StencylForge is down for maintenance (back up, for now)

Is this update part of V3?

No, the StencylForge was taken down because it was causing too much server downtime.

I don't really understand the comotion about the fact the forge is down for a while. The longer it takes, the more progress there is being made. I cannot think of any reason to be that much dependent on the forge, like everything you must have for your game is uploaded there. I've been working for nearly a year with Stencyl and actually just needed the forge twice a month.

To be fair, people use StencylForge in different ways. Some users store their own, regularly used Behaviors on the 'Forge (marked as private). Others may be working on a project that requires a lot of 'Forge usage such as providing a suite of Behaviors for others to use. For these users, unavailability of the 'Forge may have been a major inconvenience, and might even have caused problems with deadlines.

For example, if the 'Forge had been unavailable in the final weeks of my preparation for my book (www.TheStencylBook.com), then it could have caused a delay to the publication. For those who have just purchased the book, it would have prevented them from following the tutorials. For someone who had just paid for a subscription to Stencyl, they will not have been able to access an important feature that they had just paid for.

I'm keen to point out that I am not complaining; I fully understand that taking StencylForge down was an important and necessary requirement for the improvement of the Stencyl tools. However, it's important to be able to see things from the point of view of others; something that is not important to you, might be very important to someone else!

"Some users store their own, regularly used Behaviors on the 'Forge (marked as private)"

This used to be a common use case, but since 2.0, with the ability to export a behavior locally, this isn't an optimal way to use Forge. Likewise, with all of the pre-shipped behaviors included in 2.0 and up, a huge reason behind that was to take StencylForge out as a dependency and to eliminate the need for a user to discover those.

"Some users store their own, regularly used Behaviors on the 'Forge (marked as private)"

This used to be a common use case, but since 2.0, with the ability to export a behavior locally, this isn't an optimal way to use Forge.

I agree, it's not optimal, but I get the impression that a lot of users don't know how to export behaviors; it's a question that comes up quite frequently.

On that note, is there a 'hints and tips' forum? If not, it might be an idea to introduce one; it would be a great place for experienced users to post suggestions for best practice.

That's pretty unfortunate given how long 2.0 has been around.

In fact, it doesn't make a lot of sense at all given that the Export option sits directly next to the Share option. There's no way one could miss that, now that I think of it.

Given that a Wiki is forthcoming, I think it's more productive and organized to have a curated page/section with said hints and tips and a master forum topic for gathering them.

That's pretty unfortunate given how long 2.0 has been around.
In fact, it doesn't make a lot of sense at all given that the Export option sits directly next to the Share option. There's no way one could miss that, now that I think of it.

I agree, but often users just don't look at menu options (or simply don't consider what the option might actually do).

I train end-users to use MS Office products, and they're often very impressed when I introduce them to 'amazing new features' on the Home ribbon (features that have been there since Office 2007). It's human nature for users to only see the options that they need; there's not a lot you can do about it.

Given that a Wiki is forthcoming, I think it's more productive and organized to have a curated page/section with said hints and tips and a master forum topic for gathering them.

I agree; a wiki is definitely more practical for end-users and moderators.

I believe the Forge is back ?
it worked for me at least ...

Just thought I'd double check, the Forge is gone for good?

Thanks for your time.

No, it's been back online for months.  You can't connect?

Yea I can't. I am running an old version of Stencyl so that's probably the reason I can't connect.

(I've been putting off updating since the last time I did some of my games broke, I'll update as soon as I finish my current projects.)

Thanks for your reply.

When I try to go to the forge it just says "check your internet connection" i have tried redownloading and other stuff. If you could help then that would be great!