed, pain in the ass commodity, or second-rate citizens (although they've paid (and are probably still easily paying) the most 'taxes' by a huge margin) and people ARE going to be vocal, ARE going to avoid the forums (ie. EVERY DAY, is how often I used to come here, sometimes 3-4 times a day) - Now, I come here briefly, once a fortnight, if that, and it's not the experience it used to be - not because people are whinging (they've always had reason to do that), but because so much of the community simply isn't here any more (or not posting), because things have got so much harder / dejected about where things are heading / stability etc), that really, I can't find the motivation to hammer at my projects for fear I'm wasting time to end up at a support-wise, none-future-proofed or supported dead end... It's also incredibly depressing to see GS continually ignoring us loyal users, not updating us, and even when they FINALLY do so, only updating us solely on doing their own new thing, to the exclusion of anything else voiced by the community.

    I LOVE GS, I LOVE the community, but it's hard to be anywhere near as animated as I was, when I see what I see (or don't) coming from GS themselves.

    As such, I really don't feel it's worth my time investment to be more active on the forums, and to be honest, MY commitment has waned as a result of the above - and this is nothing other than a direct result of GS's lack of interaction or commitment to providing information / listening to concerns / requests, for so long, for so many times... (The latest post, FINALLY, looks interesting, but again, waaaaay overdue, and further cements that things are going to get better AND worse, in equal measure, from what I can read, ie, about the direction taken and lack of none-working preview etc - more of a backwards step, albeit hopefully a short-term one (although with ANYTHING GS-related, short-term is never the case - Short-term bugs, like, say, orientation, loading, etc...)

    It's unfair to hang the blame at the paying users' collective feet, and in all fairness, if paying users are defending them for this, then really? - are they going to change their bad practices / be forced to listen and interact anyway? - I'm guessing the damage is already done to that process... :fearful:

    Just my fourpenneth...

    (Yep, and I'll probably be seen as one of those who only moan now, but I have posted a couple of none-moans prior to this... :wink: )

  • patoghpatogh Member Posts: 23

    Android Signing Issue on Mac and Windows

    Gamesalad Team Please add "-sigalg SHA1withRSA" to jarsigner . so We can upload our app to google play .

    At this moment app uploading in google play does't working for Signature algorithm name: SHA256withRSA. you can check it signing work just for Signature algorithm name: SHA1withRSA keystore but we can manually signing or APK with adding "-sigalg SHA1withRSA" to jarsigner.

  • adent42adent42 Key Master, Head Chef, Executive Chef, Member, PRO Posts: 3,034

    @patogh We use the algorithm used when generating the keystore. So if you create a keystore with SHA256withRSA, we will sign with that. If you create a keystore with SHA1withRSA, we will sign with that.

    Here are our instructions on creating a key store.

    http://help.gamesalad.com/gamesalad-cookbook/publishing/4-android-publishing/4-02-creating-a-keystore/

  • patoghpatogh Member Posts: 23

    Hi,

    My keystore are all SHA256withRSA and if I upload a APK to google I received this error:

    Upload failed
    You uploaded an APK with an invalid signature (learn more about signing). Error from apksigner: ERROR (Jar signer Test.RSA): JAR signature META-INF/Test.RSA uses digest algorithm 2.16.840.1.101.3.4.2.1 and signature algorithm 1.2.840.113549.1.1.1 which is not supported on API Levels [[10, 17]]

    But If create a new keystore with SHA1withRSA is everything OK.
    Problem is for old game if I want make a update for my game became this error .

    But I found this solution so manually I can use old keystore with SHA256withRSA also.

    To sign
    jarsigner -verbose -sigalg SHA1withRSA -digestalg SHA1 -keystore [yourkeystore].keystore [yourappname].apk [youralias]
    To verify
    jarsigner -verify -verbose -certs [yourappname].apk
    To zipalign
    zipalign -v 4 [yourappname].apk [yourappname]_ready.apk

  • unbeatenpixelunbeatenpixel Game Developer Member, PRO Posts: 568

    When will we see a new version of creator? @adent42 @ForumNinja The iPhone X's display has a resolution of 2436 x 1125. Aspect ratio is different than previous models and this is not the only thing that has changed.

    Check out my games on the App Store!

    Wordgraphy / Polycolor / 20 Seconds / Minimal Maze

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    There's still some time (almost 2 months) until iPhone X comes out. Right now, I'm not sure it's even too clear what will happen with older apps that don't update to fit this screen size. Maybe this issue will be partly resolved by Apple? All these aspect ratios are getting a bit ridiculous, and these super-tall ones are really impractical.

    But at the end of the day -- just change the scene and camera size. It's not that much of a hassle, it will take all of 15 seconds.

  • unbeatenpixelunbeatenpixel Game Developer Member, PRO Posts: 568
    edited September 2017

    @pHghost said:
    There's still some time (almost 2 months) until iPhone X comes out. Right now, I'm not sure it's even too clear what will happen with older apps that don't update to fit this screen size. Maybe this issue will be partly resolved by Apple? All these aspect ratios are getting a bit ridiculous, and these super-tall ones are really impractical.

    But at the end of the day -- just change the scene and camera size. It's not that much of a hassle, it will take all of 15 seconds.

    I thought it might affect the review process after September 19th. Of course, I'm not sure about that. It's just a guess.

    As you said, there is a 2-month period. We may have more information about it within 2 months.

    Check out my games on the App Store!

    Wordgraphy / Polycolor / 20 Seconds / Minimal Maze

  • AlchimiaStudiosAlchimiaStudios Member Posts: 1,069

    @pHghost said:

    But at the end of the day -- just change the scene and camera size. It's not that much of a hassle, it will take all of 15 seconds.

    Yep that's really all it is, Gamesalad has given us the tools to adjust for practically any resolution out there. Just takes a bit of time to implement and perfect.

    Resolution is still (slightly) lower then an iPad, so should be able to scale from iPad assets down without losing much if anything.

    Follow us: Twitter - Website

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    In all honesty, since the iPhone X has an OLED screen, I'd most appreciate if they simply turned off portions of the display with an app like that, instead of cropping it etc.

    If we have to support three ARs (tablet, regular phone and X), it adds quite a lot of time needed to just get the UI right. Quite annoying.

  • ArmellineArmelline Member, PRO Posts: 5,327

    I've not looked into the specs of this new iPhone yet. Any reason the existing methods of dynamic universalisation won't work?

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