CosmicBunBun wrote:

Remember, guys, if you don't want to improve your cloud system, make it absolutely useless and say it's a financial issue even though you're backed by one of the richest companies in the world and haven't received any boosts of users in the last 3 years!

furrypig wrote:

Everybody's overreacting a bit. Sure, it's a big change. Many old cloud projects no longer work, because they use too much data. But one of the reasons why they use so much data is because they used to have the space- and now, without the space, people should update their games to compress better and not save unnecessary things.

People are also saying that you can no longer make high score boards, multiplayer, etc but this is wrong.

Here are common cloud project types and how they're affected:

The limit really affects projects that save each user. You can still save with save codes if you want, but you won't be able to save each user and also have other users be able to see the data. You can only store the recent users.

Cloud vote projects are affected because they have to save each user that has voted, and there's no space for all of them, so you'd only be able to save the number of votes and the recent voters. People would be able to vote again by the time they're off the recent voters, but still, it works ok…

But other kinds of projects, like multiplayer, will still be possible. They may not be as smooth, but they still work fine. They barely use any space, because the data is only temporary. Some people are acting like multiplayer is dead now, but this is probably the most lightly affected area.

Cloud chats are another thing that still works (although there's not enough space to save messages from before a user was online). People put a message into the cloud variable, the other users save it onto a list or something, then the message is taken off the cloud.

Highscores: You can't save everybody's highscore anymore, but you can still save a top 10 or something. Some people are acting like you can only make a simple one-person highscore, and that's definitely wrong.

One thing people make is cloud lists- I think they're not a good method of storing data, but you can still make these. Most people don't compress their cloud lists at all, having 2 characters saved for each 1 character in the original.

It seems here people like cloud a lot. Then why are a few just give up? Cloud isn't gone now! Take on the challenge, work on new kinds of projects, think of new methods to use less data.
“This marks the end of advanced Scratch”
“Well there goes … multiplayer games”
“Well, how will we enjoy multiplayer projects, Well , what can we do now?”
“Sad to say this will prob make me leave scratch unless it gets changed soon”
“after this my enthusiasm for scratch is greatly diminished”
“Cant imagine scratching without cloud”
Don't give up :(

Also, you know what is wasting a lot of cloud data? Old projects. You can't change the value, but it still stores the old large value. If you got rid of all of that data, there'd be more space, and the limit could be changed, right? But people would get mad that their data is gone…

Another thing: Most users probably still don't know about the limit. So they're probably really confused about why their project's data isn't updating. And the people using the projects: they don't understand why the game's not working for them. Shouldn't there be an official announcement somewhere so everybody knows? I mean, there would be more people angry at the scratch team, but I think it's better than having people spending a ton of time trying to fix their stuff.

The scratch team should also do something about people creating more than 10 cloud variables. Somebody could create a project with 1000000 cloud variables and use 128000000 characters. And with the new limit, people will probably begin to create more cloud variables to store more data.

Grubby2008 wrote:

“Thanks” @furrypig, now they limited it

77Tigers wrote:

Grubby2008 wrote:

“Thanks” @furrypig, now they limited it

I can still make over 10 cloud variables, if that's what you meant.

s-zhangcha wrote:

What a shame.
I haven't even got to using multiplayer cloud. Maybe I should consider donating?
Also, what is the server that you guys use to maintain the cloud? Just wondering.

ealgase wrote:

Just in case this hasn't been done yet, I've created a chatroom here simply for demonstration purposes. It's obvious that this change does not prevent chatrooms.

jacobsmash1 wrote:

ealgase wrote:

Just in case this hasn't been done yet, I've created a chatroom here simply for demonstration purposes. It's obvious that this change does not prevent chatrooms.

Why isn't there a whitelist?

ealgase wrote:

jacobsmash1 wrote:

ealgase wrote:

Just in case this hasn't been done yet, I've created a chatroom here simply for demonstration purposes. It's obvious that this change does not prevent chatrooms.

Why isn't there a whitelist?

Good idea, don't want the ST to take down the project.

thisandagain wrote:

…unreasonable to maintain, scale, moderate, and support financially.

DerpyHead0 wrote:

thisandagain wrote:

…unreasonable to maintain, scale, moderate, and support financially.

maybe there could be a way to host cloud on 3rd party servers (ones whitelisted by scratch, of course) that could set their own limits with cloud?
this would definitely help with the problem, and maybe finally let us have proper cloud strings and lists, if that can be worked on.

CosmicBunBun wrote:

>scratch using any 3rd-party source for anything ever

Jonathan50 wrote:

CosmicBunBun wrote:

>scratch using any 3rd-party source for anything ever

>fastly
>react
>google analytics
>and so on

Wettining wrote:

Jonathan50 wrote:

CosmicBunBun wrote:

>scratch using any 3rd-party source for anything ever

>fastly
>react
>google analytics
>and so on

>scratch using any 3rd-party source for anything ever for specifically their user base*

griffpatch wrote:

Oh bother . So no more high score tables, achievements, and definitely no scratcharia as I can't store the level . What a shame.

Since cloud cars could no longer be used for high score tables or storing achievements, do you think there will be score in new scratch 3 blocks for implementing this kind of functionality in a more scalable controllable way? For example, achievements want to be recorded per user, but not accessable by other scratchers, so this is like a local cloud variable or list for that scratcher? Couldn't be used for chat rooms, and could be set to only save very periodically as it only needs to persist between sessions not in real time.

The high score table is more tricky, but perhaps an extension for high score tables that is limited in functionality just to record the username and a number for score. It might even present itself in a common way across all scratch projects?

Just a few ideas too try to handle the huge disappointment in the loss of a highly appreciated feature of scratch.

Not sure what could be done about the saving levels like scratcharia… In that game the level was saved once a minute to a cloud var to persist it between games… Guess there's nothing that could be done there

TheLogFather wrote:

Note that using unicode doesn't really change how many bytes end up getting used to store data.

So if the constraint is that cloud values can only be 128 *bytes* long (and we don't know yet how this constraint is applied) then using unicode will not give any worthwhile increase in how much data can be stored in cloudvar…

It all depends how the cloud server is counting things – is it counting the length of the string using a method that understands unicode, or is it counting actual bytes (or a string-length method that doesn't know unicode, so ends up effectively equivalent to bytes)?

Since the Scratch player version has not changed (still on v459.1) since this length constraint has appeared, it would seem it is getting applied at the server end. (Interestingly, though, the github version is now on 460, but without any changes to the available code – so something has been going on…)

ideapad-320 wrote:

furrypig wrote:

Everybody's overreacting a bit. Sure, it's a big change. Many old cloud projects no longer work, because they use too much data. But one of the reasons why they use so much data is because they used to have the space- and now, without the space, people should update their games to compress better and not save unnecessary things.

People are also saying that you can no longer make high score boards, multiplayer, etc but this is wrong.

Here are common cloud project types and how they're affected:

The limit really affects projects that save each user. You can still save with save codes if you want, but you won't be able to save each user and also have other users be able to see the data. You can only store the recent users.

Cloud vote projects are affected because they have to save each user that has voted, and there's no space for all of them, so you'd only be able to save the number of votes and the recent voters. People would be able to vote again by the time they're off the recent voters, but still, it works ok…

But other kinds of projects, like multiplayer, will still be possible. They may not be as smooth, but they still work fine. They barely use any space, because the data is only temporary. Some people are acting like multiplayer is dead now, but this is probably the most lightly affected area.

Cloud chats are another thing that still works (although there's not enough space to save messages from before a user was online). People put a message into the cloud variable, the other users save it onto a list or something, then the message is taken off the cloud.

Highscores: You can't save everybody's highscore anymore, but you can still save a top 10 or something. Some people are acting like you can only make a simple one-person highscore, and that's definitely wrong.

One thing people make is cloud lists- I think they're not a good method of storing data, but you can still make these. Most people don't compress their cloud lists at all, having 2 characters saved for each 1 character in the original.

It seems here people like cloud a lot. Then why are a few just give up? Cloud isn't gone now! Take on the challenge, work on new kinds of projects, think of new methods to use less data.
“This marks the end of advanced Scratch”
“Well there goes … multiplayer games”
“Well, how will we enjoy multiplayer projects, Well , what can we do now?”
“Sad to say this will prob make me leave scratch unless it gets changed soon”
“after this my enthusiasm for scratch is greatly diminished”
“Cant imagine scratching without cloud”
Don't give up :(

Also, you know what is wasting a lot of cloud data? Old projects. You can't change the value, but it still stores the old large value. If you got rid of all of that data, there'd be more space, and the limit could be changed, right? But people would get mad that their data is gone…

Another thing: Most users probably still don't know about the limit. So they're probably really confused about why their project's data isn't updating. And the people using the projects: they don't understand why the game's not working for them. Shouldn't there be an official announcement somewhere so everybody knows? I mean, there would be more people angry at the scratch team, but I think it's better than having people spending a ton of time trying to fix their stuff.

The scratch team should also do something about people creating more than 10 cloud variables. Somebody could create a project with 1000000 cloud variables and use 128000000 characters. And with the new limit, people will probably begin to create more cloud variables to store more data.

I wish they notafied us. griffpatch is now more like rifpatch.

furrypig wrote:

“This marks the end of advanced Scratch”
“Well there goes … multiplayer games”
“Well, how will we enjoy multiplayer projects, Well , what can we do now?”
“Sad to say this will prob make me leave scratch unless it gets changed soon”
“after this my enthusiasm for scratch is greatly diminished”
“Cant imagine scratching without cloud”
Don't give up :(

dude341 wrote:

furrypig wrote:

“This marks the end of advanced Scratch”
“Well there goes … multiplayer games”
“Well, how will we enjoy multiplayer projects, Well , what can we do now?”
“Sad to say this will prob make me leave scratch unless it gets changed soon”
“after this my enthusiasm for scratch is greatly diminished”
“Cant imagine scratching without cloud”
Don't give up :(

Well, I sort of give up on Scratch for online multiplayer (it does affect it, usually you can't find a server with more than 3 players or even find a server at all) and other cloud things, but in the future I want to make a Scratch community alternative which will fix all the problems Scratch has (Scratch is open source after all, but I would not be able to call it anything with Scratch in the name.)