Defold 1.2.178 BETA

Release notes
#1

Defold 1.2.178 BETA

The latest beta is now released, and we invite those interested in beta testing the new features in the editor and engine to join now.
The beta period will be 2 weeks and the next planned stable release is two weeks from now.

We hope this new workflow will highlight any issues earlier, and also get valuable feedback from our users. And please comment if you come up with ideas on improving on this new workflow.

Please report any engine issues in this thread or in issues using Help -> Report Issue

Thx for helping out!

Disclaimer

This is a BETA release, and it might have issues that could potentially be disruptive for you and your teams workflow. Use with caution. Use of source control for your projects is strongly recommended.

Access to the beta

Download the editor or bob.jar from http://d.defold.com/beta/

Set your build server to https://build-stage.defold.com

Release notes

Engine

This sprint we’ve focused a lot on stability, fixing multiple issues.

We’ve finally updated HTML5 to use Emscripten 2.0.11. This fixes the size issue of the js-web builds. It is also a bit smaller the the previous versions (see below).

Another notable addition is the go.get_parent([id]) which allows you to get the parent of a game object. This makes it more consistent with the gui functionality.

We’ve also updated the editor .css which makes it a lot easier to create a themed look.
Read more here

Inspection API (C++)

We’ve updated our internal inspection api to include component types and their internal nodes.
You can see an example of this if you visit your game’s web server at http://localhost:8002/scene_graph. It returns a .json file representing the currently loaded scene graph.

We have also added these functions to the dmSDK. See dmGameObject::TraverseGetRoot() for documentation, and extension-poco for an example

Defold SDK (dmSDK)

In order to support the new functionality of the extension-poco, we also needed to add a few more headers to dmSDK.

Removed support for Emscripten 1.38.12

We moved away from Emscripten 1.38.12 with Defold version 1.2.170. That version is now 6 months old, which is the time we’ve set to support older SDK’s. And to make room in our Docker container running the server, we have now finally removed it.

Instead we encourage you to update to the new Emscripten 2.0.11 version, which is also even smaller than before:

  • js-web: ~9%
  • wasm-web: ~12%

The numbers are a comparison between Defold 1.2.170 and 1.2.178.

Note that this only affects you if you use native extensions.

Holidays

We’re taking a few days off now for the holidays and the end of the year, but we’ll continue to check the forums.
We’ll be back soon!

Engine

  • Issue-4897 - Updated: Html5: Update to Emscripten 2.0.11
  • Issue-5040 - Fixed: Custom resources can now be without suffix
  • Issue-5220 - Added: Added go.get_parent([id])
  • Issue-5289 - Fixed: Sound thread crash
  • Issue-5305 - Fixed: Bob: Crash fix: Treat the spine skins as an array if there is more than one skin
  • Issue-5336 - Fixed: macOS: Update app icon for macOS Big Sur
  • Issue-5358 - Fixed: Android: Fixed problem of recreating surface on certain Android devices
  • Issue-5366 - Fixed: Bob: Use a dummy ETag when generating the filename if one isn’t provided by the server
  • Issue-5368 - Fixed: Crash fix for easing curves (release before calling animation complete)
  • Issue-5375 - Fixed: Updated docs for angular_velocity to match implementation
  • Issue-5389 - Fixed: Fixed crash in liveupdate zip archive (Android/Windows)
  • Issue-5407 - Fixed: Add space between arguments generated from .script_apis
  • Issue-5409 - Fixed: iOS: Skip lipo step if there’s only one architecture
  • Issue-5418 - Fixed: iOS: Expose CFBundleVersion for iOS and macOS
  • Issue-5420 - Fixed: Fix for gui.get_node(), to ignore previously deleted nodes
  • Issue-5040 - Added: NE: Added profile inspection api
  • Issue-5364 - Added: NE: Added engine.h, hid.h, gameobject.h, math.h, vmath.h and to dmSdk
  • Issue-5425 - Fixed: NE: Updated to Xcode 12.1 package containing swift libraries

Editor

  • Issue-5321 - Fixed: Make editor only check for update once per hour
  • Issue-5325 - Fixed: Added a preference field for setting a custom keymap path
  • Issue-5397 - Fixed: Simplify editor styling by unifying color definitions and fonts
  • Issue-4941 - Added: Added options to move gui nodes via context menu
  • Issue-5417 - Fixed: Fixed editor signing procedure for windows
  • Issue-5229 - Fixed: Bump javafx dependency to 15-ea+8
22 Likes
#2
#3

:star_struck: :defold:

4 Likes
#4

Writing input from Lua would be a useful thing to be possible too… but maybe a mini extension could be made to use this to do that.

Have a good holiday!

2 Likes
#5

I’m curious, what’s the use case here?

1 Like
#6

Perhaps testing…

1 Like
#7

Here a request for it from a while ago, the use case here was to implement a virtual gamepad cursor. Obviously there are multiple ways to do that. Besides testing there are probably other interesting uses for it too… I do remember other people asking about it as well in the past and it will probably come up again.

2 Likes
#8

This is indeed a merry Christmas! Fantastic.

2 Likes
#9

Yes, it’s useful in a test automation scenario (similar to Poco). At King we experimented with BDD testing using Cucumber and we had tests like this with the Given, When, Then syntax from Gherkin:

Given the main menu is shown
When the Play button is pressed
Then the game starts

Executing the When the Play button is pressed step required a bit of hacking to get a reference to the on_input() functions of all scripts to be able to call them from Lua. With a Lua API for generating input it would no longer be needed.

2 Likes
#10

:partying_face::partying_face:

7 Likes