GameSalad 0.9.80 Beta: Loading, Performance, & In-App Browser

October 5 2011, 4:15pm

Late last week, our CEO Steve Felter announced a shift in priorities for the next release of GameSalad. Based heavily on valuable feedback from our community, we moved to dedicate more resources to improving the performance and power of the GameSalad engine. Today, we’re pleased to announce the first part of those improvements with the launch of GameSalad Creator 0.9.80, available now. Included in this release are the first of two major behind-the-scenes revisions to our engine’s asset and memory management. We’ve also introduced a new, powerful feature that allows developers to choose pre-loaded assets and, when used efficiently, can bring loading times down to almost nothing. We also managed to sneak in a new feature to our OpenURL behavior that means never having to leave your game, even when directed to an external URL. The new Asset Loader allows developers to select which actors will be pre-loaded into a project. The interface is a simple boolean switch, located in the attributes section of each actor. When “Pre-Load” is on, the actor will be loaded into memory at when the game launches. If “Pre-Load” is off, the actor will be loaded when it is called within the game. This feature, when used efficiently, has the power to virtually eliminate loading times for GameSalad games and will greatly improve the experience for all of our Community’s players. In conjunction with the Asset Loader, we’ve also completed the first part of our asset manager refactoring. This modification is deigned to produce better performance in-game, and prevent crashes due to memory usage. Combined with the Asset Loader, developers should be able to see a noticeable increase in the performance of their titles. Finally, we have our new In-App Browser. This feature enables developers to keep players inside their app, even when directed to an external website through our OpenURL behavior. Previously, GameSalad apps and games would have to go into multitask mode when an OpenURL behavior was activated. Now, when OpenURL is activated, the link will open via our In-App Browser. This will help keep players in-game longer and provide a better overall play experience. We’re very excited about GameSalad 0.9.80, and about the improvements we’ve been able to make to engine performance and load times. At the same time, there’s lots more to come, and we’re going to continue improving the engine and making GameSalad even more powerful as we make this final march out of Beta and toward GameSalad 1.0. Where Do I Go Now?

Download GameSalad Creator 0.9.80 Download GameSalad Viewer Asset Loader Best Practices GameSalad Marketplace GameSalad Cookbook Discuss on the GameSalad Forums