I don’t know if my problem is being caused by a new patch or what. I use the downloaded version of MakeCode arcade editor on windows 11. The auto save stops working at random times and then just seemingly stops trying until you close out the window. For the 7th time it’s crashed to a white screen, destroying hours of testing and creating.
The blockly editor still feels sluggishly cumbersome to move around in, and my ask for any updates on this have been ignored. Seemingly a solution to how squirrely it use to be but now its been over corrected to a sloths pace. I sent a message to Richard a month ago about this part, and he couldn’t even just tell me no. Instead responding that he’s on vacation, leading me to believe he’ll come back later. He’s never responded to my follow up made several days later in that thread.
Every error in code within the blockly editor causes half the screen to be covered by a massive square full of nothing, which can be very unhelpful when the editor checks your code every time you put one thing down. I don’t necessary have a problem with the constant checks but between covering the screen with a big box of usually mostly nothing and the slow down it becomes so disruptive it makes the experience slow and annoying.
The web version is slower than molasses, taking 10 seconds to boot up at best. To make it worse it has no loading bar to show that anything is happening. The website is slower than it’s ever been before no mater the computer I use. It’s all making me wonder if the developers are even trying to optimize, because with every update and new feature the editor gets progressively worse. Why is it when you’re looking at a shared game, the mute button make game frame rate run worse?? Not like MakeCode was never a fast website but I thought these issues would be fixed by now, after around 5 years sense I first started using it. Using MakeCode on the mobile website causes unintentional zoom in and for the whole page to be highlighted, making the buttons inaccessible until you tap a very narrow part of the screen. This is not an issue for many mobile web based games that make buttons unable to be highlighted in the first place. The web editor pauses constantly even on my gaming computer due to the auto save completely slowing down the website even when it’s the only thing running on whatever computer, browser or search engine I can find.
That wasteful use of data that is the Ai features is worse than unhelpful. It wants every section of code to be a labeled function. In my experience of reading others code actually makes it harder to read as someone who doesn’t already know how the original programmer was mapping their convoluted web. The Ai doesn’t even know the first game update starts before 20ms. The ask AI in the editor suggests the most basic crap, that’s completely unhelpful in slightly more complex code.
The descriptions are not that beginner friendly. At least in the context of kids in mind, where they might not know a lot of coding or even math lingo. I certainly know I didn’t know what something like an integer was starting out as a kid. I thought this platform was supposed to be educational yet the descriptions in the block editor are so uninformative compared to what it could be. Not a lot of kids have the inspiration to explore and experiment with code and the lack of good descriptions isn’t helping.
Dose any one know what’s happening?