Build 256 - beta 8

Yves · December 20, 2012 at 10:09 AM

Hello,

The 8th beta of the build 256 of the iOS runtime is available (build 256.31). Hopefully the final version of the iOS exporter for the build 256...

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For the ones who use the English Unicode version, you have to install also the Please login to see this link..

Make backup copies of your MFA files before using this build, just in case there is a problem and you need to switch back to a previous build. PS: if you want to reinstall a previous build, press SHIFT+CONTROL when you click the Start button in the installer, to force it to reinstall the main program files.

Thanks for testing!

Yves.

Bug fixes and new features in Build 256 - Beta 8

- Several encoding errors when saving data
- Crash in text drawing (when text area became too large - maximum size allowed is now 1024x1024)
- Crash when an object drawing text was resized to 0 in width or height
- String drawing bug in HiScore object
- Active/Backdrop color channels were swapped for the text color
- CalcRect extension crash when setting the current string.
- ActiveBackdrop didn't scroll with the frame
- OpenAL sound playback had several bugs with the pause mechanisms.

Bug fixes and new features in Build 256 - Beta 7

- Fixes in Flocking object
- Subapps didn't respect the 'Follow frame' property
- Subapps stole touch input events when they were invisible
- Fixed several possible crashes in sprite handling
- Better seamless audio looping when using OpenAL playback mode (still has gaps for some audio files with specific Khz)
- Faster and less bugged text drawing (Text alignment now works)
- Less input lag when using Vsync (can still cause input lag if you have a complex game and have Vsync turned on, working on this)
- Several text encoding improvements when reading external files (now attempts to guess text encoding on text) For best results use UTF8 encoding in your text files.
- Extra string encoding fixes
- INI, List and Edit objects now guess the string encoding for the files they load.
- INI object now doesn't throw warnings when it can't find its INI file
- INI object could sometimes crash when searching for groups on empty lines
- Edit object didn't use the 'alignment' property
- Active/Background system box didn't load its initial string when exported from the default MMF2 version (only worked in MMF2 Unicode)
- Crash fix for objects with transitions getting destroyed outside of the visible frame
- Crash in the string object's "npara()" expression

Other :

- Windows runtime: Set Sample Position / Get Sample Position were not accurate with looping sounds.
- Windows runtime: possible crash when building applications after changing a preference.
- Windows runtime: crash when closing stand-alone applications after using the Japanese IME keyboard.
- HWA runtime: crash or memory leak with display-as-sprite sub-apps

Bug fixes and new features in Build 256 - Beta 6

- Fixed crash in extensions showing a popover in landscape mode in iOS6 (Game Center and Active Picture object image selector)
- Fixed additional Game Center crashes if running on device with iOS5 when compiled with iOS6 SDK.
- Added backdrops adjusted for hotspot after redrawing a layer (messed up collisions with them)
- Vertical centered and bottom alignment in string objects now work
- Added 'Done' button for numeric keyboard on iPhone to be able to dismiss it
- Generating random numbers gave negative results for large input numbers
- Crash in 'Pick one object' because of the random number generation
- Lots of Flocking object bug fixes and optimizations
- For extension developers, added "Q_sqrt(x)" function to the SDK which calculates the fast inverse square root 1/sqrt(x)

Bug fixes and new features in Build 256 - Beta 5

- iOS6 : Orientation fix for some landscape modes
- Crash in ForEach object
- Counter and Score objects not visually updating their values sometimes

Bug fixes and new features in Build 256 - Beta 4

- The iOS runtime in this version was actually identical to beta 3...

Bug fixes and new features in Build 256 - Beta 3

- iOS6 : Orientation problem is now fixed.
- iOS6 : Game Center Connect crashes when authenticating the player.
- iOS6 : iAD fixed - note that Apple has phased out landscape ads, they are no longer supported.
- Flocking object has been ported.
- Fixed possible crashes in the Dead Reckoning object.
- Small optimizations.

Note for extension developers:

- iOS6 replaced the 'presentModalViewController' with the new 'presentViewController' with a completion handler. We have added a simpler version of 'presentViewController' into "MainViewController" that if compiled with iOS5 SDK uses the 'presentModalViewController' method and with iOS6 SDK uses the new 'presentViewController' routine but with no completion handler. This is the preferred way to show your view controller unless you need to use the completion handler as it will work for all users regardless of the SDK they use.

- The runtime now has an 'omnipresent' objectSelection class present in the CRun class (typically accessible through ho->hoAdRunHeader->objectSelection)The old method of allocating an instance of the class still works, but it is preferable to only use the instance in CRun.

Bug fixes and new features in Build 256 - Beta 2

- Fixed several memory leaks
- Fixed freeze in 'Last object has been destroyed' condition
- Bug in Advanced Path Movement when clearing the path (CArrayList bug)
- Mersenne Twister returned bad floating point values
- Fixed drag-drop for non-active objects
- Fixed drag-drop movement when scrolling the screen
- Crash in iOS Store when switching frames before a request finished
- Frame color was still set and read wrong
- ForEach crash when no objects were available for the loop at the time of the action
- Button object now supports the 'Checkbox' setting and shows an iOS Switch control (ON/OFF).
- String object crashed when getting the N'th paragraph
- Crash when getting a filename parameter (selected from a common dialog) in the Unicode runtime
- Active Picture object supports wrapping on/off setting
- Active Picture Object now attempts to load the image from the cache if no internet connection is available
- New "Display" property in the iOS Application property page, allowing a fine control of the application display on the device. More information in the documentation (Distributing / iOS / iOS properties).
- Active/Background System Box could crash when getting it's current string if it didn't have any from the start of the frame
- Added backdrops could disappear during scrolling while they were still on-screen (hotspot was misaligned in the visiblity calculations)
- Space Invader movement stopped working if the "master invader" got destroyed (all objects stopped moving)
- Space Invader movement crashed sometimes when destroying an object with the movement
- Two crashes in button object related to retrieving it's current text
- iOS Video object could intercept mouse clicks (touch input) even when it was destroyed
- New actions in iOSVideo object : Play, Pause, Stop, Set playback time, Begin seeking forward, Begin seeking backward, End seeking
- New expression in iOSVideo object : Get playback time
- Strings used as parameters of events were corrupted after a jump to frame jumping at the same frame
- New Launch image landscape property for iPad projects in the iOS application properties page
- PC runtime: an optimization has been made for scrolling games that contain lot of backdrop objects on layers above the first one and heavily test the collisions with the background.

Bug fixes and new features in Build 256 - Beta 1

- No more compiler warnings when using XCode 4.4
- Hang in Bin() expression
- Crash in Val() expression
- Array object garbled up it's entries when expanding the array
- Active/Background System box bug in multiline text alignment
- The current device orientation would sometimes not be updated
- Score object would sometimes not update its display of the score
- Fixed hidden layers reappering when restarting the frame
- Counter objects would not show an initial value of -1
- In a rare case textures would turn into black boxes
- Embedded binary files are now properly supported in the runtime - most objects support loading directly from them. No more need to use XCode resources.
- List object: Would sometimes not read the very last line in the file (and other extensions)
- AppDrive$, AppDir$ and AppPath$ now just return empty strings (as all file paths on iOS should be relative)
- List object did not load the list content in unicode version
- Camera object : crash in sounds when recording a video
- Camera object : the object memory was not released at the end a frame
- Crash in sound initialization
- Crash of the program in Release version
- Frame background color was incorrect (bad red value)
- RGBAt function of active objects returned wrong numbers
- Lives and scores were always 0 in a sub application
- Pasting an object on the right or bottom of the frame did not paste it.
- Load and Save actions are implemented in the Edit Box object
- Button object crashes related to its text retrieval expression
- Important change: Subfolders for files are now supported globally. Before it just removed the folder component.
- New extension port: Dead Reckoning object (needs testing)

For iOS extension developers:
- New API for listening to some iOS system events
- New easy function to retrieve the NSData of a named resource (be it local file, xcode resource or embedded binary file)
- Moved common and useful extension info routines from CExtension to CObject (such as setting and getting positions and more).
- New simple convenience functions to convert between radians and angles (degreesToRadians(), radiansToDegrees())

RhysD · December 20, 2012 at 11:21 AM

Many thanks! Will see if my lists are saving properly now. Cheers for all the fixes!

colej_uk · December 20, 2012 at 2:14 PM

I released an update with the last beta and just wondering if I need to reject the binary and use this version instead- none of the fixes relate to features used in my game unless the saving data bug affected the ini saving?

mobichan · December 20, 2012 at 8:11 PM

Did the bug associated with sounds playing across frames get resolved in this build?

Anders · December 20, 2012 at 8:17 PM

colej_uk: If you game works right now without problems even when using special characters then you should be fine. If you are having problems you should install this beta.

mobichan: I do not remember this bug, it must have slipped off my todo list. Can you resend the details about it? Thanks

mobichan · December 20, 2012 at 8:55 PM

Sorry, it was mentioned in the normal ios forum here: Please login to see this link.

The problem I ran into was that the one frame where I expect sound to keep playing during a frame transition doesn't seem to work. I recently converted my whole app to use sample stop commands when leaving every frame so I could support this feature. Let me know if you need my file for testing.

StingRay · December 20, 2012 at 9:07 PM

Thanks again for your Great work!

SoftWarewolf · December 21, 2012 at 3:22 PM

One small and one big problem i have, which may or may not be related to the update.

whenever i try to export an iOS project, i get this message

Code

Warning: problem in Data\Runtime\iPhone\KcRuntime.ext
This extension can't be included.

Exporting final ios project seems to work though. But in xcode i am getting these 2 errors

Code

Undefined symbols for architecture i386:
  "_OBJC_CLASS_$_CRunShake", referenced from:
      objc-class-ref in CExtLoad.o
ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture i386
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)

UrbanMonk · December 21, 2012 at 5:00 PM

I've had the same error SoftWarewolf for a while now.

I just add all the extensions I want to include to a frame and export as final to avoid the issue.

SoftWarewolf · December 21, 2012 at 7:32 PM

how about my bigger issue? i really want to see if my new main project works on my ipod

UrbanMonk · December 21, 2012 at 7:54 PM

When did that error start happening?

Did you try rebuilding the app in mmf and recompiling?
If you still have a problem after that check the extensions in your project, and remove some and try compiling again until you find the extension that's causing the problem.

Make sure you do a full rebuild whenever you change extension since MMF changes which files it includes when you remove/add extensions.

SoftWarewolf · December 21, 2012 at 10:46 PM

it works now, i changed to "default architectures" and turned on multitask. might be some problems with the arm6 architecture and the latest xcode. When i exported with beta7 i got tons of yellow notifications that went away when i just removed arm6 in xcode.

however the game runs really slow on my ipod, so i need to do some drastic optimization if i am going to get it working.

btw sorry for getting a bit off-topic, thanks for the update!

DistantJ · December 21, 2012 at 11:52 PM

You should be able to rectify the error by uninstalling the shake extension, unless of course you're using it in your game. Looks like the update caused a compatibility issue based on the error code. I think a framework it uses must have been removed from this beta.

Diablohead · December 28, 2012 at 2:09 PM

Not had a chance to use a beta for a little while but I don't see anything about pallet swapping on iOS exported games being fixed, there was a problem where only one colour would change and it was only for the animation it was playing thus making it useless to use, if you need an example file I can brew one up this weekend.

DistantJ · December 28, 2012 at 4:26 PM

Palette swapping also causes a lot of slowdown, DH

Diablohead · December 29, 2012 at 2:23 PM

Quote from DistantJ

Palette swapping also causes a lot of slowdown, DH

I did get it working without any performance hits on an itouch 4 a while ago but had to stop using it when it was only changing one colour, but then if it was changing them all maybe it would have slowed down.

I know you should never set it to an always event but it worked on pc using some work arounds.

mobichan · December 31, 2012 at 4:58 PM

Andos: the sound across frames bug seems to have been fixed. It took a few rebuilds and some voodoo with rebooting the macbook/restarting xcode on my end. Thanks for the update.

Olivier · February 14, 2013 at 2:20 PM

Quote from Yves

Bug fixes and new features in Build 256 - Beta 7
- Less input lag when using Vsync (can still cause input lag if you have a complex game and have Vsync turned on, working on this)

I just wanted to know, has some progress been made regarding this particular issue? I'm having a hard time getting responsive enough touch-controls in my current project.

Anders · February 14, 2013 at 2:49 PM

I have found some useful information on how to improve the run-loop when using VSync so that it allows time for input processing. Its on my todo list to investigate how long it will take to fix.

Olivier · February 14, 2013 at 2:58 PM

Thank you for letting me know Anders. I strongly hope that you'll be able to do something in the near future.

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