Known Issues & Limitations of hyperPad
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I hope this saves any new users the time I wasted learning/discovering these things.
FUNCTIONALITY RESTRICTIONS AND LIMITATIONS
- SpriteSheets can't be imported.
- Bitmap Fonts can't be imported.
- Image Sequences can't be imported as sequences of images.
- Image Sequences can't be converted to Frame Sequence Animations.
- GarageBand Sounds can't be imported.
- Dropbox Linking currently not near to fully operational
- Importing assets from iOS 11 Files app is a one-by-one process only
THE BEHAVIOUR EDITOR ISSUES & LIMITATIONS
The Behaviour Editor is where you "code" within hyperPad- No UNDO of any sort for Behaviours and their content
- No Copy/Paste facility for your code or parts thereof
- No visual indication of which Behaviour Node currently selected
- Behaviour Trash button next to Duplicate button (compounds above issues)
- No multi-select (drag to select) or behaviour grouping functionality
- No Functions or other code functionality collation of any sort
- No Search or Find mechanism, and therefore no Find and Replace
- No debugging facilities
SCENE EDITOR ISSUES AND WORKFLOW LIMITATIONS
- Playing your scene instantly wipes the UNDO history
- Selection tool is capable of inadvertently scaling objects (no UNDO)
- No Multitouch release of selected objects, so you'll move things inadvertently when panning and zooming
- No exposure of variables/properties from Behaviour Editor in Scene Editor Properties Inspector
- Behaviours Editor “button” isn’t instantly accessible from Object Selection
- Undo does not return selection to previous objects
OBJECTS AND THEIR ISSUES FOR WORKFLOW CONSIDERATION
- No symbols, instances or references nor other communicable objects
- No parenting, nesting, grouping or relationships possible between objects
- Objects have no sense of ‘self’ in any accessible manner for export or communication
- Object's duration based behaviours can't be interrupted - non linear animation not possible
PARTICLE SYSTEM EDITOR
- No interpolation of positions between frames = no smooth particle effects
- No texture support or frame sequence support in particle graphics
- No particle events (on spawn, on die, on collision etc)
- No numerical representation of values presented or editable
- No UNDO, and sliders respond instantly to touch, so remember what your values are (compounds above issue)
- Sliders are incredibly touchy and overly sensitive, even in ‘fine’ adjustment mode (compounds above two issues)
- Modifying and saving a Particle System under its original name won't refresh until closing and reopening the app
- No visual scaling reference for systems or their particles, you need to try them in-game
ODD ONES OUT
- Crashes on every attempt to relaunch after your iPad sleeps
- hyperPad doesn't "sleep", so leaving it open will flatten your iPad (might be a “fix” for above issue)
- No iOS 10/11 SplitScreen functionality incorporated or implemented
- No inter-project sharing of anything, that I can see or discover
- Set Graphic Transition doesn't exist, despite being explicitly documented
- The "camera's" concept of Screen View isn't recognised by Screen Coordinates
PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS OF HYPERPAD
These will do you head in if you're aiming at a consistent 60fps gaming experience:
- Thrashes CPU so hard that a Mac USB connection won't be sufficient to retain charge whilst working in hyperPad
- Leaks Memory when playing, eventually causing game performance to dramatically drop
- Creates heat (from above problems) - iOS thermo-throttles your iPad eventually (15fps or slower)
- Will drain your battery faster than any other app you have ever installed, or ever even considered installing
The above issues take on all sorts of concerning forms and create weird bugs when “coding”. But the main problems are visible side effects: hyperPad game playing stutters, stalls and stammers spasmodically, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Most of this is to do with how cocos2D handles time and how hyperPad never rests the display updates/redraws in the Scene and Behaviour Editors, further compounding the build up of timing problems.
Combined, these will cause you to question your sanity. You will think your code is incredibly inefficient and doing something wrong to cause these slowdowns. It’s almost never you and your hyperPad code. It’s almost always a blend of hyperPad’s insistence on redrawing all the time and cocos2D’s timing issues thrashing the system and creating heat and leaks that are ruining your experience.
As a general benefit, to anyone coming to this app, please consider adding anything you've found to this list that requires a similar degree of creative and productive consideration.
These are just the ones I've come across that will impact workflow and seriously impact what can be done, and how anything being considered must be architected and designed around these limitations and known issues. And can remember at the moment.
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This is great. Thanks
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Backing up projects is broken
Consider this a current and active warning if this is still here...
I've been working for a few months on a couple projects in hyperPad, with the top tier subscription, and using less than 20% of the provided 10GB online storage. During the past couple of months, hyperPad has changed their servers and systems.
Backups are not possible with new or existing projects.
--For me and at least three other people actively using hyperPad.
This has remained unaddressed for a month.
This is a workaround:
Export your hyperPad project to your iOS 11 Files app, set this to be stored in iCloud and hope they can be reimported if your working project becomes corrupted or you lose, sell, break, reset or upgrade your iPad.
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Deleted Objects are NOT Deleted
But none of them can be restored, either.
This includes object behaviours. So as you build and explore the iterations required to make a game, and as you branch your project and delete old scenes, objects and behaviours, your project grows, constantly.
Nothing deleted is actually deleted, nor is it ever restorable. The worst of both worlds. Projects always get larger and slower to build, regardless of the housekeeping you do.
Nothing from one project can be copied and pasted (or otherwise transported to a new/different project) so your branched project will forever grow.
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NO Image Masking
There are no workarounds, nor are there any types of masking available for, of or by any sort of bitmaps, objects or geometry.
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@deeeds Most of the issues you post have fairly simple workarounds, but the 2 issues above this post don’t, and would be awesome if they are addressed.
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@aidan-oxley
Most of the issues you post have fairly simple workarounds
LINKS?
First 25 items in above lists have no workarounds.
That I know of. When this pertains to things like bitmap fonts and sprite animations, it's a show stopping problem for many 2D game design creativity, capacity and performance considerations. And, quite frankly, unbelievable that all of these have gone completely unaddressed for so long. These are huge bugs in foundational functionality of a 2D game engine.
But they're not the only huge problems.
All of the "odd ones out" have no workarounds, and are a blend of bugs and incomplete execution... and lead to (or stem from) the uncorrected problems in the performance category below it, which can't be worked around, either.
So I dare say your claim that "most" of these have "fairly simple workarounds" is false, untrue or just plain wrong.
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@deeeds Maybe it’s because you post such an insane amount of feature requests/bug reports (you do post A LOT, you’ve posted more than any of us multi year hyperPad users in a few months) that are of fairly low priority (since they have easy workarounds) that you’re getting ignored a bit now? Lol to prove my claim that “most” of your posts have simple workarounds, I’d have to spend a day going through all your bug report posts. I said most though, not all.
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@aidan-oxley Just focus on the above list... most being more than half of THIS list... just so you don't have to go running around... and because we are in this thread, and this a general source of information that's never been countered, about negatives of this engine.
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@deeeds I wasn’t mentioning the issues in this thread, I was mentioning all your threads.
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@aidan-oxley On the matter of bug reports and missing features, feature requests and all other "complaints" I post.
For the umpteenth time... I DO NOT PRIORITISE THEM!!!
I find them, if I can be bothered, I post them. It's not my job to sort or order them, prioritise or otherwise consider their difficulty of implementation. As a service to the makers of the engine, I do spend some time reporting on what I find to be broken, missing or otherwise inconvenient and possible to be improved. Then I leave it up to the makers of the engine to sort when and where, how and what.
If others aren't providing the same considerations of the makers, and therefore I'm posting more than others about problems and broken bits, I see that as a disservice to the makers of the engine, its current users and future potential as an engine.
Not sure how you see otherwise.
