what does it mean when you get a bad symbol error message?

That's the most common error.  It usually means that you either used an unsupported command/symbol or you used the wrong type of data like using a number when a variable is expected or having a closed parenthesis without an open one.

I know, I haven't actually made a real tutorial for it yet.  I don't think I will either until its finished.  I might make a mini one when the beta comes out, but other than that, these threads are the only resource for those types of general information.

Speaking of which, whats with all the sudden influx of posts?  Just a few days ago there were only a handful of posts per day in this subforum, and now entire threads get filled up in a matter of hours.  There's got to have been over 100 new posts here just from today alone...

I know, I haven't actually made a real tutorial for it yet.  I don't think I will either until its finished.  I might make a mini one when the beta comes out, but other than that, these threads are the only resource for those types of general information.

Speaking of which, whats with all the sudden influx of posts?  Just a few days ago there were only a handful of posts per day in this subforum, and now entire threads get filled up in a matter of hours.  There's got to have been over 100 new posts here just from today alone...

Lol yeah, I noticed a suddent increase in activity there. However the entire Omnimaga forum has been going this way for over a month now. We have hit records in March. I think the IRC post notifier bot helps a lot now, though, because IRC chat users now frequent the board more often.

Yesterday alone was 300+ posts. Sometimes I checked a topic where a new member asked a question, then an hour later it was alerady on page 2

Activity really skyrocketed starting in November. October was kinda dead, even UTI had more activity than us, but near the end of that month, I kinda noticed activity wanted to rise, so I had some hope, and then it kept increasing every month. Now let's keep Omni strong ^^

nice to hear ^^

I will probably wait a bit more since there was still a bug reported by Cooliojazz or Buildeboy a short while ago IIRC and I am still thinking about ideas on what to make at the moment, as well as debatting if I should use compressed tilemaps or not.

New update.

I explain the new file system a bit in the general help file.  But anyway, you have to prefix your names when saving to files from now on.  So if you want to save to an appvar with the name "MONKEY" you have to store the string as "vMONKEY"->Str1.  That 'v' is the prefix for appvars and is not the lowercase 'v', its the one on the [2nd][8] button.  To access programs, you prefix with prgm.  So "prgmMONKEY" will read and write to the program called monkey.  However, you can not create new programs currently.

Another new thing that might need explanation is the new grayscale command.  I haven't added any grayscale drawing commands yet, but I think it can still be useful.  Basically, whatever is drawn on the back buffer will appear gray wherever the front buffer is white.  So it effectively gives you a background layer.  Keep in mind you have to update the display an odd number of times each frame (3 is fine spread out around the code) and you have to make sure sprites update their positions an even number of of draw cycles apart (every other cycle is perfect).  Otherwise they leave a checkered blur.

I think he means how many times you call the command in the program.