@Chunkypixels said:
What I don't get is how they've managed to cock up alpha transparencies in the first place. They were working fine... So why break them, and then require some half baked renaming system to try fix it?
Was it done as part of some new image optimisation system for the engine? Just seems like a strange thing to break... If it previously worked fine...
Exactly.
I am paying $299 a year to use Game Salad to create and publish games for a global audience.
Yet for the entire time I've been using Game Salad, there are months at a time when I cannot ship a game due to unacceptable bugs such as stuttering sound in one version of Game Salad, or white images in another version.
Currently, there are no supported versions of Game Salad that I know of (after many frustrating hours of combination checking my project in different versions) that I can actually publish my game with.
I'm paying $299 a year to have access to a game development toolkit that is supposed to - by it's very branding - make game development easy, and take away the unnecessary hassles and fiddliness of making games.
But there always seems to be something broken, taking months and months to fix.
The broken alpha issues don't make any sense to me. They just shouldn't happen. Or if they do, they should be fixed up whippety-snap for the next release, not hang around for months.
I'm currently stuck with Game Salad 0.10.4, which is very old now, and still has the sound-doubling bug in it. None of the more recent versions are any good to me, whether official releases or nightly builds.
People can make whatever defenses they want on behalf of Game Salad, about how "it's very tricky to make a game development toolkit with zero bugs in it", or "they're really very responsive", or "oh be gentle on them, there's only 3 people who actually work at Game Salad, there's only so fast they can work." I don't care.
I don't tell my customers, "Go easy on me, I'm just making games on my own", or "oh yeah, it will crash a lot, but just keep in mind that I I don't really have time to TEST my games as well as go food shopping", or "Oh yes, the sound stutters in my game, but please just ignore that, it's a bug in Game Salad, the toolkit I use to make my games". These are EXCUSES, and no one cares. People expect quality, and will judge you on what their user experience is, and they will not listen to reasons. You have to deliver quality, whether you have to stay up all night, or cut features and focus on what's of core importance. It has to work, and there's no excuses.
And the same must be held true for Game Salad. We, the paying customers, MUST have a solid working game development platform. I'm paying $299 a year, and find myself unable to even release a game for 6 out of the 12 months due to the tool pipeline having ship-blocking bugs in it.
It's ridiculous.
For years now, I've watched as promises are made of improvements, but all the time, Game Salad have failed to come up with proper delivery mechanisms to maintain stable bug-free versions of the toolkit for us developers.
I don't want to hear excuses or arguments about why it is OK for Game Salad to have bugs.
I'm sick of them hiding behind their lifelong "BETA" status.
I'm sick of hearing that there's only 4 or 5 guys in the office.
I don't care. At the end of the day, Game Salad needs to be a game development toolkit that users can download and rely upon to be bug free (yes, bug free), and work reliably and intuitively.
Bugs that get reported that prevent people from shipping games should be fixed and patched within one week, every time, every single time.
I don't care why that might be HARD. The paying customer doesn't care why something is hard, or how it's achieved. That is not important. It simply must be done.
@Hymloe You are not the only one here who complain about the bugs. Biggest Failure is they released a PC version of gamesalad instead of fixing bugs on the mac side. Now they have more works to do, because they have to fix the bugs on both sides.
Lets hope they release 0.11 asap. People are losing money on the android side everyday. Or simply they hold off the game and wait for the new version. Sigh...
@Hymloe@clock I have to say I am on most points complete with you. Its really getting more and more annoying. We stay with GS since years and even pay at the time where GS wants more than 1000 USD for the subscription. We are here currently very frustrated. Our game on Android is performing more well than we believed. Currently have about 30.000 downloads in the last days. And its going more and more up. That makes us on one hand very happy. And shows that GS games can perform very well. The game works fine and since the false virus messages are gone the reviews are also going up again. But we don`t get only one $ for our work. Yes no advertising means no money. We have the hope that maybe we can recover something with an later update. But its very frustrating to see your work and the work of my team going to be unpaid. Maybe for some hobby developer here its ok. As its there hobby or they try to earn some side money. But for us this is a real issue.
I can understand GS that they try to work hard to fix the issue and maybe they believed to get a larger audience when they start the Windows creator and several other unfinished features. But they just can handle this in there current company structure. And I am not sure if they ever can handle it in the future.
Yes now some other GS user came and say hey you dont need to use GS and start learning coding and the average blabla. We do also Objective-C and Java development but we cant just switch away our published and current projects without a huge of time and money loss. Our Stupid Game series is available since years and performs good for us. But it is an illusion to believe we can switch just to something else in weeks or even month.
We really don`t lost hope yet and hope that major issues will be fixed soon. And also the promised stuff from GS will work.
I cant believe when I see what they are currently doing with the alpha transparencies. This will make us a ton of issues. And more work. Why? Cant you not just test what you build? Are you have any kind of quality control? I am not sure about this.
I really wonder why there is no open letter from the GS CEO. I am sure he knows that without our all money they have nothing. And I am sure want us to earn good money with our games.
For me it would be great if they increase the pro price and hire more worker. And build a team that will not change so often. I know the technology sector can be very hard but I think GS just have to much open construction areas. Focus on your basics. But make it good.
Game Salad has been trying to broaden its reach with a Windows version of the Creator, and support for Tizen, etc. These are all totally fine things to do, IF you have your core product under control and fully realised!
Users do need to make sure we clearly articulate our concerns and frustrations to Game Salad, and report bugs clearly and effectively to the Support system, and where possible, send them a project file of your own which clearly exemplifies the problem, including steps to reproduce the issue. This can speed up their ability to address issues greatly. (It's much harder for them to fix bugs if it's guess-work, without a clear case they can test against).
I was dismayed at the proposal of the Windows version, knowing that Game Salad was already stretched too thin, and the iOS and Android aspects of the tools have never had enough solid time spent on them, because there's always something else going on at Game Salad.
I can appreciate that Game Salad needs to keep growing and expanding, but they can't make those attempts at the expense of the actual core market they were built to serve, which was for people trying to release profitable games for iOS and Android.
Android has been sadly neglected, and I've never even released my games on Android due somewhat to a general lack of monetisation features on Android, but mostly due to poor performance of the "Display Text" behaviour on that system. Using Display Text cripples a game entirely, so I've never been able to release my games on it without a redesign of my game.
But still at the forefront of my concerns is that simply making and publishing a game to iOS - the very core of this tool's purpose - is always festooned with lingering bugs, and surprise bugs and issues that appear in each new version, along with announcements of "we've updated X,Y,Z, and now it uses MORE memory", when we want to hear they've found ways to use LESS memory.
(The announcement that we might (some time!?) see optimised draw calls is very welcome news indeed, but I am several years beyond holding my breath for features).
I am not going to try and defend GS (as I have and will elsewhere) but I keep returning to the fact that the nature of GS requires patience. This is not going to change in the medium/long term.
I am not against anyone expressing their frustrations and positive criticism can make improvements but there is one basic reality of choosing to work with GS and that you will be frustrated and you will require the patience of the dead.
If you have reached the end of the line you have reached the end of the line.
@lycettebros said:
I am not going to try and defend GS (as I have and will elsewhere) but I keep returning to the fact that the nature of GS requires patience. This is not going to change in the medium/long term.
I am not against anyone expressing their frustrations and positive criticism can make improvements but there is one basic reality of choosing to work with GS and that you will be frustrated and you will require the patience of the dead.
If you have reached the end of the line you have reached the end of the line.
In some points you are right. We need patience and had them over the last years. But as every company and every product there should be some point in the production cycle that it become better. And I don`t see this point of change yet. I am very sure the GS team is trying the very best, but maybe this is not enough? They already build something nice but lost the focus on the important parts of the product and trying to build something to complex to be handled by the small team.
You are also right that its our own decision to stay or to go for some point. But as mentioned before you can`t just switch over a complete gaming line to another platform within a few weeks without a huge loss of revenue and inject a lot more money.
And yes GS have its pros. Its just great to produce a game and publish it on many different platforms. But quality comes before quantity and this is what GS should really write on there walls.
I don`t want to blame here some one from GS or the team or any one else. I just have the hope than if we raise our voices they will wake up. And it seems for my personal feeling that more and more developer becoming unhappy, something that changed not so long ago. I really like open and fair discussions.
People will weigh up the pros and cons and make their personal decisions.
It may be time for some to start switching to another platform. It is in our own interests to make strategic decisions devoid of emotional commitments made to software and communities.
Some are clearly at that point or might I say, some are struggling to see that they are at that point or not able/willing to make a decision.
Some may need to make a switch to find out that it was the wrong or right decision.
But I would posit that if you are expressing frustrations then you are inherently asking yourself questions that require answers that are irrelevant to the status of GS and their choices.
(I reiterate that I am all for the expressing of constructive criticism and not suggesting people should stop speaking).
@lycettebros said:
People will weigh up the pros and cons and make their personal decisions.
It may be time for some to start switching to another platform. It is in our own interests to make strategic decisions devoid of emotional commitments made to software and communities.
Some are clearly at that point or might I say, some are struggling to see that they are at that point or not able/willing to make a decision.
Some may need to make a switch to find out that it was the wrong or right decision.
But I would posit that if you are expressing frustrations then you are inherently asking yourself questions that require answers that are irrelevant to the status of GS and their choices.
(I reiterate that I am all for the expressing of constructive criticism and not suggesting people should stop speaking).
When it would be so easy no one have an issues. Sure if you just have game development as a hobby than its easy. You can play around with different platforms. But if you are working productive and make a least revenue for your company with the product you can't just switch. And also when you support and pay a company for long years a lot of money speaking not from the cheap current price, but the more expensive once before. You also have the right to have an opinion on there way how they work on the product. With out most of us GS wouldn't be existing any more and have no future. And as mentioned before its not all bad with GS.
Of course you have a right, absolutely (and I agree it certainly is not all bad, personally I think the good has generally outweighed the bad).
But you have a responsibility to yourself bigger than that right. You can criticise the tool until the 'cows come home' but you need to ask yourself why you are criticising and what does it mean really for you:
Is your brain telling you it is time.
Are you just letting off steam
Do you get enjoyment criticising for the sake of it.
I am sure there are other possibilities and I am the first to say I have indulged in the third point at times as guilty pleasure…but it ultimately got me nowhere except back at the same question- WHY ARE YOU HERE lycettebros?
If you keep coming back to a place of frustration then analyse why - what does it mean about you and your practice. Do you want to know why you have to do that? Because getting frustrated with GS is the nature of the beast. That fact will not change and you cannot change it but you can change your facts.
You can only change if you give feedback. Good feedback was given in the past enough.
I never said that the pros don't be larger than the cons. In not one sentence. But the issues are also large. And pseudo psychoanalyse doesn't help any one. Or at least no one else than you.
Fact is that sitting there smiling to the world doesn't help any one. Or does it? And for sure things can be changed.
Why I am frustrated? I can tell you. I am loosing a lot of money since november since no advertising on Android is available. And I am sure we are not the only one. And btw. the android app monetization is not a feature that was some feature that is advertised to be available in the future. Its a part of the service we pay for. And yes its my decision to stay with GS but what else we could do? Invest again thousands of dollars to switch to another platform that takes at least half a year? No. So we and many others have the absolute right to make our statement here.
@lycettebros said:
Of course you have a right, absolutely (and I agree it certainly is not all bad, personally I think the good has generally outweighed the bad).
But you have a responsibility to yourself bigger than that right. You can criticise the tool until the 'cows come home' but you need to ask yourself why you are criticising and what does it mean really for you:
Is your brain telling you it is time.
Are you just letting off steam
Do you get enjoyment criticising for the sake of it.
I am sure there are other possibilities and I am the first to say I have indulged in the third point at times as guilty pleasure…but it ultimately got me nowhere except back at the same question- WHY ARE YOU HERE lycettebros?
If you keep coming back to a place of frustration then analyse why - what does it mean about you and your practice. Do you want to know why you have to do that? Because getting frustrated with GS is the nature of the beast. That fact will not change and you cannot change it but you can change your facts.
@Hymloe I appreciate some of your points but I can't help thinking that all your rant suggests to me is that you should maybe reconsider your business plan! Is it not bad practise to invest into something that you feel cannot get the job done? Is it you actually letting your customers down as opposed to GameSalad? Since you feel you cannot release your assets or that you've invested into something and pinned all your plans on something that you know has obviously been in beta, had bugs, the way they work as a company etc etc for some time now!
As for the line I read where you expect software to be bug free, I almost stopped reading … You name me one major piece of software that is bug free and I'll be in awe! That is the nature of software and development. I bet your apps/games have bugs and that is likely tiny in comparison on software scale to something like GameSalad.
Why are you here if GameSalad is so bad?
@beefy_clyro said:
Hymloe I appreciate some of your points but I can't help thinking that all your rant suggests to me is that you should maybe reconsider your business plan! Is it not bad practise to invest into something that you feel cannot get the job done? Is it you actually letting your customers down as opposed to GameSalad? Since you feel you cannot release your assets or that you've invested into something and pinned all your plans on something that you know has obviously been in beta, had bugs, the way they work as a company etc etc for some time now!
As for the line I read where you expect software to be bug free, I almost stopped reading … You name me one major piece of software that is bug free and I'll be in awe! That is the nature of software and development. I bet your apps/games have bugs and that is likely tiny in comparison on software scale to something like GameSalad.
Why are you here if GameSalad is so bad?
I see what ur saying, but everyone knows that when you pay for game salad, you get the ability to have ads. That's one of, of not the primary reason people pay for the pro version. It's hard to argue with the fact that he's a paying customer, and he's not getting what he paid for.
@Daveinpublic I wouldn't know about ads, I certainly don't pay for pro to get ads so I don't have a clue if theres a problem with them. When reading Hymloe's posts on this page, he didn't reference ads either.
The point I'm making is, Hymloe has been active on this forum since 2011, maybe even used GS before that time as well, by now, he knows what he's getting … If he's that sick of GameSalad as he puts it, stop renewing your license and use a tool that meets your needs!
@beefy_clyro said:
Daveinpublic I wouldn't know about ads, I certainly don't pay for pro to get ads so I don't have a clue if theres a problem with them. When reading Hymloe's posts on this page, he didn't reference ads either.
The point I'm making is, Hymloe has been active on this forum since 2011, maybe even used GS before that time as well, by now, he knows what he's getting … If he's that sick of GameSalad as he puts it, stop renewing your license and use a tool that meets your needs!
I see your point, hymloe did mention:
"Android has been sadly neglected, and I've never even released my games on Android due somewhat to a general lack of monetisation features on Android"
What I should have said is, it's hard to argue with a paying customer - the customer is always right. Especially if you're a customer who pays a subscription, because you expect a fully supported product, not just one that worked when you bought it. And in his defense, we were told things would be much better by now, there was never any hints of negativity about the future. I personally thought that years later (now) we'd have many amazing advances and fixes, due to the posts of game salad employees. Looking back, I'm glad I never plucked down the money based on one of the projected timelines but found another program instead, the timelines were laughable in hindsight. They should have replaced all of their projections with - won't be able to fix basic fundamental issues within the next two years. Yes, he should know by now that game salad is not good on their projections or hype, but he could really only know it now after learning first hand, right now. That's not his fault, he's the paying customer. It was a little naive on his part. We can say that he knows what he's getting, but technically, he's not even getting what he thought he would. Because one of the features that many complain about is not there although it's advertised. For what it's worth, I think one of the big problems was the old game salad representatives on this blog, one in particular was unprofessional, and hateful to customers, even bullying anyone who held them accountable. Codewizard is way better, can manage expectations, run the whole staff, and actually talk kindly and professionally all at the same time. I think that game salad today has a more realistic timeline. Hopefully, they will actually fix some of the main use ability problems. But, there will be people from the old mismanaged time that want answers for all the issues, and I can see why.
Depends on what you want out of something I guess. I've never wanted to bombard my stuff with ads so thats never bothered me!
I don't know what exactly has been projected by GameSalad in turn of monetization as its never interested me, therefore, I have never had to hold of a release. I will say unless GS has said Android monetization will be available by xxx then you can do what they say. e.g. Release to Android.
I have been with GS over 4 years so needless to say, i've been through it all and I have never been in a situation I couldn't release a game! Sure bugs are a pain but thats software to a degree, some companies fix quickly, others take time.
I am getting what I pay for .. I can do all of that (unless theres something majorly wrong with App Monetization I do not know about).
As for the present bugs, we are led to believe they have had to completely re-write thing their end for the good of the engine and I believe in that. This takes time and changing things, whilst still trying to keep all previous projects compatible must be no small feat and likely cause additional bugs! Whilst the image alpha thing seems strange, who am I, a nobody who knows nothing behind the scenes, to ridicule them for this cropping up!
Some people are never happy and thats partly why we are, where we are! The forums were filled with complaints of not having this feature or that and something was introduced whilst delaying working on the core! The general consensus was to work with the bugs and keep getting no goodies! It was only when GS got more serious and the community itself that people really wanted to get the engine sorted of bugs and performance! Again a complete overhaul of this engine and keeping present compatibility intact must be huge, lets not forget that!
Every weekly post recently code wizard has shown us the pie chart of bug squashing yet theres still complaints …. Morale of the story, you can't please everyone!
Having said all of that, I do see your points and like I said, being here over 4 years, i've seen it all, trust me!
Perhaps it is time for GameSalad to start offering a monthly subscription. Perhaps $50 for 1 month of Pro. That way, people who are frustrated at all the wasted months they're paying for could instead work on their games, and when they had releases ready and GameSalad is in a stable state where games can be published without getting rejected they can sign up for a month of Pro, push out their releases.
A lot of the annoyance and frustration seems to be that they are paying $299 for a year and feeling most of it is wasted.
My Pro runs out in a few days and I had a year of Pro due from the Tizen promotion (none of which has been applied, despite my first app being sorted well before the end of December). I if I didn't have that year of Pro coming my way... I'd probably not stump up the $299. GameSalad has just become too unreliable and communication from the team too vague and spotty.
I'd pay $50 for a month of Pro, though, when I was ready to push out a new app or a bunch of upgrades.
I wouldn't mind an option like that but can't see it coming personally! Mine is due to expire in around a month and I also have a year lined up from the Tizen promotion but if I hadn't, I would of worked on something until ready to publish and then renew again, the $299 I make back easy from my games.
Since SSS left, there is a huge hole that needs filling by a community manager, thats why the communication and presence has stopped, heres to hoping they hire someone soon!
Again, we are here because we believe in gamesalad, but that doesn't mean we are happy with their updates.
Why do we make games? I believe most of us here because we have the same interest. But we want to make some money out of our games too. You either make a paid game or make it free with ads. So with free games, App Monetization is one of the options for us to make some money. Its been a year, GS still don't have a good monetization feature. Should i mention Playheaven?
I said it once and I say it again ... You don't have to put all your eggs in one basket then cry when the basket can't carry the eggs. I will be having a corona with my salad in the future ... When the salad does not taste too good I will have a beer ... GS will be my primary tool as I have invested time and $$ in it. Yes GS has issues. I don't deny that and guess what in the future it will have new issues ... Things will get better then they will get worse as apple rules change the GS team will need to implement new things and optimise the engine ... etc It will never be perfect that is the nature of software. I will support the company on a pro level because they did a great job to make this tool but I am also going to learn Corona or another tool so in times like these if I have that project that needs to be implemented with features that GS doesn't support I can do it ... That is my two cents ... Some people will like it and some people won't ... Keep up the good work GS and bring on 0.11 soon so people can relax ... ;-)
@lycettebros said:
sometimes I think maybe I can help this person with an alternative view.
Totally agree that is why I comment sometimes as well otherwise I just stay out of it.
@lycettebros said:
A man with a plan has a destiny.
If you take something seriously YOU are the one who has to do something about it. You can't rely on others to do it for you. YOU have to make it happen yourself ... ;-)
Comments
Exactly.
I am paying $299 a year to use Game Salad to create and publish games for a global audience.
Yet for the entire time I've been using Game Salad, there are months at a time when I cannot ship a game due to unacceptable bugs such as stuttering sound in one version of Game Salad, or white images in another version.
Currently, there are no supported versions of Game Salad that I know of (after many frustrating hours of combination checking my project in different versions) that I can actually publish my game with.
I'm paying $299 a year to have access to a game development toolkit that is supposed to - by it's very branding - make game development easy, and take away the unnecessary hassles and fiddliness of making games.
But there always seems to be something broken, taking months and months to fix.
The broken alpha issues don't make any sense to me. They just shouldn't happen. Or if they do, they should be fixed up whippety-snap for the next release, not hang around for months.
I'm currently stuck with Game Salad 0.10.4, which is very old now, and still has the sound-doubling bug in it. None of the more recent versions are any good to me, whether official releases or nightly builds.
People can make whatever defenses they want on behalf of Game Salad, about how "it's very tricky to make a game development toolkit with zero bugs in it", or "they're really very responsive", or "oh be gentle on them, there's only 3 people who actually work at Game Salad, there's only so fast they can work." I don't care.
I don't tell my customers, "Go easy on me, I'm just making games on my own", or "oh yeah, it will crash a lot, but just keep in mind that I I don't really have time to TEST my games as well as go food shopping", or "Oh yes, the sound stutters in my game, but please just ignore that, it's a bug in Game Salad, the toolkit I use to make my games". These are EXCUSES, and no one cares. People expect quality, and will judge you on what their user experience is, and they will not listen to reasons. You have to deliver quality, whether you have to stay up all night, or cut features and focus on what's of core importance. It has to work, and there's no excuses.
And the same must be held true for Game Salad. We, the paying customers, MUST have a solid working game development platform. I'm paying $299 a year, and find myself unable to even release a game for 6 out of the 12 months due to the tool pipeline having ship-blocking bugs in it.
It's ridiculous.
For years now, I've watched as promises are made of improvements, but all the time, Game Salad have failed to come up with proper delivery mechanisms to maintain stable bug-free versions of the toolkit for us developers.
I don't want to hear excuses or arguments about why it is OK for Game Salad to have bugs.
I'm sick of them hiding behind their lifelong "BETA" status.
I'm sick of hearing that there's only 4 or 5 guys in the office.
I don't care. At the end of the day, Game Salad needs to be a game development toolkit that users can download and rely upon to be bug free (yes, bug free), and work reliably and intuitively.
Bugs that get reported that prevent people from shipping games should be fixed and patched within one week, every time, every single time.
I don't care why that might be HARD. The paying customer doesn't care why something is hard, or how it's achieved. That is not important. It simply must be done.
@Hymloe You are not the only one here who complain about the bugs. Biggest Failure is they released a PC version of gamesalad instead of fixing bugs on the mac side. Now they have more works to do, because they have to fix the bugs on both sides.
Lets hope they release 0.11 asap. People are losing money on the android side everyday. Or simply they hold off the game and wait for the new version. Sigh...
@Hymloe @clock I have to say I am on most points complete with you. Its really getting more and more annoying. We stay with GS since years and even pay at the time where GS wants more than 1000 USD for the subscription. We are here currently very frustrated. Our game on Android is performing more well than we believed. Currently have about 30.000 downloads in the last days. And its going more and more up. That makes us on one hand very happy. And shows that GS games can perform very well. The game works fine and since the false virus messages are gone the reviews are also going up again. But we don`t get only one $ for our work. Yes no advertising means no money. We have the hope that maybe we can recover something with an later update. But its very frustrating to see your work and the work of my team going to be unpaid. Maybe for some hobby developer here its ok. As its there hobby or they try to earn some side money. But for us this is a real issue.
I can understand GS that they try to work hard to fix the issue and maybe they believed to get a larger audience when they start the Windows creator and several other unfinished features. But they just can handle this in there current company structure. And I am not sure if they ever can handle it in the future.
Yes now some other GS user came and say hey you don
t need to use GS and start learning coding and the average blabla. We do also Objective-C and Java development but we cant just switch away our published and current projects without a huge of time and money loss. Our Stupid Game series is available since years and performs good for us. But it is an illusion to believe we can switch just to something else in weeks or even month.We really don`t lost hope yet and hope that major issues will be fixed soon. And also the promised stuff from GS will work.
I can
t believe when I see what they are currently doing with the alpha transparencies. This will make us a ton of issues. And more work. Why? Cant you not just test what you build? Are you have any kind of quality control? I am not sure about this.I really wonder why there is no open letter from the GS CEO. I am sure he knows that without our all money they have nothing. And I am sure want us to earn good money with our games.
For me it would be great if they increase the pro price and hire more worker. And build a team that will not change so often. I know the technology sector can be very hard but I think GS just have to much open construction areas. Focus on your basics. But make it good.
Totally agree with those last posts.
Game Salad has been trying to broaden its reach with a Windows version of the Creator, and support for Tizen, etc. These are all totally fine things to do, IF you have your core product under control and fully realised!
Users do need to make sure we clearly articulate our concerns and frustrations to Game Salad, and report bugs clearly and effectively to the Support system, and where possible, send them a project file of your own which clearly exemplifies the problem, including steps to reproduce the issue. This can speed up their ability to address issues greatly. (It's much harder for them to fix bugs if it's guess-work, without a clear case they can test against).
I was dismayed at the proposal of the Windows version, knowing that Game Salad was already stretched too thin, and the iOS and Android aspects of the tools have never had enough solid time spent on them, because there's always something else going on at Game Salad.
I can appreciate that Game Salad needs to keep growing and expanding, but they can't make those attempts at the expense of the actual core market they were built to serve, which was for people trying to release profitable games for iOS and Android.
Android has been sadly neglected, and I've never even released my games on Android due somewhat to a general lack of monetisation features on Android, but mostly due to poor performance of the "Display Text" behaviour on that system. Using Display Text cripples a game entirely, so I've never been able to release my games on it without a redesign of my game.
But still at the forefront of my concerns is that simply making and publishing a game to iOS - the very core of this tool's purpose - is always festooned with lingering bugs, and surprise bugs and issues that appear in each new version, along with announcements of "we've updated X,Y,Z, and now it uses MORE memory", when we want to hear they've found ways to use LESS memory.
(The announcement that we might (some time!?) see optimised draw calls is very welcome news indeed, but I am several years beyond holding my breath for features).
I am not going to try and defend GS (as I have and will elsewhere) but I keep returning to the fact that the nature of GS requires patience. This is not going to change in the medium/long term.
I am not against anyone expressing their frustrations and positive criticism can make improvements but there is one basic reality of choosing to work with GS and that you will be frustrated and you will require the patience of the dead.
If you have reached the end of the line you have reached the end of the line.
Man this is escalating quickly.
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Just people expressing their opinions.
In some points you are right. We need patience and had them over the last years. But as every company and every product there should be some point in the production cycle that it become better. And I don`t see this point of change yet. I am very sure the GS team is trying the very best, but maybe this is not enough? They already build something nice but lost the focus on the important parts of the product and trying to build something to complex to be handled by the small team.
You are also right that its our own decision to stay or to go for some point. But as mentioned before you can`t just switch over a complete gaming line to another platform within a few weeks without a huge loss of revenue and inject a lot more money.
And yes GS have its pros. Its just great to produce a game and publish it on many different platforms. But quality comes before quantity and this is what GS should really write on there walls.
I don`t want to blame here some one from GS or the team or any one else. I just have the hope than if we raise our voices they will wake up. And it seems for my personal feeling that more and more developer becoming unhappy, something that changed not so long ago. I really like open and fair discussions.
People will weigh up the pros and cons and make their personal decisions.
It may be time for some to start switching to another platform. It is in our own interests to make strategic decisions devoid of emotional commitments made to software and communities.
Some are clearly at that point or might I say, some are struggling to see that they are at that point or not able/willing to make a decision.
Some may need to make a switch to find out that it was the wrong or right decision.
But I would posit that if you are expressing frustrations then you are inherently asking yourself questions that require answers that are irrelevant to the status of GS and their choices.
(I reiterate that I am all for the expressing of constructive criticism and not suggesting people should stop speaking).
When it would be so easy no one have an issues. Sure if you just have game development as a hobby than its easy. You can play around with different platforms. But if you are working productive and make a least revenue for your company with the product you can't just switch. And also when you support and pay a company for long years a lot of money speaking not from the cheap current price, but the more expensive once before. You also have the right to have an opinion on there way how they work on the product. With out most of us GS wouldn't be existing any more and have no future. And as mentioned before its not all bad with GS.
Of course you have a right, absolutely (and I agree it certainly is not all bad, personally I think the good has generally outweighed the bad).
But you have a responsibility to yourself bigger than that right. You can criticise the tool until the 'cows come home' but you need to ask yourself why you are criticising and what does it mean really for you:
I am sure there are other possibilities and I am the first to say I have indulged in the third point at times as guilty pleasure…but it ultimately got me nowhere except back at the same question- WHY ARE YOU HERE lycettebros?
If you keep coming back to a place of frustration then analyse why - what does it mean about you and your practice. Do you want to know why you have to do that? Because getting frustrated with GS is the nature of the beast. That fact will not change and you cannot change it but you can change your facts.
You can only change if you give feedback. Good feedback was given in the past enough.
I never said that the pros don't be larger than the cons. In not one sentence. But the issues are also large. And pseudo psychoanalyse doesn't help any one. Or at least no one else than you.
Fact is that sitting there smiling to the world doesn't help any one. Or does it? And for sure things can be changed.
Why I am frustrated? I can tell you. I am loosing a lot of money since november since no advertising on Android is available. And I am sure we are not the only one. And btw. the android app monetization is not a feature that was some feature that is advertised to be available in the future. Its a part of the service we pay for. And yes its my decision to stay with GS but what else we could do? Invest again thousands of dollars to switch to another platform that takes at least half a year? No. So we and many others have the absolute right to make our statement here.
Just to be clear. I said you have the right, absolutely.
Ok!
@Hymloe I appreciate some of your points but I can't help thinking that all your rant suggests to me is that you should maybe reconsider your business plan! Is it not bad practise to invest into something that you feel cannot get the job done? Is it you actually letting your customers down as opposed to GameSalad? Since you feel you cannot release your assets or that you've invested into something and pinned all your plans on something that you know has obviously been in beta, had bugs, the way they work as a company etc etc for some time now!
As for the line I read where you expect software to be bug free, I almost stopped reading … You name me one major piece of software that is bug free and I'll be in awe! That is the nature of software and development. I bet your apps/games have bugs and that is likely tiny in comparison on software scale to something like GameSalad.
Why are you here if GameSalad is so bad?
I see what ur saying, but everyone knows that when you pay for game salad, you get the ability to have ads. That's one of, of not the primary reason people pay for the pro version. It's hard to argue with the fact that he's a paying customer, and he's not getting what he paid for.
@Daveinpublic I wouldn't know about ads, I certainly don't pay for pro to get ads so I don't have a clue if theres a problem with them. When reading Hymloe's posts on this page, he didn't reference ads either.
The point I'm making is, Hymloe has been active on this forum since 2011, maybe even used GS before that time as well, by now, he knows what he's getting … If he's that sick of GameSalad as he puts it, stop renewing your license and use a tool that meets your needs!
Y'all are entitled to your opinion... As long as it doesn't contradict mine.
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I see your point, hymloe did mention:
"Android has been sadly neglected, and I've never even released my games on Android due somewhat to a general lack of monetisation features on Android"
What I should have said is, it's hard to argue with a paying customer - the customer is always right. Especially if you're a customer who pays a subscription, because you expect a fully supported product, not just one that worked when you bought it. And in his defense, we were told things would be much better by now, there was never any hints of negativity about the future. I personally thought that years later (now) we'd have many amazing advances and fixes, due to the posts of game salad employees. Looking back, I'm glad I never plucked down the money based on one of the projected timelines but found another program instead, the timelines were laughable in hindsight. They should have replaced all of their projections with - won't be able to fix basic fundamental issues within the next two years. Yes, he should know by now that game salad is not good on their projections or hype, but he could really only know it now after learning first hand, right now. That's not his fault, he's the paying customer. It was a little naive on his part. We can say that he knows what he's getting, but technically, he's not even getting what he thought he would. Because one of the features that many complain about is not there although it's advertised. For what it's worth, I think one of the big problems was the old game salad representatives on this blog, one in particular was unprofessional, and hateful to customers, even bullying anyone who held them accountable. Codewizard is way better, can manage expectations, run the whole staff, and actually talk kindly and professionally all at the same time. I think that game salad today has a more realistic timeline. Hopefully, they will actually fix some of the main use ability problems. But, there will be people from the old mismanaged time that want answers for all the issues, and I can see why.
Depends on what you want out of something I guess. I've never wanted to bombard my stuff with ads so thats never bothered me!
I don't know what exactly has been projected by GameSalad in turn of monetization as its never interested me, therefore, I have never had to hold of a release. I will say unless GS has said Android monetization will be available by xxx then you can do what they say. e.g. Release to Android.
I have been with GS over 4 years so needless to say, i've been through it all and I have never been in a situation I couldn't release a game! Sure bugs are a pain but thats software to a degree, some companies fix quickly, others take time.
When I look at my pro license and what it covers;
http://gamesalad.com/creator/pricing
I am getting what I pay for .. I can do all of that (unless theres something majorly wrong with App Monetization I do not know about).
As for the present bugs, we are led to believe they have had to completely re-write thing their end for the good of the engine and I believe in that. This takes time and changing things, whilst still trying to keep all previous projects compatible must be no small feat and likely cause additional bugs! Whilst the image alpha thing seems strange, who am I, a nobody who knows nothing behind the scenes, to ridicule them for this cropping up!
Some people are never happy and thats partly why we are, where we are! The forums were filled with complaints of not having this feature or that and something was introduced whilst delaying working on the core! The general consensus was to work with the bugs and keep getting no goodies! It was only when GS got more serious and the community itself that people really wanted to get the engine sorted of bugs and performance! Again a complete overhaul of this engine and keeping present compatibility intact must be huge, lets not forget that!
Every weekly post recently code wizard has shown us the pie chart of bug squashing yet theres still complaints …. Morale of the story, you can't please everyone!
Having said all of that, I do see your points and like I said, being here over 4 years, i've seen it all, trust me!
Perhaps it is time for GameSalad to start offering a monthly subscription. Perhaps $50 for 1 month of Pro. That way, people who are frustrated at all the wasted months they're paying for could instead work on their games, and when they had releases ready and GameSalad is in a stable state where games can be published without getting rejected they can sign up for a month of Pro, push out their releases.
A lot of the annoyance and frustration seems to be that they are paying $299 for a year and feeling most of it is wasted.
My Pro runs out in a few days and I had a year of Pro due from the Tizen promotion (none of which has been applied, despite my first app being sorted well before the end of December). I if I didn't have that year of Pro coming my way... I'd probably not stump up the $299. GameSalad has just become too unreliable and communication from the team too vague and spotty.
I'd pay $50 for a month of Pro, though, when I was ready to push out a new app or a bunch of upgrades.
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I wouldn't mind an option like that but can't see it coming personally! Mine is due to expire in around a month and I also have a year lined up from the Tizen promotion but if I hadn't, I would of worked on something until ready to publish and then renew again, the $299 I make back easy from my games.
Since SSS left, there is a huge hole that needs filling by a community manager, thats why the communication and presence has stopped, heres to hoping they hire someone soon!
Again, we are here because we believe in gamesalad, but that doesn't mean we are happy with their updates.
Why do we make games? I believe most of us here because we have the same interest. But we want to make some money out of our games too. You either make a paid game or make it free with ads. So with free games, App Monetization is one of the options for us to make some money. Its been a year, GS still don't have a good monetization feature. Should i mention Playheaven?
I said it once and I say it again ... You don't have to put all your eggs in one basket then cry when the basket can't carry the eggs. I will be having a corona with my salad in the future ... When the salad does not taste too good I will have a beer ... GS will be my primary tool as I have invested time and $$ in it. Yes GS has issues. I don't deny that and guess what in the future it will have new issues ... Things will get better then they will get worse as apple rules change the GS team will need to implement new things and optimise the engine ... etc It will never be perfect that is the nature of software. I will support the company on a pro level because they did a great job to make this tool but I am also going to learn Corona or another tool so in times like these if I have that project that needs to be implemented with features that GS doesn't support I can do it ... That is my two cents ... Some people will like it and some people won't ... Keep up the good work GS and bring on 0.11 soon so people can relax ... ;-)
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I've learned to not get involved in these types of discussions. Sure is nicer to watch from the sidelines.
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That was a hard lesson learnt Mr Bacon ... I did enjoy watching those times when you were involved ... Ha ha :-)
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Yep I generally am a member of that club but sometimes I think maybe I can help this person with an alternative view.
Time will sort it out. Forum time that is.
A man with a plan has a destiny.
Totally agree that is why I comment sometimes as well otherwise I just stay out of it.
If you take something seriously YOU are the one who has to do something about it. You can't rely on others to do it for you. YOU have to make it happen yourself ... ;-)
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