About ready to give up
by Joe Strout · in Torque Game Builder · 05/16/2009 (2:06 pm) · 2 replies
All right, this is getting ridiculous. Every time I try to do even the simplest thing it TGB, I run into either documentation errors, or outright bugs in the app.
Today, I tried to take the "blocks2" tile map from SpriteLib and make a TGB tile map out of it. Here was my experience:
1. Examined blocks2.bmp in GraphicConverter; looks great and should be easy to use.
2. Launched TGB and started a new project.
3. Clicked the "Create a new ImageMap" button and selected blocks2.bmp. TGB promptly crashed. (Incidentally, you guys should really turn on function names in your OS X build settings, as the last 20 or so steps of the stack trace were unnamed and so completely unhelpful.)
4. Relaunched TGB and tried it again. It crashed again.
5. Thought maybe TGB doesn't support BMP images, so I saved the image as PNG and tried again. TGB crashed again.
6. Checked my PNG settings; turned off Interterlaced and saved it again.
7. Also thought maybe I should try dragging the image onto the TGB app icon instead of using the button. When I tried that, TGB accepted it, but then said, "Unable to open project." (Bug: TGB shouldn't accept an image file type if it's going to think it's a project.)
8. Tried the button again, this time on imagemap1234.png that came with TGB. This one worked.
9. Tried it again on my blocks2.png; this time (finally!) it worked.
10. Dragged it out to the level editor, and used the "Edit this imageMap" button on it.
11. Changed Image Mode to Cell. It naturally didn't know the proper cell divisions, so I need to fix them. Should be easy, right? No...
12. Tried to change the Cell Width, which was 320, to 32 by clicking after the "0", pressing Delete, and then Tab. As soon as I hit Tab, the value changed to 40. WTF?
13. Went back to the field, deleted 40 entirely, and typed 32, and tabbed out. It again changed back to 40. Grr!
14. Tried changing Cell Height to 32. This worked. How nice of it...
15. Returned to Cell Width, deleted 40, tried to type "32"... but this type, it ignores my keypresses completely! I can't type anything! After some frantic clicking, typing, clicking again, typing again, it finally deigned to let me type "32". But as soon as I tab out it says No, I really think you should set your cell size to 40.
16. Gave up.
17. Tried to run the project anyway, just to see what else might go wrong. Not disappointed: I immediately get a "Game Startup Error: 'initializeProject' function could not be found. This could indicate a bad or corrupt common directory for your game. The Game will now shutdown because it cannot properly function." Brand new project, remember. Very nice.
18. And my other project I've been playing with -- based on the platformer tutorial -- actually runs, but crashes on exit every time. (Again, nothing helpful in the stack trace.)
And that's just today. Other days have produced a similar experience in other parts of the app.
I love the idea of TGB, and the editor seems really nice when it works. Even the poor documentation I could live with, if everything worked reliably. But it doesn't; it seems riddled with bugs.
If I got through the trial period without problems, I'd still be risking that only the simple, obvious, beginner stuff worked well, and that there would be bugs lurking in the more obscure features. But it's much worse than that: I've only been using it for a few days, and I've run into dozens of different bugs each of those days.
I certainly have no reason to suppose this is going to get better if I keep using it; at best I might learn to work around some of the bugs. (For example, you can apparently work around the inability to type through persistence, but my son is 8 and can barely type to begin with; I'm not going to try to explain why sometimes his attempts to type are completely ignored and that he should just keep trying!)
So, I think that's about it for me — TGB is a great idea that's not fully baked yet. Unless somebody happens to know that the TGB engineers have been working away for the last several months on stamping out all the bugs, and a new, much higher-quality release is just around the corner? I'd certainly give that a chance — that's how much I want to love TGB!
Today, I tried to take the "blocks2" tile map from SpriteLib and make a TGB tile map out of it. Here was my experience:
1. Examined blocks2.bmp in GraphicConverter; looks great and should be easy to use.
2. Launched TGB and started a new project.
3. Clicked the "Create a new ImageMap" button and selected blocks2.bmp. TGB promptly crashed. (Incidentally, you guys should really turn on function names in your OS X build settings, as the last 20 or so steps of the stack trace were unnamed and so completely unhelpful.)
4. Relaunched TGB and tried it again. It crashed again.
5. Thought maybe TGB doesn't support BMP images, so I saved the image as PNG and tried again. TGB crashed again.
6. Checked my PNG settings; turned off Interterlaced and saved it again.
7. Also thought maybe I should try dragging the image onto the TGB app icon instead of using the button. When I tried that, TGB accepted it, but then said, "Unable to open project." (Bug: TGB shouldn't accept an image file type if it's going to think it's a project.)
8. Tried the button again, this time on imagemap1234.png that came with TGB. This one worked.
9. Tried it again on my blocks2.png; this time (finally!) it worked.
10. Dragged it out to the level editor, and used the "Edit this imageMap" button on it.
11. Changed Image Mode to Cell. It naturally didn't know the proper cell divisions, so I need to fix them. Should be easy, right? No...
12. Tried to change the Cell Width, which was 320, to 32 by clicking after the "0", pressing Delete, and then Tab. As soon as I hit Tab, the value changed to 40. WTF?
13. Went back to the field, deleted 40 entirely, and typed 32, and tabbed out. It again changed back to 40. Grr!
14. Tried changing Cell Height to 32. This worked. How nice of it...
15. Returned to Cell Width, deleted 40, tried to type "32"... but this type, it ignores my keypresses completely! I can't type anything! After some frantic clicking, typing, clicking again, typing again, it finally deigned to let me type "32". But as soon as I tab out it says No, I really think you should set your cell size to 40.
16. Gave up.
17. Tried to run the project anyway, just to see what else might go wrong. Not disappointed: I immediately get a "Game Startup Error: 'initializeProject' function could not be found. This could indicate a bad or corrupt common directory for your game. The Game will now shutdown because it cannot properly function." Brand new project, remember. Very nice.
18. And my other project I've been playing with -- based on the platformer tutorial -- actually runs, but crashes on exit every time. (Again, nothing helpful in the stack trace.)
And that's just today. Other days have produced a similar experience in other parts of the app.
I love the idea of TGB, and the editor seems really nice when it works. Even the poor documentation I could live with, if everything worked reliably. But it doesn't; it seems riddled with bugs.
If I got through the trial period without problems, I'd still be risking that only the simple, obvious, beginner stuff worked well, and that there would be bugs lurking in the more obscure features. But it's much worse than that: I've only been using it for a few days, and I've run into dozens of different bugs each of those days.
I certainly have no reason to suppose this is going to get better if I keep using it; at best I might learn to work around some of the bugs. (For example, you can apparently work around the inability to type through persistence, but my son is 8 and can barely type to begin with; I'm not going to try to explain why sometimes his attempts to type are completely ignored and that he should just keep trying!)
So, I think that's about it for me — TGB is a great idea that's not fully baked yet. Unless somebody happens to know that the TGB engineers have been working away for the last several months on stamping out all the bugs, and a new, much higher-quality release is just around the corner? I'd certainly give that a chance — that's how much I want to love TGB!
Torque Owner Tyler Slabinski
If you ARE using 1.1.1, then I suggest you upgrade it and try again...