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Ask a Question / Stencyl Market
« on: June 01, 2012, 12:39:47 pm »
Any idea of the general time frame for the opening of the Stencyl Market?
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Old Bugs (1.x/2.x) / Stencyl requires an internet connection or freezes
« on: May 27, 2012, 03:13:14 pm »
I use my desktop computer for any sort of development. It doesn't have an internet connection since the network adapter was recently fried. So I download Stencyl on my laptop. It runs perfectly fine on the laptop. I transfer it to my desktop, and it has issues. First, on the desktop, the program does open, but it doesn't load any of the sample games. Also, after clicking the button to create a new game, I see the "Saving..." message, but that message never disappears, and nothing happens after that. It doesn't exactly "freeze", since I can close the program, but I can't do anything useful with it either. It's impossible to create a new game. There's nothing wrong with the desktop computer besides the lack of an internet connection. The desktop is actually new. Windows 7 64. Ran program as administrator and all that. Will you make it so you don't need an internet connection to use this?
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Archives / Suggestion List
« on: June 13, 2011, 11:40:36 pm »
I tried submitting all of this via the StencylWorks feedback dialog, but it didn't seem to send. Sorry if any of this has already been mentioned.
1. When you want to add a behavior to an actor, it would be nice to be able to do that straight from the actor's tab, not have to go somewhere else to create the behavior and *then* add it to the actor. Also, you shouldn't have to place the behavior in a category either. It's just another impediment. If you want to provide that ability, at least make the first category listed and automatically selected be called something like "Any". I guess I get your thinking about defining external behaviors and categorizing them to encourage behavior reuse/sharing, but it's just troublesome. Please reduce the amount of clicking around done in this program. My hand hurts!
2. Scene-specific behaviors didn't work for me at all. I added a simple one just to create an actor somewhere "when created", but all it did was laugh at me.
3. Your loop blocks increment a counter by 1, but I should be able to set the amount of the increment on the loop block itself. Otherwise, I seem to have to create an attribute named "i" (an attribute for a temporary variable???), set it to 0 whenever I want to start a loop, use a loop block that increments its own counter that I'm not using, and then increment my "i" by the amount I want.... Seems pretty inefficient. I don't want anyone complaining "OMG! UR GAEM LAGGED MY FLASH!11!"
4. Ah, Scratch. The Programming Model That Was Foretold To Come.... More like, The Programming Model Forged In Hell!! I was forced to use Scratch for one of my Computer Science courses, and I absolutely hated it, for a number of reasons. Almost all of my classmates hated it as well, so we switched to another engine for our finals. One problem is that this block editor was horribly slow and often buggy on the computers at my college, and it's horribly slow on my computer at home also, which can certainly handle more complex things. I know you won't toss the block system. Just venting my and others extreme dislike of it.
5. Need toolbar buttons for common things like undo and redo. Clicking on Edit --> Undo or Ctrl+Z is too much for my carpal tunnel.
6. There were some things I didn't immediately know I could do because the buttons were on the bottom of the screen and "camouflaged", whereas the only thing most people expect on the bottom of the screen is a status bar. (Well, I'm a Windows user and haven't used a Mac in years, so I don't know what you crazy Mac users expect. Yeh, I know Windows sucks.)
7. Let me change the interface's color scheme! My eyes shed blood looking at all this dull gray and black.
8. I had clicked on Publish from an example game just to see the steps that it would take me through. I assumed it would've notified me that I was on the final step and the next click would push the game to the site. It wasn't until I saw a progress bar and "Publishing..." that I said "OH CRAP!!" and realized I wasn't provided such a notification. So, to avoid publishing the example game to the site like a n00b, I quickly shut the entire program down. lol. No Cancel button???. The publishing step should be much more informative/user-friendly.
9. Sure, I could've read the tutorials, but no program that's meant to be simple for the masses should need one right? Speaking of tutorials, clicking on the 1-hour course did not launch anything at all. The first tutorial did launch however (but I didn't read it). Although, even if the 1-hour course button had worked, I doubt I would've felt like going through it. Yeh, I know, lazy.... But I'm a guy who sat down and read the entire Game Maker manual before even starting the program. So with my general patience level, you just know most of the other slack-jawed yokels and whatnot on the net won't read that thing. Also, the tutorials should start with a Table of Contents with links that I can click to quickly get to the parts I'm interested in and maybe some breadcrumb navigation. Just having Next and Previous buttons is not enough.
10. Having some sort of "place_free()" and "position_free()" Game Maker-like functions for blocks would be useful. I mention Game Maker, which I actually hate because of its brain-dead interface and company, but it currently has the best, most expansive list of functions for 2d development out of any other package out there.
That's all for now...
1. When you want to add a behavior to an actor, it would be nice to be able to do that straight from the actor's tab, not have to go somewhere else to create the behavior and *then* add it to the actor. Also, you shouldn't have to place the behavior in a category either. It's just another impediment. If you want to provide that ability, at least make the first category listed and automatically selected be called something like "Any". I guess I get your thinking about defining external behaviors and categorizing them to encourage behavior reuse/sharing, but it's just troublesome. Please reduce the amount of clicking around done in this program. My hand hurts!
2. Scene-specific behaviors didn't work for me at all. I added a simple one just to create an actor somewhere "when created", but all it did was laugh at me.
3. Your loop blocks increment a counter by 1, but I should be able to set the amount of the increment on the loop block itself. Otherwise, I seem to have to create an attribute named "i" (an attribute for a temporary variable???), set it to 0 whenever I want to start a loop, use a loop block that increments its own counter that I'm not using, and then increment my "i" by the amount I want.... Seems pretty inefficient. I don't want anyone complaining "OMG! UR GAEM LAGGED MY FLASH!11!"
4. Ah, Scratch. The Programming Model That Was Foretold To Come.... More like, The Programming Model Forged In Hell!! I was forced to use Scratch for one of my Computer Science courses, and I absolutely hated it, for a number of reasons. Almost all of my classmates hated it as well, so we switched to another engine for our finals. One problem is that this block editor was horribly slow and often buggy on the computers at my college, and it's horribly slow on my computer at home also, which can certainly handle more complex things. I know you won't toss the block system. Just venting my and others extreme dislike of it.
5. Need toolbar buttons for common things like undo and redo. Clicking on Edit --> Undo or Ctrl+Z is too much for my carpal tunnel.
6. There were some things I didn't immediately know I could do because the buttons were on the bottom of the screen and "camouflaged", whereas the only thing most people expect on the bottom of the screen is a status bar. (Well, I'm a Windows user and haven't used a Mac in years, so I don't know what you crazy Mac users expect. Yeh, I know Windows sucks.)
7. Let me change the interface's color scheme! My eyes shed blood looking at all this dull gray and black.
8. I had clicked on Publish from an example game just to see the steps that it would take me through. I assumed it would've notified me that I was on the final step and the next click would push the game to the site. It wasn't until I saw a progress bar and "Publishing..." that I said "OH CRAP!!" and realized I wasn't provided such a notification. So, to avoid publishing the example game to the site like a n00b, I quickly shut the entire program down. lol. No Cancel button???. The publishing step should be much more informative/user-friendly.
9. Sure, I could've read the tutorials, but no program that's meant to be simple for the masses should need one right? Speaking of tutorials, clicking on the 1-hour course did not launch anything at all. The first tutorial did launch however (but I didn't read it). Although, even if the 1-hour course button had worked, I doubt I would've felt like going through it. Yeh, I know, lazy.... But I'm a guy who sat down and read the entire Game Maker manual before even starting the program. So with my general patience level, you just know most of the other slack-jawed yokels and whatnot on the net won't read that thing. Also, the tutorials should start with a Table of Contents with links that I can click to quickly get to the parts I'm interested in and maybe some breadcrumb navigation. Just having Next and Previous buttons is not enough.
10. Having some sort of "place_free()" and "position_free()" Game Maker-like functions for blocks would be useful. I mention Game Maker, which I actually hate because of its brain-dead interface and company, but it currently has the best, most expansive list of functions for 2d development out of any other package out there.
That's all for now...
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