Stable Release 0.13.6 - FireTV Support

BlackCloakGS

Stable Release 0.13.6- FireTV Support

For a limited time, Amazon is making Fire TV publishing free for ALL GameSalad Mac users!

To celebrate, we’ll be giving away a total of $1000 total to 3 randomly selected games that are published on Fire TV between now and March 30th. In addition, every game published on Fire TV will net you a free month of PRO, giving you access to publishing on all GameSalad supported platforms and powerful monetization features. For official rules

Features:

• Amazon Fire TV support added. You can now publish apps specifically for the Fire TV.

• Fire TV Remote Support option added to Android, Kindle, and Fire TV publishing targets. This allows you to choose whether or not the Fire TV remote is supported in your apps.

• Gamepad support added for Android, Kindle, Fire TV, and Mac Desktop apps

  • Supports up to 8 Players via USB and Bluetooth with new Game Device attributes

  • Single Player and Multi Player support. Single Player allows every connected Gamepad to act as Player 1. Multi Player treats every gamepad as a unique player. This can be toggled through the "Player Type" Game attribute.

  • Gamepad Buttons Supported: D-Pad Up, D-Pad Down, D-Pad Left, D-Pad Right, Button X, Button Y, Button B, Button A, Start, Select, Left Shoulder 1, Left Shoulder 2, Right Shoulder 1, Right Shoulder 2, Left Stick Click, Right Stick Click, Analog Sticks, and Analog Triggers (NOTE: The gamepad button names are only a reference to the standard XBOX 360 gamepad layout. Some controllers will have these named differently but should work the same)

  • Keyboard Mapping support with new Keymap Game attributes. You can use these to easily add gamepad support to existing projects that use keyboard controls. Just type in the key for the player and button you want to map. These new attributes can be changed like any other text attribute. (NOTE: We only support one button per keyboard key.)

  • Officially supported Gamepads:

    • Fire TV/Kindle/Android: Fire TV Remote, Fire TV Gamepad, XBOX 360 Wireless and Wired gamepads, PS4 Dualshock 4, Steelseries Free, OUYA Gamepad, Logitech F310 (X Mode), Game Elements Recoil, NYKO Playpad Pro, and any gamepad made for Android.

    • Mac Desktop/Creator Preview: XBOX 360 Wireless and Wired gamepads, XBOX One gamepad (USB only), PS2 Dualshock 2 (with the HVG2 USB adapter only), PS3 Dualshock 3, PS4 Dualshock 4, Steelseries Free, Steelseries 3GC (Red Mode recommended), Logitech F310 (Both Modes), Logitech Dual Action, Game Elements Recoil

• The Fire TV remote is moved down the player list as other gamepads are connected to the Fire TV. This will ensure gamepads with more buttons take precedence over the remote.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue that caused iAds to appear at the top even if set to show at the bottom

• Fixed an issue with iOS apps where it could hang on start-up.

• Fixed Revmob ads not displaying correctly in iOS 8.1.3

Changes From 0.13.5RC to 0.13.6

• Fixed D-Pad buttons staying active if you roll your thumb across different directions without letting go.

• Fixed a crash that could happen if a button was pressed repeatedly over a period of time.

Known Issues:

• It is possible that the gamepad you are using is not supported or acts strangely when used in a GameSalad app. Most Android bluetooth gamepads should work. As well as most gamepads that emulate an XBOX 360 controller. Your Mileage May Vary. Additional gamepads may be officially supported in the future.

• Most gamepads do not support both the analog and digital press of the triggers (L2 and R2). What this means is some gamepads will use the Left Shoulder 2 button (digital) while others will only use the Left Trigger axis (analog). Some gamepads may even use both. Plan accordingly.

• Apps published through the Fire TV target in Web Publishing will only work on the Fire TV. You must specify that this app is only compatible with the Fire TV when submitting to Amazon otherwise your app will be rejected. If you want the app to run on Kindle Fire devices as well, use the Kindle target.

• On the Fire TV, gamepads that have a BACK or SELECT button are usually mapped to the Fire TV back command.

• The OUYA Gamepad's analog capabilities do not work correctly in Creator. However, they do work on Android devices (including the FireTV)

• Vendor and Product IDs report as -1 on Android, Kindle, and Fire TV.

• Android devices running API level less than 16 (4.1 Jellybean) do not have gamepad support.

• Open URL behaviors and ad services are not supported in Fire TV apps. Ads may show up based on the campaign, but the user will not be able to activate the ad. The Back button will dismiss an ad.

For more information on how to put controller support in you games see our Cookbook controller page and our next GameSalad Monthly Meetup

RondoRocket

Very nice! Can't wait to start messing around with the gamepad features!

jonmulcahy

Great job everyone. This is one of the more exciting features to come out over the years I've been here. It's so great to play some of my games on the tv.

BobD

Love it!! Thank you GameSalad!!

hzapps

BUG? - What am I doing wrong? I imagine its me, but I'm running 13.5 and after I open a project I usually get about 5-8 modifications of actors and it starts getting so incredibly slow- with the spinning wheel- that I'm waiting 2-3 minutes. I have tried not using back button and returning to scene from home button. maybe helps a little bit but does anyone have an idea what I am doing wrong. It is a Pro membership and using Macbook air.

jamie_c

I have to agree with @jonmulcahy, this is a great update! It's so exciting to have gamepad support!

neoman

@BlackCloakGS Thanks for the update. Keep up the great work. Any update on a solution or a workaround for the Android back button so our games don't get rejected by Amazon ???

supafly129

...

BobD

@theazlowes said:
BUG? - What am I doing wrong? I imagine its me, but I'm running 13.5 and after I open a project I usually get about 5-8 modifications of actors and it starts getting so incredibly slow- with the spinning wheel- that I'm waiting 2-3 minutes. I have tried not using back button and returning to scene from home button. maybe helps a little bit but does anyone have an idea what I am doing wrong. It is a Pro membership and using Macbook air.

1. I also noticed that it starts getting slower with spinning wheel after a few edits.
2. Fields inside the code get cleared when traversing the screen code.

DigiChain

@neoman said:
BlackCloakGS Thanks for the update. Keep up the great work. Any update on a solution or a workaround for the Android back button so our games don't get rejected by Amazon ???

Or the sound continuing to play bug on Android... which will also get apps rejected on Amazon???

freneticz

If i want to add Fire TV support to a app, can i use my ipad potrait Project and just add a button(game.player 1 keymap button a) to my one touch game and then check fire tv in gamesalad publish and in amazon

kirafu

I may express not very good,but this version there is a short lag when initializing the scene,The previous version not have this problem.

This will cause a serious problem,I previously put on the scene objects/actor will be seen,
For example
I spawn a white actor make it the transition fadeOut at initializing the scene In the top of the Layers,at 0.12.20 a white actor will be spawn immediate then fadeOUT,
but this version 0.13.6 all of the actor will be seen,Because there is a short lag!

I did an experiment,
In a clean scene,no any actor,
put a withe actor(width:20,height:20) on scene,
in actor,change attribute width:768,height:1024.
at 0.12.20 play,you will see white actor width:768,height:1024.
but at 0.13.6,
you will see white actor width:20,height:20,than change size to width:768,height:1024.
Appears to have a short lag,This is very strange.

Please fix this problem!
Please.

KC_Games

@theazlowes said: BUG? - What am I doing wrong? I imagine its me, but I'm running 13.5 and after I open a project I usually get about 5-8 modifications of actors and it starts getting so incredibly slow- with the spinning wheel- that I'm waiting 2-3 minutes. I have tried not using back button and returning to scene from home button. maybe helps a little bit but does anyone have an idea what I am doing wrong. It is a Pro membership and using Macbook air.

I experience the same thing. After a few minutes of editing it slows down and I have to shut down and reopen project. Its become a habit that it doesn't even bother me that much but would be so much faster if I didn't have to do this every 10 minutes. I also noticed that sometimes fields disappear when hovering over them in expression editor.
Will this ever get addressed? I feel like people have been complaining about the lag for years.

Other than that I am excited to see these improvements for gamesalad creator. The controller compatibility sounds exciting.

Would be great to have local play without controllers too.

BlackCloakGS

@kirafu we delayed the start of all the behaviors by one update frame to allow the scene to full transition. Before behaviors would start before the engine had full transitions to the new scene. There was a bug where if you had a change scene behavior that then change scene a change scene back to the first scene the engine would break because it was in the first scene when it tried to chance scenes to the first scene. I would recommend working around it for now i will see what i can do. Feel free to file a bug with us and please let me know if any one else is having these kind of problems.

I know there is an issue with the GC that can cause creator to hang for a little while. Unfortunately it will take me a few weeks to fix because i have to rearchitect many major subsystems in creator.

68kStudios

It's really slow. After 10 minutes the creator become unusable...

jonmulcahy

@BlackCloakGS when publishing for the FireTV the only splash screen option we have is a portrait one, would it be possible to get a widescreen option in there?

adent42

@jonmulcahy I'll have to double check but the reason we don't allow landscape splash screens is that android doesn't support the concept of multiple splash screen types. Once I reconfirm that this is the case, we'll check if we can just allow the upload of a wider screen and just change the dimensions you are allowed to upload.

jonmulcahy

@adent42 said:
jonmulcahy I'll have to double check but the reason we don't allow landscape splash screens is that android doesn't support the concept of multiple splash screen types. Once I reconfirm that this is the case, we'll check if we can just allow the upload of a wider screen and just change the dimensions you are allowed to upload.

yea that makes sense, it's just that since the FireTV is for widescreen TVs, a widescreen splash would look better

jonmulcahy

Well I just put my first real build of A Long Way Home onto my fire tv, and it looks gorgeous!

The portrait splash screen is up for a fraction of a second, and it looks like it's using an overscan method to display, so until something otherwise, I'm going to just adjust to suit those needs.

I'm designing my game to use both the fire remote and gamepad. This added a few challenges that I originally wasn't anticipating, when you have 1 button to do multiple functions, sometimes those functions fire off at the same time So I have to do some thinking on that

but did I mention how beautiful it looks?

BlackCloakGS

Can't wait to play it let me know when it in on the app store love to try it. I need some more games for my FireTV.

AlchimiaStudios

@BlackCloakGS said:
kirafu we delayed the start of all the behaviors by one update frame to allow the scene to full transition. Before behaviors would start before the engine had full transitions to the new scene. There was a bug where if you had a change scene behavior that then change scene a change scene back to the first scene the engine would break because it was in the first scene when it tried to chance scenes to the first scene. I would recommend working around it for now i will see what i can do. Feel free to file a bug with us and please let me know if any one else is having these kind of problems.

I know there is an issue with the GC that can cause creator to hang for a little while. Unfortunately it will take me a few weeks to fix because i have to rearchitect many major subsystems in creator.

I'm, seeing something similar ( I use a black transition to fade in /out) in the previewer, haven't tested on device. But I may may be able to change the logic to work around it.

JSproject

@BlackCloakGS said:
kirafu we delayed the start of all the behaviors by one update frame to allow the scene to full transition. Before behaviors would start before the engine had full transitions to the new scene. There was a bug where if you had a change scene behavior that then change scene a change scene back to the first scene the engine would break because it was in the first scene when it tried to chance scenes to the first scene. I would recommend working around it for now i will see what i can do. Feel free to file a bug with us and please let me know if any one else is having these kind of problems.

I know there is an issue with the GC that can cause creator to hang for a little while. Unfortunately it will take me a few weeks to fix because i have to rearchitect many major subsystems in creator.

This change also means that any actors (e.g. control actors and display text) that we have visible on screen for easy access when developing (but hide directly at app start via change attribute self.color.alpha to 0) will now be visible for a split second. An easy work around for that right now is to simply change alpha to 0 on the actor instead. It's a small price to pay for a bit better stability!

8bitninja

Is anyone working to fix the publishing issues that started with 12.20. Since 12.20 my adhocs have no loading wheel (which I thought was a pro feature) and all the greys in my game turn black. I've been patiently waiting and hoping these things would be ironed out by now. So, imagine my disappointment when I publish out with 13.6 and find out that not only are those issues still occurring but now there's a flicker between scene changes. I wish you guys could just add 64 bit support to 12.10. My game ran perfectly when published from 12.10 . The controller support is amazing, thank you guys for all your work on that. But, I would love if someone would let me know when these publishing issues will be fixed and also If pro members will be compensated for time lost from missing features. Thanks!

BlackCloakGS

@8bitninja do you have bugs in the bugs submitted in our public bug database?

AlchimiaStudios

@BlackCloakGS

So I can work around the issue with delayed behaviours for my fade to black transition. But that means the fade to black must be black to start and the appropriate size/position instead of changing or constraining.

That means that every scene has a fat camera sized black box on the top most layer blocking me from seeing the scene...

Of course I can move it our of the way or turn it's alpha off when working the creator... But it certainly has slowed my workflow a bit.

Just a question, but the issue was with a change scene changing to a second scene which had a change scene to go to the first? Isn't that just poor logic and not a bug?

neoman

@DigiChain said:
Or the sound continuing to play bug on Android... which will also get apps rejected on Amazon???

Yes and it would be great to get a solution for that bug too ...

BlackCloakGS

No it turned out that it was a bug in the engine. I will go back and see what i can do to get things to start sooner with out breaking the change scene behavior. However, i won't have a fix until 0.14 . So for now we will just have to work around the issue for one release sorry .

AlchimiaStudios

@BlackCloakGS said:
No it turned out that it was a bug in the engine. I will go back and see what i can do to get things to start sooner with out breaking the change scene behavior. However, i won't have a fix until 0.14 . So for now we will just have to work around the issue for one release sorry .

Fair enough, thanks for the hard work on the engine. Beyond that minor annoyance, it does seem to be functioning quite well for me.

8bitninja

@BlackCloakGS No, I don't. I'm not even sure how I would do that. But, I can't be the only one missing a loading wheel or having all my greys turn black.

BlackCloakGS

@8bitninja it would really help us out if you could submit two bugs in our database. It helps me keep track of all the bugs. Click here to enter a new bug against the engine

AlchimiaStudios

@8bitninja said:
BlackCloakGS No, I don't. I'm not even sure how I would do that. But, I can't be the only one missing a loading wheel or having all my greys turn black.

You aren't. The workaround for greys is to add 1 pixel of color to the grey image (so small cant be seen).

I'll file a bug report on it, it's def during the publishing, so whatever program/script is prepping images during publishing seems to detect the image as greyscale pixels only; regardless of how you saved it and then coverts it to greyscale png which is not supported by GS engine.

the one pixel of colors means it maintains the RGBA png and wont render incorrectly at run time.