Well, I
definitely remember people complaining about how unstable GM:S 1.4 was... And I also remember a LOT of people complaining about long times between updates and getting lots of new features at once and saying "can't we have more frequent updates with fewer features?".
At this point, YYG just can't win regardless of what they do...
I get what you're saying. Now let me tell you a little story.
For the past week I have made
zero progress on any of my 3 main projects, because I have been spending all that time fixing features and code in all of them that were already working before updating. No changes to code, just update of runtime and IDE. This has been anything from basic animations to collisions (which has now been broken in my projects for the third time since the shift to GMS2) to even specific level designs.
Today it culminated when I made the dire mistake of updating once again the newest runtime and IDE. I was told I might be able to fix some of the collision and level designs that were broken (again, not by my own doing) by the conversion process if I could replace certain Spine sprites in a converted project with the old non converted version of said sprites, so I thought I'd give it a go, since I had both collisions and levels broken by updates. In particular an old level was broken by the collisions breaking, and I wanted to bring it back.
So first I updated, then imported the Spine sprites from and old nonconverted version. Since the level that was broken was no longer in the new version of the project, I had to import it from an old version. First I did it using the "Import existing" feature. The room referenced objects that were also in the newest version of the project, and they all had the exact same names and sprites, but rather than identifying this, GMS2 chose to ignore that and create exact duplicates of every single asset referenced in the imported room, opening every single one of them in the process. Now the IDE became so unresponsive that I could not even open the room folder in the asset browser.
This obviously wouldn't work anyway, since the room had duplicates of the referenced assets in the room rather than the originals it was supposed to use, so I chose to bite the bullet and recreate the room manually instead. Once again, I updated the Spine sprites, and rather than having to create an entire new room, I wanted to use an existing level as template. So I selected a room in the asset browser and pressed Ctrl+D to duplicate it. I don't know if that happened, since somehow this managed to make my asset browser completely empty - even the search feature could not find any assets in it. I have no idea what happened.
So after once again restarting the IDE and reopening the project, and this time successfully duplicating a room to use as template, I wanted to finally test if I could actually unbreak my collisions and bring back the level that was broken by an update. When I went to compile, I got some very odd compile errors that didn't really make sense. After investigating a bit further, I found out that now GMS2 had somehow decided to
erase code from 3 different events in a very important object - all 3 events were there, but they were empty. No idea how that happened either. Looking at the files in the project folder, the GML files for the events still contained the actual code, but GMS2 refused to recognize this. So I tried restarting again, but still nothing. Then I tried making some manual changes to the code in the events (such as adding a comment) and saving. The object YY file was updated (as shown by Windows timestamps), but again, the GML files were not. They even showed the asterisk * in GMS2 (but the projects' own asterisk disappeared to indicate a successful save). Then, after backing up the code contents of the GML files, I tried to delete the 3 events in GMS2 via the IDE and saving. This actually removed the GML files in the project folder. Yay! Then, I manually added the events back via the IDE, and added the code into the events. Finally, GMS2 would allow me to save the YY file as well as the code, and it would actually load back up again. But now, the project simply refused to compile, with no compile errors, but a lot of internal stuff in the compile log which I have never seen in 17 years of GM use, and which clearly had nothing to do with my code. Restarting changed nothing.
All of this was just to test if I could be so privileged to bring back a level that was broken (again, not by me, but by YYG), but I never even got to the point where this was possible to test, even though essentially all I had to do could be boiled down to:
1: Replace Spine sprites
2: Import room
3: Test room
Instead, I am now left with a project that is somehow more broken than before and won't even compile, and is refusing to save code, and even deletes it seemingly at random, when it isn't hiding all resources in the asset browser. Not exaggerating when I say this is behaving like a beta product right now.
Before today, I've spent the rest of the week trying to fix animations and other fun stuff that were also broken by updating (not by any changes by myself). So I have managed to waste an entire week of my life where no progress was made on at least
one project, but all time was used chasing my own tail, trying to get back to square one. My projects are now more crippled than before, and I am nowhere closer to doing actual work - quite the opposite, my work has regressed.
And all of this is just a quick glimpse of the past week, but this is basically how it's been ever since the shift to GMS2 to varying degrees. We've all had our ups and downs with GM through the years (again, user of 17 years here, no marriage is perfect), but this is beyond extreme. At
no point in the GMS1 days was it like this. I have to go back all the way to when GMS1 was in beta to remember when it was this broken.
I realize this may sound slightly ranty, but I am legit nearing a serious breaking point. We
need to address the lack of stability that has been increasingly drastic for the past 3 years or so now, and while it's all fun and good to chuckle about how we can never please everyone, this is, if nothing else, a serious look into what just one week looks like for one user with enough years in the bank for some high level perspective.