Buildbox 2.3 Is Here!

Discussion in 'Official Announcements' started by Andy, Dec 8, 2017.

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  1. Andy

    Andy Miniboss Boxer

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    Some people have issues but some are not. It depends on your workflow.

    If your workflow causes issues then please contact support and help us identify why things are not working you. We've tested the BETA closely with many customers, but we can't catch everything. I've noted the Android Studio export issues, it's our first build with Android Studio support so some wrinkles are expected. The consensus was to get Android Studio support out there, it was too important to keep customers waiting.
     
  2. TreySmith

    TreySmith Moderator

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    Hi Lamora,

    Sorry you are having issues, let me see if I can help get this fixed for you.

    When someone has serious issues like this, 90% of the time it's use case. This means that there is something in your game we didn't plan or test for, and unfortunately some times this can be hard to fix via a forum post.

    For instance, maybe you linked an action to a spawner, and copy/pasted those, and we just haven't tested for this specific scenario. That's just a random example, but these types of use cases are almost impossible to test for in a closed environment before we release wide. This is also why some people are posting that their 2.3 is fine, because they might not be running into the same use case issue.

    The main issue is it's hard for us to track these verbally or with just text. If you don't mind, please email a BBDOC or video to support@buildbox.com. That will help us track down the specific cause, and fix it, much faster.
     
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  3. UpperCat

    UpperCat Avid Boxer

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    That's so sad... I'm a student and I'm working so hard for the money I spend on this software...
    Literally nothing is working in this software...

    When there is an update coming it should be nearly bug free, but this version has more bugs than the last one.. I'm happy that there is something like Buildbox, but not to work like this where I have to save every second and make backups everyday...

    I already asked for the last version via email, still no answer.
    When is the 2.3.1 coming? (Without this big bugs)
     
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  4. Christoph

    Christoph Miniboss Boxer

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    Hi @TreySmith , I can fully understand that a software like Buildbox has million of use cases and that it's a nightmare to be aware of all scenarios. I always wondered how you can get around that complexity and am glad I'm not one of the developers. :) I also appreciate the great support you guys have given always when I sent a bbdoc. But you also have to understand that every time we do this, it takes us time do so and time is what we don't have. Since I'm a subscriber I haven't stopped to send in bug reports. At least I do it for the most annoying ones. But paying a steep price for the software - I must admit - I always feel betrayed when I do so, because from my point of view, with what I pay, the software should just work flawlessly. At least after 2 years using it. So why should I 'help' to fix it if I pay a premium price for it. You see what I mean? That's why I proposed some time ago that you guys should invite some of us extreme users to help test the new builds so you can release a (more) bug free product. I gladly would do this in exchange of a free license. So you wouldn't be spending more money on it. But it just was an idea and can understand if you have a complete different approach. I wished though it was one that worked better.

    Now with Buildbox 2.3 specifically we get repeated what we lived with the first releases of Buildbox 2. Even with very simple game builds you encounter bugs very quickly. I opened the software, started a new project and after 5 minutes I came across several bugs. Some are just annoying others seem to corrupt your file like the ones that have to do with the automated optimizing tools. I admit, it was worse in beta 2 but the final release still has some very obvious bugs to it, some of them are listed in this thread.

    But lets dig into a very clear example: the animation timeline for the UI.

    You just have to start animating 1 graphic with scale for example and you will see immediately that the graphic gets somehow moved out of the screen once you manipulate a keyframe at the beginning or at the end of the timeline. And I can't imagine how this has slipped through the testing because when you animate a button you always want it to loop so this is a basic tool/feature of the software that is messed up right now and has nothing to do with a use case. Unfortunately it doesn't stop there. It is like another bug that we have since the animation timeline was introduced in Buildbox 2 and never got fixed. Whenever you copy a already animated graphic from one UI to another, in order to duplicate all the keyframes (instead of redoing the entire animation), the handles get completely messed up (it also happens when you duplicate the entire UI). And then when you try to fix them by clicking on the keyframe and its value and hit enter to assert it, you now have suddenly two keyframes one on top of the other and the animation doesn't work anymore. The only way of fixing it is to delete both keyframes (all 4 if it is for scale) and enter the values again. So by simply doing a 3 step action to animate a simple UI button and make it appear the same way in two different UIs you encountered already 3 bugs all related to the animation timeline. And that's in literally less than 5 minutes of use. You can imagine how this affects our production timeline. I love to animate UI stuff like the character unlock in my last game. And what I can do in After Effects in an hour, in Buildbox I need an entire week. Not because of missing tools or features, but because it's buggy.

    So getting a new 2.3 release should be exciting because I should be able to look forward to it because a lot of the bugs are fixed and a lot of new stuff should have been introduced. But with Buildbox it has been the opposite, at least regarding the bugs. I didn't even touch beta 1, and when I touched beta 2 I knew that last weeks release was impossible with a stable version. And now we have exactly that. And instead of developing one of my upcoming games I'm writing here a novel. lol. In the end, it just doesn't feel right and I see others feel exactly the same. In my case I feel tired to see that nothing is changing because somehow I always hoped that with time passing by and the software getting matured, everything will be better. But I see that it's not. Sometimes - like now with the Master Collection release - it even feels that Buildbox has been dropped for good or that there is just not enough resources put into it. That's when we start to imagine a big conspiracy and get all crazy saying things like you guys don't even use 2.3 anymore and only are rocking version 3 which is why you obviously won't see the bugs. Stuff like that...

    Haha everyone who got it that far I hope I didn't bore you and could help a little in the discussion. At least for me, I could - once more - let of some steam. :)
     
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  5. Lamora

    Lamora Avid Boxer

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    Hi Trey Smith

    Thank you for personal response i really appreciate it, like i said im using Buildbox for more then a year and it changed my life i started the mobile game bussines with it help.

    But i will defend my point here:

    Im not having and issuses that im alone with lot of us have graphic assets deleted and all the bugs that are already listed here

    and im not doing some crazy tricks and hacks in Buildbox that can crush it i have made about 8 games now and never had problem like this

    Also i don't have any control in export phase and when there are files missing like SDK etc i see it, like it wasn't tested at all, and i see all of us have sdk problem when try to create apk

    Thank you i send BBDOC to support already

    i'm really sorry i truly am but Buildbox 2.3 is unworkable at this point
    Still it just my opinion
     
  6. volcank

    volcank Serious Boxer

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    I really don't understand why this release is so buggy. Luckily I didn't start building any games with it but was able to export one of my games that I created in 2.2.9 for iphonex and upload to itunes appstore and it was approved with heyzap mediation and everything.
    But....

    I believe If the following were added I guess users would be more happy with 2.3

    1-Bug Free at least 80%

    2-Able to export both for Eclipse and Android Studio

    3-Since for Android, Android Studio is available at least an online tutorial that really shows how to export and make it work on real device.

    4-An online tutorial for Heyzap and Android Studio (But there is none even for eclipse right now) Thanx to @Christoph for all Heyzap tutorials without him it would be impossible for me to apply heyzap mediation.

    5-Didn't check but I doubt there is still a screen share option for Android. In 2.2.9 it wasn't fixed and I am sure in this one it isn't fixed.(Yes we can not share a gameplay or menu photo in Android still) I can not test because I couldn't make a single working build with this one. And if Heyzap is implemented inside BB project Android Studio is asking for Heyzap Sdk to complete the build unlike Eclipse you could go ahead and make a build in any situation.

    6-Rewarded Video ads (Unity, Vungle, Admob, Applovin) just the basic ones without Heyzap so some part of our ad revenue does not go to Heyzap but it is in our control and we don't need to worry about Heyzap updates and changes with SDK all the time. Basically I don't like mediation since we are indies and do not have lots of downloads so our impressions are important to us. The more impressions more revenue per ad network. I would be happy with Unity alone it gives good revenue.

    7-I know it might not be considered as an important thing but Achievements are important. Why there are not achievements? All the popular games have achievements in them Clash of Clans, Candy Crush etc. I know myself I always check the achievements of Clash Royale and Clash of Clans Achievements all the time like what is my progress.

    8-Being able to create more than 2 event observers so we are not stuck with coins and scores. They are variables and should be created as many as they can. I mean how can we make a game if we can not add more variables. I would like to say for this game collect like 3 candies and 6 chocolates to finish the game. With this we need to sacrifice things like coins or score.

    9-At least a basic energy bar or something without using hacks. I really don't understand why we need to use hacks or other things to create simple things in a game. And yes Timer! A Timer should be added that shouldn't be too hard.

    10- Last but not least Touch controls should be added in this version since this is a big update. I really would like to make touch based games since that is what phones are for. I would like to touch and destroy things nothing else. Even that would make me happier. Anyways.

    I mean the 2.3 version is really exciting because it is really nice to see my game running on iphone x emulator and see how it looks etc. but I guess from the threads above I see that I will only use 2.3 for exporting only right now and still continue using 2.2.9. Also the master collection is great btw but I guess things should be balanced. While creating new and great products the current ones should be upgraded and make sure they are solid. I know I might sound a bit like Mr. Know it all and harsh but I am actually talking for most of the users here and if anyone does not agree with me I totally understand.

    But like today I spent around 3 hours of my time trying to make Android Studio work and I couldn't basically. In that time I could have create at least like 10-20 more scenes for my current game I am working on. Since BB is a drag and drop game maker the exporting and building should be as simple as drag and drop I believe.

    Other than above again I am really sorry if .I was too harsh in my writings but I just wanted to be direct in what I am trying to explain.

    Peace and Happiness
     
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  7. spicedbeangames

    spicedbeangames Miniboss Boxer

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    I think the overall problem is that we have to create hacks and work arounds to make certain things work, and my guess is that some do a bit more than others, which causes problems.

    By using the Action method to replace other controls (for an example), could be part of the problem. With 2.3 I was really hoping for some major steps forward, especially given the time scale between the release of 2.0 and now 2.3. Basic things like having the enemy drop coins/power ups on death, or more variety for reward videos are things that should really be the staple, but we have to use 'hacks' to make them work.
     
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  8. TreySmith

    TreySmith Moderator

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    @Lamora Appreciate the feedback and comments. I talked with the dev team to get some clarification, and no question we did drop the ball on the SDK implementation. We simply missed the advertising part. I set a hard date for a December 7th release, and they were rushing to get our first version of Android Studio in this version. Android SDK export is fully tested and working, but advertising was not. I apologize for that. They are working on a hotfix now.

    @Christoph I appreciate your feedback as well, and the specific example. Lots of times when I just see "lots of bugs" I am not sure what to focus on, but this was helpful. Unfortunately, I tried to recreate your example multiple times and it was working correctly for me. Maybe this is another use case scenario? Here is the video of me doing this:

    Animation Creation Video

    If you don't mind, let me know how it behaves different for you.
     
  9. TreySmith

    TreySmith Moderator

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    @volcank Thanks for the information, and don't worry, you're not going to hurt our feelings. We just want to make the best possible products for you guys and that requires you being honest so we know what you want and expect. So keep it coming.

    We're always working on the bugs and improving the product. I'm sorry you were having issues with Android Studio, and the hotfix coming soon will take care of that. We decided to add Android Studio support as a surprise right before release, and hindsight says this might not have been the best call. People wanted it bad, so maybe it would have been best to slap a beta banner on this feature. We'll learn from this and do better in the future.

    As for the feature request, they are all great requests. Unfortunately, we don't have the time or resources do everything that we want in the software right this second, but we're getting there. I n fact, I am pretty sure with 3.0 you'll be able to do everything you are requesting (in 2D or 3D).

    @MOONRUNNER If nothing is working in your software, then that is not a normal experience and something deeper is going on. Maybe a driver issue, corrupt Buildbox save file, etc. You should not have to save constantly on this build. Please communicate with support so we can fix this for you.
     
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  10. TreySmith

    TreySmith Moderator

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    Hi @spicedbeangames, these types of core functional changes won't happen in 2.x.x. It would disrupt too much of the flow for 2.x, and honestly, I'm not sure how it would even be possible with the current setup. We actually created the node system for 3.0 specifically for these types of changes. With nodes you won't need to do hacks anymore. There's a full State Machine nodes that can be activated by collides, or any other input.
     
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  11. Skrubzy

    Skrubzy Avid Boxer

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    Is there going to be a coding tutorial series explaining how to use the nodes, and make them do what you want?
     
  12. thatguyminib

    thatguyminib Serious Boxer

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    I would love to create a tutorial for it once I get the software and mess around with it, but sadly I cannot until it is released since I am not able to get MC2 lol
     
  13. Christoph

    Christoph Miniboss Boxer

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    Thanks for the reply @TreySmith. My example case was a just that, an example. The same point could be made for the advanced move bugs or anything else that doesn't work. But since you kept up with the specific example I'd like to take advantage of it and go more in depth. :)

    I'm also glad you uploaded a video. Your shown example is the 'obvious' scale up scale down. The standard so to say. I know you did that example because I wrote, it wouldn't work, so that's cool. But if software gets checked like that, then we have problem. Because to have a stable release - in my humble opinion - the software needs to get stress-tested. And to be honest, I couldn't believe that it was working when I saw it. lol. So I checked again and you are right, it works the way you manipulated it. But since I know that I'm not inventing haha I tried to replicate it and just found out the culprit, playing simply a little more with it: Value = 0. If you put for example a scale-in from 0 to 100, then the problem appears. So basically the only thing I had to do is to go one step further to get into trouble and the bugs started to appear.

    I also did a nice video (even though my voice is not as nice that's why I decided not to speak lol) to show all the other bugs mentioned that exist since the introduction of the animation timeline feature. This is what I am fighting with every time I make a nice animated UI. And the problem is not a use case, but exactly the same as with the bug scale=zero. I'm just using the tool in a very straight forward manner. Going a little bit beyond the minimum and animate a little more. Up and down, rotate a little bit, change some values. And as you can see, it is hell. :) So my question would be: has this really not been seen until now by you guys when testing the software or has it been ignored until now because nobody complaint? I think both are severe.

    Here's the video (5 minutes, sorry, but I thought I would show how annoying it is :) )
    https://app.box.com/s/1wy9zetnh6dq5jot9tms9svt3cx84mz2

    In the video you can see:
    1. keyframes are automatically set for other conditions than the one you are manipulating at the moment. Like when you set a rotation keyframe, this keyframe now appears as well in Opacity. So you constantly have to delete them again or even worse, like in scale the already existing animation gets messed up.
    2. Keyframe handles get reset when you add more animation to the same condition and then do what they want. So you have to re-enter them again and again to correct the handles. Example: you ad one more scale up, scale down to the already existing animation.
    3. Keyframe handles get reset when you copy the image/button from one UI to another (similar to the problem as described in point 2).
    4. The re-positioning of the entire UI when you put scale to zero.

    The only one I couldn't reproduce anymore in 2.3 is the double keyframe. It seems to be fixed. :)

    So we got a long way from 2.0 to 2.3 and almost two years have passed by. That's 2 years of having these bugs in all released updates. I can't understand why. It seems the only way this finally gets fixed, is that I took today more than 4 hours of my work day to write here in the forum and to record the video. As Volkan said, I could have worked on my game some more scenes instead, or prepared a release or whatever. Some of my business. I really don't think that it should be my role to point out bugs to you, and if I do, I shouldn't lose that much time. The software really needs to be more stress-tested. And once it's stress tested and it still has a bug because a use case makes some crazy stuff, then I'm more than available to show it in detail so it can get fixed. But if I have to show that the basics are not working like they should then something is wrong. At least if I'm not being paid for doing it or even worse, if I pay for it (imagine!).
     
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  14. TreySmith

    TreySmith Moderator

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    Hi @Christoph, thanks for taking the time to do that. As you stated, it's definitely not your job, and it is appreciated. The video was great.

    I can see how those bugs are annoying, and while I haven't personally ever run across them (I don't manual input often, so maybe that is why), I am not sure of all the bugs in the development log. I had a quick talk with support, and they said this specific issue hasn't been reported to them that they know of. We obviously put priority on issues that customers are facing, so if it was logged and not fixed, that could be why. Regardless, I'll make sure the development team watches this, and ensure they have it fixed soon.

    Thanks again
     
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  15. brakewind723

    brakewind723 Serious Boxer

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    I agree with Andy here. Other than a few minor bugs Buildbox 2.3 has been pretty flawless to me. I think there really is a system disconnect here.
     
    Last edited: Dec 12, 2017
  16. DaddyMagic

    DaddyMagic Boxer

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    This is one of the reasons I've requested a refund, which I'm still waiting for. Because there was no demo I had no idea these most basic features were not possible. Most of us are building games for touch based devices so I just expected touch based controls to be there. I also have objects that need to be interacted with, like touching a balloon and popping it or touched a bomb and exploding, throw a box across the screen ect... I just assumed this was possible with build box because they are technically simple reactions to touch. I can't use build box without this functionality In addition when I sent support requests they went unanswered to this day and so has my refund request. It's just not a way to run a business and capture an audience of dedicated users.
     
  17. Christoph

    Christoph Miniboss Boxer

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    Thanks Trey. I really appreciate you taking the time to get back to us here in the forum. Cheers!
     
  18. Phoebe

    Phoebe Serious Boxer

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    I find it very sad what I read here. I tried to follow the progress of the 2.3 update in the hospital with pleasure but if I read all this here and watch the release notes unfortunately I don't like to read what I would like to read. I keep trying to encourage people to use buildboxes and try to help (be it with tutorials to answer e-mails or form postings, or ask for Facebook) only so slowly I get tired when I have to see how buildbox gets worse instead of better. I understand all those who are annoyed that in the middle of work the program crashes and you keep thinking why Grade now. I could live with it since I've been saving again and again, but since I've been using Buildbox again and again, I've had the problem that after a while with my platformers the Jump Button (on Android devices) doesn't work and I've tried to solve it again and again via support or here in the forum but unfortunately it's always said there are setting problems. After some time I tried all the settings but still haven't found out which ones (it doesn't happen so often anymore but it's still not possible to use the jump button). Eventually I'll get tired too and will probably look for alternatives. I've written a lot of stuff with Zac and have to say nice guy and I know what kind of work it is to build something like that, but after so many years with such a big team you should be able to sell no betas as RC and I think it's a pity that we are always working with big publishers and the small ones are going down. Big publishers are great no question, only can you live from having big publishers as customers? There will be more and more people who are not willing to pay as beta testers.
     
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  19. Phoebe

    Phoebe Serious Boxer

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    Its possible the Problem is we say IT for a Long time please Insert this please Insert that but No Updates for ( real healthbar, real ledder climb , real Touch Control and many more ) but nothing was in Buildbox . But i found a way to make ledder climb Touch Control and many more . The Problem is that was only hacks , it works but the Problem is it works not fine . That all was wishes from User and We've been waiting a long time for. Now its a new Update and Crashes Bugs and many more .

    Ledder climb


    Touch Control



    I think even the developers from Buildbox didn't know that the current version was working.
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2017
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  20. volcank

    volcank Serious Boxer

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    @TreySmith Thank you so much for your time and positive reply. I really wish the things that I listed to come to life in 3.0. Btw I really do understand the worth of Buildbox since I used Construct 2 before and did visual scripting and I know how messy things can get when you are dealing with lots of lots of scripts where as in Buildbox it is what you see is what you get. Even the iphone simulator inside which lets you see how things are working got me hooked up from the beginning. In Construct2 for example it is almost a nightmare you need to set up reference images to center the screen etc and do many many scripting to set things up. Once again thank your for your reply and your time. Have a great day!
     
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