Anyone tried using this thing?
It seems broken in every single way I can think of. Almost nothing works the way I expect it would, and everything I do creates unique oddities. Each and everyone of which makes me think this is in an Alpha stage, pre-beta.
And there's little to no discussion of it online.
Is the Sprite Kit version better?
Whats broken? Did you report it tp Apple?
Now is your chance since Xcode is in beta!!!
I just fired up a new project yesterday and tried out some actions in the editor. I rotated some spheres, moved some things, repeated some actions forever. All seemed to work as expected. What issues are you experiencing exactly?
The list is long. Perhaps a few dozen oddities. Far more than I have time to write individual reports for, with that bug report system. That thing is... I don't have words other than pedantic and a time trap.
Try actually using it. Conceive of an idea, and then attempt to achieve it.
The moment you start editing these little time chunks you'll start experiencing crashes, weirdness and bugs. I am certain of it.
The first time you place them, they're fine... but for a few weird glitches and peculiar aspects of their operation.
But editing them opens up a whole new can of worms on an entirely different level of disasterous.
Here's just a sample of the problems:
Add a move action. Set it as you desire. Now change the duration of the Action in the right panel. Notice the timeline has not updated to reflect the increase/decrease in duration. Wait for it... at some point in the next few things you do in the UI, it will update.
Duplicate this action. Right click over it, and duplicate it. Or copy and paste it. Notice the duplicate/copy retained NONE of the values in the original, other than the duration. It's not a duplicate, it's not a copy.
Set the duplicate/copy to mirror the first Action. You'll probably expereience some glitchy weirdness whilst doing this.
Now you have an oscillation, back and forth.
Deselect this node, do anything else you like in the Project.
Return to the node you created these actions in. And select the first of the actions. Change any value of the Move (Offset) X,Y,Z fields.
Select the "duplicate" to change its corresponding value to match your changes. CRASH!
Restart Xcode.
Return to your timeline, and attempt, again, to edit the "duplicate" action to match the first action. CRASH!
You now have a perfectly looping crash cycle and corrupted project. I have found no way around this problem other than deleting the object, and starting over.
And just about everything about this timeline and Action editor is like this. There is nothing that's stable about it. I don't think anyone actually uses it, as I've not found any complaints about it, anywhere.
Very seriously, how do I report something to Apple?
I've reported several bugs and issues through their bug reporter in the past. NO RESPONSE.
I doubt anyone has ever read them.
Have you ever used the bug reporter? It's not even clear where I should file a Scene Kit bug, let alone dozens of them. iOS SDK, iOS, Xcode?
Over the past 3 weeks I've filed 4 different Scene Kit bugs. Not a single response.
And then there's the time it takes to use that bug report system, which is buggy, in and of itself. It's hung on me a few times, and lost the "upload" of the bug report. Meaning I have to start again with the entire process... so more wasted time.
How long did it take you to file a bug report? It takes me at least 10 minutes to compose one because each box is so weird and inappropriate. It's such a "catch all" system that it fits nothing.
Imagine I have a little table with dozens of Scene Kit bugs, that grows every day... should I spend a few days articulating that via their bug report system, or first find out if someone else has experienced anywhere near the issues I'm facing when trying to be creative with Scene Kit?
At this point I'd much rather create a massive PDF with screen captures and inline video examples of some issues, publish it to Dropbox and see if anyone else suffers similarly. That's likely a far more productive use of time than bothering with that ******* bug report ********.
I understand your frustration with the editor, because in some of the previous betas I've seen some bizarre behavior. I haven't played around with the actions in the editor timeline enough to notice many problems, like I said I just tried a few actions and it seemed to work. I have however submitted multiple bugs for SceneKit stuff over the past few betas, and for the most part I get responses within 2 to 3 weeks. Make sure to set the priority high if it's an important issue. As new betas have been released (both El Captian and Xcode) I have found many of my original bugs have been corrected. So, I think there is value in submitting the bug report even though it can be time consuming. Good luck.
