It's Flash CS5 now for me, I've worked with Flash on web stuff for years. My current project isn't a game, so this is very doable... but a lot of GS production work is lost.
I don't think I'll be doing any games any time soon... at least nothing with physics involved, I'm not very deep into Action Script 3, but I'm about to dive back into it.
If Apple had no turned around on Flash a couple weeks ago, I'd be really screwed now.
____________________________
Friends sharing the "great" news about GameSalad Publisher! (warning: adult words)
I'm looking at Unity also but my opinion is kind of the opposite, looks like it handles 3d very well, native actually, and the 2d part is the problem... but it seems easy to make a 3d game look 2d (zombieville and many others)
i'm going corona, well I was starting to do that before. The coding isn't really an issue, its easy and makes me feel like a real developer. My only problem so far is making things for android as there are no set screen dimensions on android devices, everything has to be set relative to the systems reported size, including graphic sizes and coordinates. I think I'll make my first app on corona just for iOS, its a bit easier.
mynameisace said: Has anyone used iTorque or know if it's any good?
Ace
I'm gonna chime in regarding iTorque 2D. I jumped in on an early beta and almost put my fist through my iMac screen. Took me two months to create Archangel: FGC with it, and while it's pretty powerful in terms of polygon collision, scripting ability, and the ability to inject your own Objective-C code, it was ridiculously complex to fine-tune and compile to the device. They basically gave me nothing to start with (aka tutorials and start-up guides), and many people were fending for themselves just to get a project going. The editor was also very buggy, and crashes out completely when your script has an error, but I was finally able to compile a final product by the skin of my teeth. You basically have to strip everything out manually if you want to minimize the mandatory splash screen time and increase your game's performance. Unfortunately, they've updated their beta (still in beta) a few times and my project no longer runs properly with it, which is why I haven't been able to submit an update.
GameSalad is similar in a few ways to Torque, negatively and positively. They both have a drag-and-drop setup, but Torque takes it up a notch by allowing aligning, snapping, and easily manipulating each actor on the fly. When I was active on their boards, their team's posts were infrequent but moderately detailed - not terse, teasing, and cryptic like GameSalad has been. But, it's all about using real C++ for scripting, and not their TorqueScript - while TorqueScript is much easier to use and relatively powerful, it's comparatively slow as hell, and the overall performance compared to GameSalad is slower. I was surprised that I was able to detail my GameSalad version of Archangel for the iPad with 10x as many asteroids as I could with iTorque 2D.
Just a quick, tangential note about Unity and Corona - they both offer academic pricing that is about half the price of their standard licenses. Still not free, but it might make a difference for devs still in uni (or high school, or younger - I know we have several in the community ^_^) or who are employed by a school (and we've got at least a couple of those, too).
Obligatory GameSalad reference: Whatever its attractiveness (or lack thereof) to existing game designers, GameSalad Direct's new structure would be particularly well-suited to its use in the classroom, or for a game design course for kids.
maniraptor said: Whatever its attractiveness (or lack thereof) to existing game designers, GameSalad Direct's new structure would be particularly well-suited to its use in the classroom, or for a game design course for kids.
Gee...that sounds incredibly profitable...NOT! Build a revenue sharing model based on a bunch of apps created by 8 year olds and alienate the devs that produce strong titles?
reddotinc said: I'm looking at Unity, but it seems to be more work to make 2D games than 3D games.. Which is a bit of a nuisance.. Anyone else looking at this?
// red.
After downloading the trial last night, I came to the same conclusion. I downloaded the corona trial this morning, and find it really easy (I'm a programmer by day). The one thing I can't find and wish it had was a GUI to layout a scene.
I've also dug into cocos2d a bit.
So far all most of my apps on the store have been written in xcode, but I just don't have the time to make the kind of app I really want to make in xcode. Gamesalad was (and hopefully still will be) the best choice for doing this.
maniraptor said: Just a quick, tangential note about Unity and Corona - they both offer academic pricing that is about half the price of their standard licenses. Still not free, but it might make a difference for devs still in uni (or high school, or younger - I know we have several in the community ^_^) or who are employed by a school (and we've got at least a couple of those, too).
PLEASE be careful with stuff like this. A lot of academic licenses are slightly altered and you CAN NOT PUBLISH your product to sell. Sometimes you CAN publish it but you TECHNICALLY are NOT ALLOWED to sell.
Either way, although it is a way to get these programs cheaper, it is not a suitable way to sell games "legally".
Also, a lot of these academic softwares are non-upgradable to major upgrades (3.0 to 4.0 or so on).
just my 2 cents: I own corona, it's easy but not SO easy and it doesn't have a gui to layout pieces around. I looked at UNITY, but it seems too complex. Had a look on SHIVA 3D, cool but lot of code. GAmemaker is still in development for iphone.
The only one that 'feels' like GS (r.i.p.) is GAME EDITOR. native gui, really drag and drop like GS (r.i.p), easy and very short scripting or not script at all, C code if you wish to customize your works. Free for free games, 99bucks for licence, 1500 for professional (i don't know the difference now) I think I will try that.
This was a really good forum, I hope to find you guys around on other iphone dev forums...
italianmaxx said: just my 2 cents: I own corona, it's easy but not SO easy and it doesn't have a gui to layout pieces around. I looked at UNITY, but it seems too complex. Had a look on SHIVA 3D, cool but lot of code. GAmemaker is still in development for iphone.
The only one that 'feels' like GS (r.i.p.) is GAME EDITOR. native gui, really drag and drop like GS (r.i.p), easy and very short scripting or not script at all, C code if you wish to customize your works. Free for free games, 99bucks for licence, 1500 for professional (i don't know the difference now) I think I will try that.
This was a really good forum, I hope to find you guys around on other iphone dev forums...
Never heard of Game Editor. Just checked it out and it looks very interesting. Any idea on how the performance is on an iphone?
EDIT: NEVER MIND, just saw this in Game Editor's faq: "Game-Editor will charge 50% of the app revenue generated after Apple charges."
EDIT #2: Never mind the above - it only applies for iphone apps submitted to them from windows/linux.
I don't know if it matters to some of you, but Corona does have an extensive set of API's that give you access to the device's GPS, camera/photo library, compass, microphone. That can really open up to a wider variety of games (or apps).
@ BTT: yes from the pure development POV, corona has a great advantage. the use of more than 500 APIs to effectively use iphone's hardware. I looked at corona for this precise reason.
regarding gameeditor's fees, I don't know. for sure a 50% after the apple 30% make it a dead sdk walking...we should read the licences and share the info, maybe we have a winner here.
and more, I don't know if it's possible to implement hardware functions like gps on gameeditor, via the C code, from what I've read the final compile is via XCODE, so maybe it's possible to use all the hardware. tomorrow will be a day dedicated to gameeditor...
MattVollet said: PLEASE be careful with stuff like this. A lot of academic licenses are slightly altered and you CAN NOT PUBLISH your product to sell. Sometimes you CAN publish it but you TECHNICALLY are NOT ALLOWED to sell.
Either way, although it is a way to get these programs cheaper, it is not a suitable way to sell games "legally".
Also, a lot of these academic softwares are non-upgradable to major upgrades (3.0 to 4.0 or so on).
To be clear: I did not advocate the violation of license agreements. My purpose was let student developers know that they do have the option of an academic license if they wanted more than one month (i.e. the duration of the trial) to learn one - or both - of these two tools before committing to develop commercially on either.
synthesis said: Gee...that sounds incredibly profitable...NOT! Build a revenue sharing model based on a bunch of apps created by 8 year olds and alienate the devs that produce strong titles?
Yes, rather.
LOL. Perhaps I should have said, "well-suited for teachers who had no money to spend even on discounted academic versions of software for non-commercial use in their classrooms for using game design to motivate their attention-impaired pupils."
LOL. Perhaps I should have said, "well-suited for teachers who had no money to spend even on discounted academic versions of software for non-commercial use in their classrooms for using game design to motivate their attention-impaired pupils."
Still I ask...How does that help GS become profitable?
think of it as slowly slowly... new devs come to gs, publish new games for free... GS starts to gain... more devs arrive...and more... and more. They gain a continous profit, not only 99$ a year per user.
synthesis said: Still I ask...How does that help GS become profitable?
By becoming the YouTube of iPhone games? Averaging $.20 a game in royalties, times 100 unit sales per game, times... .5 million users (or at least individual games)? That outcome seems improbable to me, but venture capital investors generally expect a minimum 10X return on investment.
I'd really like to hear the VC's answer to that question.
tshirtbooth said: butter, i think your wrong. I think like anything in life people will adjust. I think new members will out weigh the old and in a month it will be business as usual here. Most people are angry and making rash choices. But i think time will show most people will stick with GS.
just my opinion
I think very few people have made any choices at all, rather coming to the realization that it is very likely that GameSalad doesn't suit them any longer.
Comments
I don't think I'll be doing any games any time soon... at least nothing with physics involved, I'm not very deep into Action Script 3, but I'm about to dive back into it.
If Apple had no turned around on Flash a couple weeks ago, I'd be really screwed now.
____________________________
Friends sharing the "great" news about GameSalad Publisher! (warning: adult words)
plus great documentation...customer service!
code a program in less than 25 minutes...(most SDK take that long for "Hello World")
there are 2 more videos to finish the project..
MH
// red.
MH
i'm going corona, well I was starting to do that before. The coding isn't really an issue, its easy and makes me feel like a real developer. My only problem so far is making things for android as there are no set screen dimensions on android devices, everything has to be set relative to the systems reported size, including graphic sizes and coordinates. I think I'll make my first app on corona just for iOS, its a bit easier.
GameSalad is similar in a few ways to Torque, negatively and positively. They both have a drag-and-drop setup, but Torque takes it up a notch by allowing aligning, snapping, and easily manipulating each actor on the fly. When I was active on their boards, their team's posts were infrequent but moderately detailed - not terse, teasing, and cryptic like GameSalad has been. But, it's all about using real C++ for scripting, and not their TorqueScript - while TorqueScript is much easier to use and relatively powerful, it's comparatively slow as hell, and the overall performance compared to GameSalad is slower. I was surprised that I was able to detail my GameSalad version of Archangel for the iPad with 10x as many asteroids as I could with iTorque 2D.
Obligatory GameSalad reference: Whatever its attractiveness (or lack thereof) to existing game designers, GameSalad Direct's new structure would be particularly well-suited to its use in the classroom, or for a game design course for kids.
What did I miss? Some atrocious slander?
Ahh....found it...its his funny video...
Not sure if its spam...
oh well...
Build a revenue sharing model based on a bunch of apps created by 8 year olds and alienate the devs that produce strong titles?
I've also dug into cocos2d a bit.
So far all most of my apps on the store have been written in xcode, but I just don't have the time to make the kind of app I really want to make in xcode. Gamesalad was (and hopefully still will be) the best choice for doing this.
Sometimes you CAN publish it but you TECHNICALLY are NOT ALLOWED to sell.
Either way, although it is a way to get these programs cheaper, it is not a suitable way to sell games "legally".
Also, a lot of these academic softwares are non-upgradable to major upgrades (3.0 to 4.0 or so on).
The only one that 'feels' like GS (r.i.p.) is GAME EDITOR. native gui, really drag and drop like GS (r.i.p), easy and very short scripting or not script at all, C code if you wish to customize your works.
Free for free games, 99bucks for licence, 1500 for professional (i don't know the difference now)
I think I will try that.
This was a really good forum, I hope to find you guys around on other iphone dev forums...
EDIT: NEVER MIND, just saw this in Game Editor's faq:
"Game-Editor will charge 50% of the app revenue generated after Apple charges."
EDIT #2: Never mind the above - it only applies for iphone apps submitted to them from windows/linux.
regarding gameeditor's fees, I don't know. for sure a 50% after the apple 30% make it a dead sdk walking...we should read the licences and share the info, maybe we have a winner here.
and more, I don't know if it's possible to implement hardware functions like gps on gameeditor, via the C code, from what I've read the final compile is via XCODE, so maybe it's possible to use all the hardware.
tomorrow will be a day dedicated to gameeditor...
LOL. Perhaps I should have said, "well-suited for teachers who had no money to spend even on discounted academic versions of software for non-commercial use in their classrooms for using game design to motivate their attention-impaired pupils."
They gain a continous profit, not only 99$ a year per user.
I'd really like to hear the VC's answer to that question.
No way will it ever happen, they're scaring all the PRO's away, and they need them the MOST.
Do I think it's a bit naive... or a bit too soon to be saying things will be business as usual in a month? Yes.
Gamesalad has a LOT to prove in the up and coming months, and I don't think people are going to "settle" into this plan.
They will lose a LOT of customers, and it will take a hell of a lot to regain more in the process, and professional ones I might add.