State of the Salad 03/2018

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

    @jr2520 said:
    @adent42 I've submitted 2 tickets on your "Pro User Gamesalad Support" days ago and still have not received anything indicating my tickets were even received. I've been using GameSalad for years and continually pay your $30/mo so I'm bewildered on why I cannot get in touch with support.

    I can look at your ticket; I looked earlier but didn't see it. Maybe it got put somewhere and I missed it. Sorry for the delay!

  • HymloeHymloe Member Posts: 1,653

    Did you guys ever get around to fixing the various HTML5 bugs?

    HTML5 bugs project - play it here - instructions in the game scene
    http://www.muzboz.com/Games/HTML5Bugs/Build18/

    • Sound Positional not working correctly on HTML5.

    • Sound Pitch not working correctly on HTML5.

    • If you have actors that change their Width and Height at runtime, the physics collision shape does not update to match it's size.

    • Large Text does not render correctly.

    EXPECTED BEHAVIOUR: Make all these features work the same in HTML5 as they do in the Mac Creator play mode.

    You can grab a copy of this project here, with NOTES in the relevant actors about each bug:
    http://www.muzboz.com/Games/HTML5Bugs/Build18/HTML5-Bugs-Project18.zip (411 kb)

    (Last check by me in GS 1.25.79. Published thru GS servers, and uploaded to the web as of today, 16th March 2018.)

  • KevinCrossKevinCross London, UKMember Posts: 1,894

    Has text boxes improved in version 2.0 on mobile devices? Or do you still open a full screen text box?

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

    @Hymloe thanks for the example project. Haven't looked at any of those yet. Font rendering might not be fixable. The resize I looked at it a few years ago but couldn't find a source of the problem. We even upgraded box2d implementations to try to fix it. I think, based on a different bug, I might have an idea, but gonna want to sort the ad updates first.

    @Kevin Cross, still full screen. I don't think we'll be making any changes to it, rather I'd put the effort into improving text input overall.

  • Two.ETwo.E Member Posts: 599

    Nice work! Some really cool features coming to the web creator. I hope you send out a massive email campaign to everyone once you change your UI (Professionally). I would be very interested in re-visiting the software if there are changes to the interface, it really is a big reason why some many have left.

    Also, I hope you also put in some settings to turn of the preview requirements. I don't really need to fix all the "errors" in my game for testing purposes. If I could toggle them on and off, that would be very useful. I assume this is very handy for education students though!

    Every now and then I like to see if what the creator is doing and it takes me 1-2 minutes before I close it down. I think everyone has provided feedback on what needs improving, but it seems these conflict with the feedback from students?

    Great communication so far!

    Best,
    Two.E

  • KevinCrossKevinCross London, UKMember Posts: 1,894

    @adent42 thanks for replying. That is unfortunate as full screen was just weird, but thought I'd ask as I've been away from the forums and software for a while.

    One thing you may want to look at if you haven't already sorted it was the Done button on the device was almost impossible to see. I raised it when I was a user of the software: http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/92898/keyboard-input-done-button

  • jr2520jr2520 Member Posts: 9

    @Braydon_SFX said:

    @jr2520 said:
    @adent42 I've submitted 2 tickets on your "Pro User Gamesalad Support" days ago and still have not received anything indicating my tickets were even received. I've been using GameSalad for years and continually pay your $30/mo so I'm bewildered on why I cannot get in touch with support.

    I can look at your ticket; I looked earlier but didn't see it. Maybe it got put somewhere and I missed it. Sorry for the delay!

    @Braydon_SFX No problem, but since I still haven't received any response from GameSalad besides your comment here, I'd be happy to explain it here. Essentially GameSalad will only show Banner Ads. I've tried every ad provider and every combination of settings in both GameSalad Publisher and each Ad Networks website settings. Simply the only Ads that appear are Banner Ads. With literally no support I've come to the conclusion that this is a GameSalad issue. Testing the app, I can see the scene reset when it should but no Interstitial Ad shows, and when the user chooses a Reward Ad, nothing is shown either. The reward attribute isn't updated, no reward is given, and the scene simply changes. Yet throughout all of this Banner Ads are showing. @adent42 mentioned an update to ChartBoost, but my concern is that you need to update all of your ad SDKs... or something, IDK this isn't my job. What I do know is that you advertise that customers can make money from this service and once they've spent months on a project, paying $30 each of those months, and are finally ready to complete their project and start monetizing it, it's pretty disappointing when NONE of the monetization features work as advertised, rendering the project, the months of time, and the GameSalad subscription useless. This is false advertisement and I will absolutely NOT sit back while you scam me and post about being sick or wanting time off for spring break. This is a company you're running.

  • HymloeHymloe Member Posts: 1,653

    @adent42 said:
    @Hymloe thanks for the example project. Haven't looked at any of those yet. Font rendering might not be fixable. The resize I looked at it a few years ago but couldn't find a source of the problem. We even upgraded box2d implementations to try to fix it. I think, based on a different bug, I might have an idea, but gonna want to sort the ad updates first.

    @Kevin Cross, still full screen. I don't think we'll be making any changes to it, rather I'd put the effort into improving text input overall.

    It would be great if the COLLISIONS and SOUND issues were addressed, as they are fairly core parts of the engine, and I can't currently output my completed game to HTML5, that I spent about 5 years on, because these core engine features do not work on HTML5.

    Cheers.

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    @jr2520 said:
    Essentially GameSalad will only show Banner Ads. I've tried every ad provider and every combination of settings in both GameSalad Publisher and each Ad Networks website settings. Simply the only Ads that appear are Banner Ads. With literally no support I've come to the conclusion that this is a GameSalad issue.

    Have you had any assistance from the community on this? While there were and are some issues with ad networks, I'm not aware o anyone else having this same experience, where nothing except banners works. If you are really the only one, it's doubtful it is a GameSalad issue.

    Maybe start a new thread and share screenshots how your logic and Ad Networks are set up, to get some feedback?

  • J's JunctionJ's Junction IllinoisMember, PRO Posts: 81

    I can not get a hold of support. I had to start a dispute with my credit card company. I believe 7 days of waiting for an initial response was generous of me.

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

    Just to help with some worries, @Hymloe is looking for positional sound. The HTML5 engine can play sound. The collision issue is related to the collision shapes of resized actors. We may have a lead on that since we also discovered an issue where collisions are a bit weird and depend on which actor you add them too. I have a feeling both issues are related.

    @KevinCross I'll look into the Done button soon.

    @Two.E so teachers and students tend to love the software, but they're also not using it for hours on end (most students use it in 30 minute increments during their class time). I think the sentence structure we currently have helps as a description of what's going on with each behavior for the first time, but's it's not great when you're scanning large numbers of behaviors or if you already know what a behavior does, so that's the kind of though we're gonna put into the "pro" design. The errors are kind of necessary for now, as the HTML5 engine is pickier about missing inputs. So if you have an error message, it's usually something that's blocking preview. But there are the "warning" messages, and I'll add something so you can turn those off.

    Chartboost UPDATE
    It's been slow going with them as they take a couple of days between responses. I got my last response just as I was leaving for the weekend, so I'll be getting back to them today. Hopefully we can get this resolved this week.

  • HymloeHymloe Member Posts: 1,653

    @adent42 said:
    Just to help with some worries, @Hymloe is looking for positional sound. The HTML5 engine can play sound. The collision issue is related to the collision shapes of resized actors. We may have a lead on that since we also discovered an issue where collisions are a bit weird and depend on which actor you add them too. I have a feeling both issues are related.

    Just to clarify @adent42 , yes I know that the HTML5 engine can play sound. But the "positional" and "pitch" functionality do not work, correct? Do you acknowledge that? The bug is that sound can only be played at full volume, at a pitch of "1". Sound does not pan left and right if the player moves away from the sound source, and volume does not attenuate as the player moves away either. And if you try to play the pitch at anything other than 1, such as 1.5, or 2, or 0.8, the sound will always play at a pitch of "1" anyway. Do you understand?

    Also, regarding collisions, great to hear you have a lead, and I would really like you to follow up on that, as I believe I reported it one or two years ago (I lose track), and nothing has been done. These are fundamental elements of the HTML5 functionality, and without those things working, in my case at least, the "HTML5 support" may as well not be listed as something that Game Salad can do, at all.

    I really feel that my bug reports generally fall on deaf ears, and sit in the bug base for literally years on end. (You can go look up my open bugs for proof of that).

    Game Salad has some nice things about it, but it has been a long journey of frustrated expectations waiting for basic things like... true and full support for HTML5 output, that actually honors the functionality as seen in the iOS or Mac versions of Game Salad. And, Windows output support. (HTML5 support, if done correctly, would at least allow for wrapping that into a Windows version).

    I am 99% confident that you will NOT fix this sound issue, or the collisions issue, because... history. I would be delighted to be proven wrong. But time for me is running out. After years of waiting, I am finally trying to export out "archival / historical" versions of all my software I've made in GS, so I can dust off my hands and unsubscribe.

    And it really saddens and frustrates me (as you may have noticed), that after all these years, I'm walking away from an engine that still has so many of the shortcomings that have been there for years.

    I don't think you guys realise that, even if there may not be many users harping on about these bugs, for many users, they probably come across these stumbling blocks, and shrug and go, "I guess I won't be trying to use that feature", or "jee, maybe that'll be fixed one day, but for now I'm gonna just give up on that"... and they may go off and silently give up on some aspect of your feature set, and that weakens what Game Salad is overall.

    My frustration boils over very quickly when I think about how you advertise your HTML5 output, and sure it works for some things. But it does not work fully across your feature set, including core aspects like SOUND playing POSITIONALLY and PITCHED, and the COLLISIONS system not updating properly and accurately if the actor changes at runtime, and also TEXT displayed at a size of over about 50 or 60 renders all wrong. These are not bazaar feature requests, they are just BUGS for common, core engine functionality.

    These are reported bugs, and you can see them demonstrated very clearly, without ambiguity, in the demo project I've provided. I can't imagine they'll be fixed before I finally bow out for good. But if you happen to have a chance to address them, well that'd be just fantastic.

  • SocksSocks London, UK.Member Posts: 12,822
    edited March 2018

    @Hymloe said:
    I don't think you guys realise that, even if there may not be many users harping on about these bugs, for many users, they probably come across these stumbling blocks, and shrug and go, "I guess I won't be trying to use that feature", or "jee, maybe that'll be fixed one day, but for now I'm gonna just give up on that"... and they may go off and silently give up on some aspect of your feature set, and that weakens what Game Salad is overall.

    "Workaround" has always been GameSalad's middle name, but I would agree that people just seem to resign themselves to the fact that when an issue arises it's very probably going to become permanent, of course that's not true of everyone and every issue, you do see more persistent members fight their corner for weeks and even months, with varying levels of success (or failure), but personally speaking when an issue came up I did - like you say - just assume, based on history, it was vanishingly unlikely to get fixed and simply go for the 'I'm gonna just give up on that' option, which can work for a surprisingly long time, you'd be surprised what you can workaround if you're prepared to put in the effort, but eventually one of the issues will likley catch up with you, it might be touch screen issue for one person or an ad network incompatibility issue for another, personally the slow demise of the iOS viewer finally threw me out of the GameSalad world, and it sounds like it's HTML5 for you, but whatever the issue the fact that even the hardcore fans of GameSalad feel this way should tell you something.

  • HymloeHymloe Member Posts: 1,653

    Mostly, I can take the projects I've made, and export them as a combination of HTML5 projects, Mac projects, and Android projects, and between those options, I have a working version of my game for posterity sake.

    But yes, sadly, my big magnum opus, I cannot export to HTML5, as the issues with that output format prevent that from being viable. My game procedurally generates levels, and therefore the collisions are all broken, and the sound issues mean that all my sounds play at full volume, making it a horrible cacophony that sounds nothing like it should.

    I do have a Mac and Android build of it, and of course the iOS version published to the App Store. But ideally, I want versions of my games I can keep for decades to come, that run on open platforms, such as Windows, HTML5, and to some degree Android.

    The issues with HTML5 prevent me from ever being able to offer up some of my proudest game efforts to an online audience, whether it's on my website, or itch.io, or something like Kongregate. Those options at sharing my work, or monetising through those platforms are simply cut off entirely due to long-stranding HTML5 bugs that have never been addressed.

    That's very frustrating for someone paying $40 a month (in Australian dollars).

    I've always hoped things would get addressed.

    Anyway, I'm coming to peace with it all, and just doing my best to export my games out in as many formats as each project works in. :)

    All in all, everything considered, it's been worthwhile being here.

    But ultimately, if you're going to take your art and work seriously, you need tools that you can really respect and rely on... where you own skills and ability are what's limiting you, not long-standing flaws and bugs in the tool chain.

    But hey, we had some good times. :)

    I feel a bit weird that once I unsubscribe, I don't think I'll be able to OPEN UP and LOOK AT MY OWN projects in years to come. But many will maybe open up in old versions of GS. We'll see!

    All good.

    OXOX

  • adent42adent42 Key Master, Head Chef, Executive Chef, Member, PRO Posts: 3,034
    edited March 2018

    Quick Update for people waiting on this stuff:

    We have the source of the Chartboost issue, we think. The fix may have side effects though, so testing that. (Basically, the offending code is something put there to gobble up unused clicks during scene transitions. I think it's unnecessary now, but we'll need to do some testing to be sure.

    Also, we found the source of the edge click (or lack there-of) issue on iOS, so that should be fixed with the coming release.

  • JapsterJapster Member Posts: 672

    @adent42 said:
    Quick Update for people waiting on this stuff:

    We have the source of the Chartboost issue, we think. The fix may have side effects though, so testing that. (Basically, the offending code is something put there to gobble up unused clicks during scene transitions. I think it's unnecessary now, but we'll need to do some testing to be sure.

    Also, we found the source of the edge click (or lack there-of) issue on iOS, so that should be fixed with the coming release.

    I, the perpetually whinging b*stard of late, have actually given you an Awesome for this bit of news @adent42 ... Make it happen, pleeeeeease.....

  • HymloeHymloe Member Posts: 1,653

    Can anyone else get to the publishing page currently?

    I'm getting a 504 gateway error.

    I have no idea if this is a 30 minute problem, or to walk away from my computer for the day.

    Any updates would be much appreciated.

  • HymloeHymloe Member Posts: 1,653

    Can anyone go here currently?
    http://publish.gamesalad.com/games

  • HymloeHymloe Member Posts: 1,653

    Looks like it's back now. :)

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    @adent42 said:
    Also, we found the source of the edge click (or lack there-of) issue on iOS, so that should be fixed with the coming release.

    Super! If it's not too long an explanation, I'd be quite interested in what was causing it.

  • JapsterJapster Member Posts: 672

    @pHghost said:

    @adent42 said:
    Also, we found the source of the edge click (or lack there-of) issue on iOS, so that should be fixed with the coming release.

    Super! If it's not too long an explanation, I'd be quite interested in what was causing it.

    +1 to this! - it's been the bane of my life for the last few months... :frowning:

  • ArmellineArmelline Member, PRO Posts: 5,327
    edited March 2018

    @adent42 Processing seems to be taking unusually long. It hasn't been going long enough that I can say there's a problem yet, but it's at about 10x the normal durartion so far.

    Edit: I hit Save Comment and it went "ping". So please disregard :D

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

    @pHghost @Japster Basically, iOS 10 (I think, I forget when it starts) onward have a "gesture" areas for OS gestures. The gesture handling area can intercept the clicks and not pass them on.

    Before iOS 11, Apple assumes that if you're hiding the status bar, you want do de-emphasize the gestures, so you have to do them twice.

    In iOS 11, they added another config option you had to enable to de-emphasize the gestures. Just hiding the status bar wasn't enough. Likely because of the iPhone X's required 'Home' gestures.

    So the code now turns that flag on and it also turns on a flag to fade out the iPhone X 'Home' bar when it's not in use.

    There is another issue now, but I think it's unavoidable. There's now a 16px area around the screen that's not very sensitive (which is much smaller than the problem people were seeing). I'm guessing it's permanent gesture space that can't be reclaimed, so to be safe, you'll want to design your games with that safe zone in mind. I'll keep looking to find a work-around, but I'm thinking we're gonna be stuck with that.

  • ArmellineArmelline Member, PRO Posts: 5,327
    edited March 2018

    @adent42 - Cannot publish. Fails during upload.

    I appear to have been signed out and cannot sign back in - it just times out.

    Edit: I'm now signed in but offline. Get JSON decoding error when hitting publish.

  • ArmellineArmelline Member, PRO Posts: 5,327

    Issue has resolved for me.

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    @adent42 Thank for the write-up! Much appreciated!

    @adent42 said:
    There is another issue now, but I think it's unavoidable. There's now a 16px area around the screen that's not very sensitive

    16px will hopefully not be a huge deal, so great! Is that actual 16 onscreen pixels, or 16 GameSalad points?

  • HymloeHymloe Member Posts: 1,653

    PUBLISHING SYSTEM IS DOWN AGAIN!

    And seems to now be redirecting to ...
    http://arcade.gamesalad.com/error

    ...which worries me.

    Still in the middle of exporting my game projects out.

    When will this be fixed?

  • HymloeHymloe Member Posts: 1,653

    Game Salad: @ForumNinja @adent42

    Could you please keep the publishing system up and running reliably?

    This is making work very difficult.

    Could you please explain why the publishing site keeps going on and off line recently?

    Is there a reason for it?

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

    Should be fixed now. Something is overloading the auth server, I'm looking into it.

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