Release 1.1.7 contains a small documentation fix that didn't make it to 1.1.6.
Release 1.1.6 features Script Properties, improved auto-completion when scripting, fixed auto-update on Windows and login through Yahoo.
We apologize that this release took longer than expected.
Remember to voice your opinions in the
Forums, all feedback is more than welcome.
Script Properties
We have now implemented a first version of the Script Properties.
You can now declare properties inside your scripts and have them automatically appear in the Properties View when they are used in game objects and collections.
More info on how to use them is available in the new
Script Properties user guide.
If you currently create game objects through a factory and pass custom properties to the created game object, you have to declare those properties in the script for it to work. See the
user guide for more info on this.
Improved Auto-Completion
Auto-completion for scripts brings up a list inside the script of the available functions and messages.
You trigger it with Ctrl+Space (Cmd+Space for Mac users).
This is a really handy way to see what's available, as it also contains documentation and examples.
The standard Lua functions are not yet included.
Auto-Update on Windows
This is only relevant for Windows users who currently have the Defold Editor installed.
We have finally managed to get the automatic updating of the Defold Editor to work on Windows.
This means that the version you currently have installed still contains the error and needs to be removed.
Follow these steps:
Open the editor
Select "No" when asked about updating to 1.1.6
Open each of your projects and make sure they are synced (File > Synchronize), the Changed Files View should be empty for each opened project
Remove the editor from your computer
Download a new one from the
dashboardYahoo
We have added the ability to login with Yahoo-accounts.
If you want us to add more providers, let us know in the
Forums.
Other Fixes
- The function msg.url() with no arguments now creates an empty URL which can't be used for message passing
- Fonts were not properly rebuilt when TTF-files were updated
- Drop-down lists for fonts and textures in the Gui Editor
- Wizards for creating new files are easier to use
- Optimizations for editing in the Properties View
- The rendering supports camera components
- Ray-casting against tile maps could cause the engine to crash
Known Bugs
- The editor is slow when editing collections with much content
Script Properties
The Script Properties feature proved to be much harder to implement the way we wanted it to work.
The current implementation is crude and limited in functionality, but we still hope it will simplify your work.
This feature was the biggest reason for the delayed release.
Even though we had planned it thoroughly, there were many unknowns that popped up in the implementation stage.
We have been discussing different approaches to counter these things in the future.
Prototyping
Start by implementing a prototype for the sole purpose of understanding the problem better.
This would be followed by design, planning and implementation.
Branching
We currently only use one branch for each repository in our code base.
By branching features like these, we can still provide a frequent update cycle when a feature takes more time than expected.
Windows Auto-Update Problem
The Defold Editor is based on the Eclipse RCP framework.
The provisioning platform, which handles updating of the application, is called p2.
To simplify the installation process we also bundle Java inside the editor, specifically the JRE.
These files are used when running the editor, which are then locked on Windows.
The problem was that p2 tried to uninstall these files while they were locked, failed and left the editor in a very confused state.
This is a
known bug in p2.
To solve it we have instead manually attached the JRE to the zip, so p2 leaves it alone when updating.
The drawback is that we then lose the ability to update the JRE automatically.
As that's something we plan to do very rarely, it's a drawback we can accept.
Slow Editor
We currently haven't implemented a resource management system for the editor yet.
Such a system makes sure that resources, like textures, are reused instead of being loaded over and over and duplicated in the memory.
This is one of the reasons why the editor is so slow when using many resources (like in a big collection).
It can also become slower and consume more memory when you have many visual files opened.
We haven't investigated this yet, but we suspect there are memory leaks involved in the current resource handling.
Editing files can also be slow when many files are opened.
One of the reasons for this is that we do a lot of state checking to keep the status up to date for the different files, like tracking errors etc.
We'd just like you to know for now that this is of great concern to us and we long to start improving these things.
If this is of great concern to you too, please let us know in the
forums so we can adjust the priorities.