The Ultimate GameSalad Feedback Thread

Photics

Here's a list of things that I think would help improve GameSalad.
(This is aside from the usual "MAKE PRO CHEAPER" and "ADD GAME CENTER" rants.)

New Behaviors To Make Pro More Valuable
- Webview (Load local or web content in a frame)
- In-App purchases
- Read/Write MySQL Database

General Behaviors
- On-Screen Keyboard
- On-Screen number pad
- Play video
- Change Layer

Hardware Behaviors
- Vibration
- Camera light
- Screen brightness
- Clock (What time is it? What day is it?)

Add Expressions in the fields of behaviors that could use it...
- Hyperlink Behavior (for dynamic link creation)
- Animate Frames Behavior (for speed control)
- Change Scene (for better control over scene changes)

User Interface improvements
- Grid / guides / rulers
- Snap to grid / guide
- Control+Arrow to move 10 pixels, instead of just one pixel per arrow press
- able to delete "My Behaviors"
- Sort custom attributes
- Unable to delete "All" tag
- Revert to prototype includes attributes
- More Right-Click menu items for common tasks

Advanced Stuff
- Custom Behaviors
- Arrays (I'm not sure what this is, but it seems important.)
- Custom collision shapes

Audio
- Midi support / able to read sheet music
- Loop Maker (Like Fruity Loops)
(These two would make music files much smaller, while creating good video game sound.)

Technical issues
- Tiles not working properly with Resolution Independence
- Memory leak, not releasing memory after actor is deleted
- Loading time needs improvement
- GameSalad creator slows down the more it is used
- Hard to take iPad screenshots (in preview mode) on small displays

Difficult to Achieve
- Better cross-platform support (Android, Web Browsers, PC)
- Pixel based collision detection (without crippling performance)
- Vector Graphics (Unlikely, but that would help with the next item)
- Universal Binary (One size fits all)

Miscellaneous
- Disable unused touch points (Keeping track of 5 or 11 touches is often overkill.)
- Flip animation
- Set app language (for multi-language support)
- Wrap text to actor box in the Display Text behavior

Community
- Custom Behaviors (Let the community get involved in the development process)
- Have a competition for the best "New Projects" templates
- Better text editor (html or wysiwyg) for forum posting
- Better private messaging system

ChipmunkGames

awesome! But one thing i think u should add is being able to interact with the mic and camera.

Photics

ChipmunkGames said:
awesome! But one thing i think u should add is being able to interact with the mic and camera.

How would that be used for games?

I considered Voice Chat, but that falls under Game Center.

Photics

I added "Change Layer" to the "General Behaviors" list, for games like Shinobi or Mario climbing on a fence in Super Mario World. The post closes in about 35 minutes, so there's not much left I can add. HA HA

design219

From your mouth to Gendai's ears!

I'd be happy with faster load and GameCenter, but all this list would be great.

_______________

Nesen Probe http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nesen-probe/id377766693?mt=8
Tickle Stones http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tickle-stones/id363484260?mt=8
Food Fight! (free) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/food-fight/id352646643?mt=8

victorkin11

about UI, no zoom out/in have big trouble to edit the stage!

BarkBarkCo

Photics said:
How would that be used for games?

Who says you have to use GameSalad for games? ;-)

Photics

BarkBarkCo said:
Who says you have to use GameSalad for games? ;-)

Well, I did make the Photics: Toolbox with GameSalad, but I think any non-game development features should not take priority over regular GameSalad features.

ORBZ

Vector & Point Data Types

chosenonestudios

I think for it to really become a engine. It needs to do other things besides games. It should support game stuff first though, well it is called GameSalad haha

NexusGameStudio

Here's my input

GameSalad Software:

-Sprite Sheet support (to fix the tiling issues)
-Enable/Disable gravity on actor (so actor is not affected by scene gravity)
-Actor attributes (flip horizontally, vertically, skew)
-Organizer! (I would LOVE to organize all my images and sounds by folders and sub-folders)
-New GameSalad splashscreen (no more "made with", perhaps "powered by")

GameSalad Community:

-Private forum for paid developers
-More Gendai forum activity
-Some sort of quality control through Gendai or the community. (No more 1 day development cash-ins, stolen games, and more quality titles that will perhaps help bring some credit back to the GameSalad name.)

synthesis

Arrays (or tables) are the next big behavior Gendai should work to integrate.
2nd is polygonal collision shapes.
3rd is dynamic actor anchors (instead of only its center point)
4th is actor chains (linking actors to actors via their anchor points)

The first will allow us to build more complex and exciting sequences in our games as well as manage data better.
The second will allow more unique collision physics and expand games beyond circles and squares.
The third will make things like levers and pendulums (amongst many other things) possible.
The fourth will make things like chain links, trains, etc. possible...which could open the door to more complex physics games.

I would also like to see features like a "take a screenshot" behavior , device clock and date access and an "email content" support (for things like screenshots and scores)...which would make non-game apps more exciting and more inline with normal app features in entertainment (ie: more cupcake types).

firemaplegames

Accessing the mic would allow for voice controlled games. From simple things like creating an ocarina, to more complex voice controls like the ones used in the amazing Legend of Zelda games for the Nintendo DS - blowing out candles, yelling to characters through locked doors, etc. - really cool stuff.

However, that being said, the microphone, vibrations, camera, compass, and gyroscope are only available on iPhones. None of the other iDevices have those.

It would go against GameSalad's aim to be completely cross-platform. You would have to re-factor your code for different devices.

It would certainly be amazing to play with those features, but I don't think it will ever happen.

I agree with everything else on the list.

VoidedSky

Great stuff! I hope these all are in out next update! Ha! who am I kidding!

ChipmunkGames

firemaplegames said:
Accessing the mic would allow for voice controlled games. From simple things like creating an ocarina, to more complex voice controls like the ones used in the amazing Legend of Zelda games for the Nintendo DS - blowing out candles, yelling to characters through locked doors, etc. - really cool stuff.

However, that being said, the microphone, vibrations, camera, compass, and gyroscope are only available on iPhones. None of the other iDevices have those.

It would go against GameSalad's aim to be completely cross-platform. You would have to re-factor your code for different devices.

It would certainly be amazing to play with those features, but I don't think it will ever happen.

I agree with everything else on the list.

The new ipod touch has a camera. I really want to be able to interact with camera cause then they could chose they're own characters from they're pictures like ive seen in many other games. Or touchgrind how you can costomize your skateboard. People like that kind of stuff.

dmilinovichiii

I would love to see built in image and audio editors in GameSalad and even more importantly, I want GameSalad to have an online file sharing program so GameSalad members can share their images and audio files so people can download them ROYALTY FREE (mostly because I suck at drawing and want to be able to create decent looking apps).

victorkin11

I think the first thing we need is a roadmap, a Schedule, so we don't need a lot of post about when, what the update!!