** UPDATE **
’EAT - Frameworks’ (Tool 1 derived from GDT work) has been released:
https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/62799-eat-frameworks-released/
Please do not post to this thread any more. Instead, post any comments and questions in thread linked above.
Hi folks! I am opening this post so my closed-beta testers have a place to post their thoughts and feedback as well as to ask questions.
Let the testing begin!
Hi
Here’s my very first report on OSX 10.11.4 MacBookPro13(2010) 1280x800.
It’s all about first launch user experience
Not exactly technical issues but… something people feels.
My First GDT experience was “intercepted” by LittleSnitch (a network filtering app) 
At first launch Little Snitch detected immediately a connection attempt to google.com, blocking it and showing me a popup to request my decision. I’ve then granted permission for all connections but GDT’s test had already failed and i saw the “internet not found” message.
In doing this I’ve lost the slideshow messages: my attention was shifted on Little Snitch requests
After having granted network access in LittleSnitch, the next launches of GDT worked perfectly, but the startup messages were gone forever for me (until I’ve reset the prefs…)
A possible solution might be to perform the connection check only when the app is in a “static” phase. In a screen where I am not required to pay attention to instructions or messages as something external from GDT might break the user flow.
Maybe you might check first on entering the “New Account/Login” pages and then check again upon some user action like pressing one of the create/login account buttons, or on form fill completion (to avoid relaunching the app when the first check fails because of network filtering alerts).
that’s it for my first ten minutes on GDT.
Then i had a small hiccup on new account creation.
The buttons for account creation confused me a little mainly because of their appearance: the enabled state of the OK button is slightly noticeable while the “Create New Account” button is instead clearly highlighted and visible.
So, after filling the form, I instinctively went for the most visible button, the Create New Account one, instead of the OK. I saw the highlight not the text. To be more precise, I really noticed the OK button only the third time i filled the form, after my first account creation attempts failed and reset the form fields.
The same thing can be said for the login page. The OK button gets unnoticed because of the Log In highlighted button.
Summary:
a) the network check might interfere with user first experience
b) the buttons in account/login page can confuse users.
cheers,
G.
P.S.
I’m writing a lot while testing, keeping logs and other stuff.
Isn’t there a risk of overusing the forum? this thread might become a very loooooong one…
A bit of unfair testing: I’ve quit the app while it was downloading assets (during the first download phase).
On next start of the app GDT does not seem to notice that the assets are not there. Only in the Tools page I see a “double click to download” message on the Icon Generator Tool Icon.
The catalog page shows all the assets, as if they were present.
But i know they really don’t exists on my drive as I deliberately interrupted the download/install process.
the ~/Library/Application Support/GDT_ClosedBeta contains only config files and two trees of empty folders (Documents and tmp)
I kept one zipped copy of the contents of ~/Library/Application Support/GDT_ClosedBeta and one of the console-log for future reference and comparison, if necessary.
So i go on, create a project and as expected i get my crash, after the “empty project” selection.
Apr 7 11:15:06 Scrat GDT\_ClosedBeta[1340]: Load content of this project: s\_basic Apr 7 11:15:06 Scrat GDT\_ClosedBeta[1340]: sources.template.t\_basic.package nil Apr 7 11:15:06 Scrat GDT\_ClosedBeta[1340]: ERROR: Runtime error Apr 7 11:15:06 Scrat GDT\_ClosedBeta[1340]: unhandledError: Apr 7 11:15:06 Scrat GDT\_ClosedBeta[1340]: notifyRuntimeError: ?:0: attempt to index field 'projectPackage' (a nil value)
Then I deleted the ~/Library/Application Support/GDT_ClosedBeta, relaunched a fresh copy of GDT, allowed the assets to download and created
My first project.
But then, when i press “Run My Game” nothing happens…
Apr 7 11:32:28 Scrat GDT\_ClosedBeta[1377]: open -n -a "" "/Users/pignus/Desktop/GDT Projects/GS\_test\_beginner\_1/main.lua" Apr 7 11:32:28 Scrat GDT\_ClosedBeta[1377]: 256
Some notes.
Cosmetic:
In the catalog page the bottom-right icons overlap a little with the user message text (in experienced mode only)
Geek notes:
in last.settings.json There’s a hardcoded pathToImageMagick pointing to a windows C: drive
the “forgot” button did not send the email with my user details.
One Question:
Device Orientation: Why do i Have to choose between portrait and landscape? What if i want to support rotation in all orientations?
That’s all for today.
Ciao
G.
Ed-
In Beginner mode - Mac osx
When I create a game, generate works great then press “Run My Game”… nothing happens. From the created app, I can run the app in luaGlider or zeroBrane the game does work. The simulator is not being called (for me) I do not know how to attach simulator to GDT
@sierramanagment
Can you press “Show my code”? If you can it will open the game folder.
Do you see “run.bat”? Wait. Your on Mac. Sorry.
I’m guessing there’s something similar to get the code running? Can you take a screen shot of your folder? Thanks!
May i ask how you work with the credit system? Is it stored locally or all on server?
Seems like it’s stored on the server but i’m not sure.
@g.sciacchitano,
re: Delay internet test till login screen/account creation. - Good idea. I’ll put that on the list.
re: Buttons being confusing. - Agreed. I’ll give this whole thing a once over on art and aesthics before the open beta starts. I wanted to before the closed beta, but I more wanted you guys to get this more…
re: risk of breaking the forums - 
I’ve been assured it will be fine even if the thread gets very long. So, lets filler up.
re: Killing app during download. - Dang. I failed to say ‘don’t do that’ in the video. Actually, thats cool. I hadn’t tested that yet. I’ll run through some tests however. Ideally, the app would detect you didn’t download all the content and try to download them on the next launch or give you the opportunity to re-download them.
Note: There is an update button on the (otherwise empty) home page. If you click this, it should download the missing content.
re: ImageMagic - That is left over from the alpha. I left it in because I’m going to give folks the option of using ImageMagick to do any art generation, scaling, etc. Using Corona is good, but ImageMagick does a better job. i.e. Corona is not a art processing tool while ImageMagick is.
re: Landscape and Portrait - I struggled with this for a bit. I’ll experiment to see if it matters anymore. Initially allowing both made writing the other bits difficult. Finally, I decided… it is extremely rare that a game support both landscape and portrait and this is a game making tool first. However, again, I’ll see if it matters any more and if not, allow either.
Extra Note: One of the biggest challenges of making a tool like this is the interconnectedness of the most mundane seeming details. Like i said, “Pull a string here and a bell rings over there”, but its more like, “Pull a string an 10 bells ring and a piano plays, add a trumpet and the orchestra loses their sheet music…”
re: Can’t run game from GDT - I was afraid that might happen. I autodiscover the location of the latest binary, but if it isn’t where I expect it to be, the App fails to find it. I’ll add an update to the GDT beta to explicitly list the path where it thinks Corona is, so if it doesn’t find it you can type in the path manually (or maybe use the explorer to find it)… I’ll have to think on this a bit, but I should have an update for early next week.
re: Killing app during download. - Can’t you make it so there a txt file that downloads last and every time you try to use that content it could check if that txt file is there and if not then it re downloads. Something like that could work.
re: Can’t run game from GDT - I’m not sure how OSX works but on windows you can just edit the .bat file and put in the correct directory.
Credit system, etc. - This is one thing I don’t want to go into too much detail about, but I will say:
Very excited to get a chance to play with this a bit today. I ran into a few issues that i’ve tried to describe briefly below. In general, I think this is going to be a great way to help manage the various components or new or previously-created Corona projects.
I ran the Mac OS X build on Yosemite 10.10.5 on a Macbook Pro Retina Mid 2012.
Using left/right arrow keys while in text fields causes app to navigate back/forth pages
scrollbar on file explorer acts funky - scrolling doesn’t correspond to the position always.
Runtime error when clicking on the Path bar or back arrow buton in file explorer:
Cannot open Users/tonygod/: No such file or directory
stack traceback:
[C]: in function ‘dir’
?: in function ‘getFilesInFolder’
?: in function ‘getCurFolderDetails’
?: in function ‘_listener’
?: in function <?:167>
?: in function <?:205>
excludeFiles = {
all = { “*secret.txt”, },
},
CFBundleIconFiles = {
},
UILaunchImages = {
},
I am confused by the Catalog. I found that I can buy some of the items in there with credits, but after that, clicking on the tiles in here doesn’t seem to do anything. I think clicking on these should maybe go to a screen that shows the install status of those items with options to uninstall or re-install and version/update info.
the red X close button in the upper left is barely visible on the screen – took me a while to realize it was there. It’s an important button, though because it seems to be the only way to cancel/back out to the main screen for each of the tabs.
FPS setting in config.lua is 30 - this should probably default at 60 for games, but I don’t remember seeing an option for setting it anywhere.
asked for applovin id at the end of the configuration, but did not ask for anything for vungle, google analytics or gameNetwork ids
Thanks for the opportunity to test it out – looking forward to getting more time with it.
Best regards,
Tony
re: left/right arrows while in text field - Good catch.
b - Yeah, I had real trouble with that. The thing is, I have to pad the bottom of scroll areas (which you don’t see, but the scroller does) and you are right there is a little offset in my calculation. I’ll pound on it some more.
re: explorer - Thanks for finding this. I do all my dev on Windows and unfortunately, have done only moderate testing on OS X so far. Whatever the case, bugs are not acceptable.
b - I didn’t quite understand the sequence here. Are you saying you editted a project you previously started in beginner-mode after switching to experienced-mode, or are you saying you exported over a project you had previously hand-editted?
If it is the latter, please note: I overwrite the destination, so hand-editing, then generating again will wipe out your edits.
re: FPS - You didn’t miss anything. FPS, a few other config settings, and a bunch of android/plist settings in build.settings are not yet exposed for editting.
re: Applovin - Please verify what your project option selections were. It should only ask you for IDs for the options you selected.
re: Thanks - You are welcome. Thank You!
Thus far most of the tests have been successful.
1. Allow the user to determine where projects are stored at. I am very picky about how I store projects because I use so many tools.
2. When I deleted a project it did not remove the project files (main.lua, build.settings, etc…) from my hard drive. It only removed the project from the GDT Projects Window.
Jason
Is there any way to log out of the application?
Logging out isn’t really a concept that applies here as I won’t be supporting multiple users using the same app on the same machine.
Also, the system isn’t connected all the time. It logs in when you start up and retrieves the latest catalog. Then, it doesn’t talk to the server again unless you check for updates or get something from the catalog.
-Ed
Understood.
This is true. Is this a bug or just hasn’t been implemented yet?
Also. The whole applications text is kinda blurry. Starts to hurt the eyes after a bit.
Question. Why is there a “Settings” tab if there are no settings? Will there be?
re: Deleting Projects - There are two parts to a project:
GDT stores a copy of all of the settings/options you’ve selected for a project. This allows you to edit it again later and generate it again if you need it. I will add a ‘clone’ project for the open beta as making copies and modifying them will also be useful for some.
You will eventually generate the program do your drive. After you generate this, GDT forgets it exists. Also I will never remove contents from your drive/system. Although I could, this would be too dangerous and it would trip up users. Also it doesn’t make much sense as a usage model. GDT is meant to generate code. What you do with that code later is entirely up to you.
re: Blurry - I’ve noticed this too and to be honest it is really puzzling me. I may have to talk to some Corona staff to see if they have any ideas as to why this is.
re: Settings - Did you watch the video? If not, or if you skipped parts I don’t blame you. It was long. That said, there will be settings, just not for the closed beta.
re: Deleting Projects - InfiSnyp quoted you and I answered up above.
In short, I won’t delete anything from your hard drive. The idea is that GDT make content, never destroy it. How you manage your projects once their generated is up to you. (I’d feel terrible if I deleted your content after you got it just the way you wanted by hand editing it.)