• Editor

  • Spine status update

    anglais

Normally we do new builds every couple days, if not more often. Lately however, we have been working on an updated launcher, updates for Mac OS X, and some general housekeeping/refactoring for the magic that happens under the covers. The scope of these changes are much larger than our usual updates, so this is the reason why it has been 2 weeks without an update. Sorry! Once we get through this, updates will go back to being much more often. Hopefully it will only be another couple days, but sometimes things come up.

Here are some of the features for the new stuff, which will be christened v1.8.00:

  • Many bug fixes, as seen on the changelog. I know some of these cause a lot of pain, so sorry again these are taking so long!

  • The launcher now asks if you would like to update to the latest.

  • You can specify an older Spine update version and the launcher will download that specific version. This will make it easier to stick to a particular version, especially for teams or when moving to a new computer.

  • example projects, including the "speedy" ninja and exported JSON/atlas examples.

  • The latest Illustrator and Photoshop scripts.

  • Mac OS X installer and app are signed, so GateKeeper settings don't need to be changed.

  • Mac OS X gets a better bundled version of Java. Using the bundled version will be the default (only a single .app) and provides native file dialogs and image directory watching. You can still use a different version of Java, but it shouldn't be needed.

  • Mac OS X has launcher improvements, so you can double click a Spine project file and it will open with Spine.

There is a small downside, however. Spine will tell you that you need to download and reinstall, which is how you get the 1.8.00 launcher. The 1.8.00 launcher will only work for versions >= 1.8.00. Because of this, you probably want to install the 1.8.00 launcher to a new location (on Mac, just copy the old .app files somewhere else before reinstalling), so you can use the old launcher if you need to go back to a < 1.8.00 version of Spine. For those that don't want to update to 1.8.00 yet, Spine will allow you to choose one of your existing versions and you can use that until you are ready.

Besides the above, we have also been working on a new website. This is waaay better than the current site and will make for a better experience all around, as well as make it easier for us to provide new content to you guys.

I have to admit, this stuff has been distracting me from getting skinning done. 🙁 I know everyone is dying to use meshes, FFD and skinning in the runtimes. I'm dying to get it done! I would much prefer not having to mess with the launcher, which is extremely time consuming since it has so many platform-specific pieces, but it really needed an update. At any rate, it's almost ready and then skinning will get 100% of my attention.

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Thanks for letting us know, Nate!

Thank you for your hard work! 🙂

hooo man thanks for having the "ask before update" dialog !!! this is very useful !

Preparing the new release, it's freaking complicated! Should be out tonight.

Yeah! Home stretch! Go Nate!

So much pain... not ready tonight (6am). 🙁 Tomorrow for sure.

It is done! 1.8 is available. Please don't find any problems. 🙂

Too bad signing the OS X installer requires paying Apple $99/year. All the pain they inflict on me just to support their platform, they should be so lucky. I have trouble coughing that up, on principle. I have a feeling the "unsigned developer" dialog isn't too big of a deal for OS X users.

That sucks. I say don't pay it.

But yay! 1.8!

(EDIT: uh. Where do I download the new launcher?)

(EDIT2: never mind. I just used my download link from the purchase email.)

Sorry Nate, but new version is working terrible, very, very slow. I start my skeletal animation and it's running frame by frame, also user navigation in Animation phase (moving, zooming) is very slow. The worst, I deinstalled an old version and my work was fucked up, now. Pardon my French. 🙁

Windows 7, 64-bit.

Hi Nate,

My team doesn't want to upgrade yet (we have a release this week and want to keep things as is.) But I can't figure out how to get upgrade prompt to go away and let me enter the version of Spine that was working Friday. It seems like you're instructions cover this case but having trouble making it happen. Help!

Ok, my collegue had a old version and i did smart copy-replace-magic then I deleted 1.8 update. Old version is working now. So, dear kids, beware for new version, don't be naive like I was, you should to do a backup before update.

Nate, unfortunately 1.8 version is working very slow in Animation mode.

Hi Pancho

Can you walk through your steps. I think maybe auto-update clobbered by pre-1.8 before I could back up. Thanks!

Hi Nate,

Where is my "private download link" so I can reinstall manually? Did I do something wrong here? I wake up today and everything is a disaster.

Are you guys using Macs?

It's working fine on my end. Much more stable too.
Windows 8.1 64-bit.

The Spine icon on the taskbar turned into the OpenJDK icon though.

EDIT: My friend's Spine works fine too.

@jb.tellez your private download link is in the license email you received on purchase. If you click revert when installing you can choose which version of Spine you want to use.

@Pancho it sounds strange that it is slow in Animate mode, any chance you have ghosting on with a frame step of 1 ? We've identified an issue with it, currently investigating further.

jb.tellez a écrit

Hi Pancho

Can you walk through your steps. I think maybe auto-update clobbered by pre-1.8 before I could back up. Thanks!

Backup:

For Windows 7.

Backup all from your install directory (default: c:\Program Files (x86)\Spine) and all from <user home folder>\Spine\ (it's very important).

Restore:

Replace all files from install folder and from user folder. Edit version.txt (user folder) and write:
1.7.12

Delete 1.8 file and directory from „updates” directory (user folder).

But, maybe wait for Nate's suggestions...

Pharan a écrit

Are you guys using Macs?

It's working fine on my end. Much more stable too.
Windows 8.1 64-bit.

No, Windows 7. Maybe it's stable, but it works very slow (tragic slow). Did you check animations? My collegue with Windows 8.1 had the same problem.

Pharan, use the link in your receipt email. I'm afraid we are going to have a lot of "where do I download" questions! 🙁

Pancho, that isn't good. 🙁 First, Spine always makes a backup before saving, you can find it here:
Windows: <user home folder>\Spine\backups\
Mac: <user home folder>/Library/Application Support/Spine/backups/
Linux: <user home folder>/.spine/backups/
Saving a project with a new version of Spine usually means an old version of Spine can't open it. Newer versions of Spine can always open old projects.

I wonder why you see such a performance difference. 🙁 Spine uses 7% of my laptop's CPU when playing the dragon animation and zooming around, so there should be plenty of headroom for slower computers. Can you post your spine.log?
Windows: <user home folder>\Spine\spine.log
Mac: <user home folder>/Library/Application Support/Spine/spine.log
Linux: <user home folder>/.spine/spine.log
The log will report the GPU it detects, maybe it is using the wrong graphics drivers or something. LWJGL was updated in 1.8, which is what is used on Windows to interface with OpenGL. Maybe there is a problem there. Are you graphics drivers up to date? Is it better if you make sure ghosting is off? I hope we can quickly fix your performance issue! Sorry for the hassle.

jb.tellez, when you run the old version of the Spine launcher: if you had it set to not auto update, then it will continue to use the version you had set. If you had it set to use the latest, then it will tell you:

Image supprimée en raison de l'absence de support de HTTPS. | Afficher quand même


Choose "Revert" and then it prompts for what old version to use:

Image supprimée en raison de l'absence de support de HTTPS. | Afficher quand même


If the first dialog doesn't have a "Revert" button it means it didn't find any old updates in your "updates" folder. If you uninstalled Spine, that will remove all the updates. Unfortunately, with the old Spine launcher you can only choose from updates that you have downloaded in the past. 🙁 This is part of the reason to move to the new launcher, which can download any specific update version you ask it to (but the oldest version it can download is 1.8.00). I can see this might be a problem for people, if they want to go back to 1.7.12. I will make a way for the 1.8 launcher to run 1.7.12, but it won't be able to run older versions. I'll post how in a few minutes.

Thanks for the details Nate.

I don't have my original purchase email. Is there another way to get the download I need?

Also, I'm on Mac and I don't get the options displayed in screenshot posted above. Mine just gives option to close, not revert.

  • jb

p.s. I see from your notes why option to revert isn't shown. I guess that is because I auto-updated instead of manually updating.