Photics said: If you didn't already know, double-tapping the home button pauses the game.
Sure, but if you're have to pause the game to change the music/sound levels or to check out the help/instructions, the home button is no longer as useful:)
I wrote in a pause functionality into my games by creating a pause attribute and wrapping any actors that need to pause in a rule that the pause attribute has to be false for their movement to work (or for the main actor's controls to work). A pause button toggles the pause on/off, and when the game is paused the pause button becomes large and in the middle of the scene. So far it works flawless, it took some tinkering to get right. Then, despite the game being paused, I can have other things continue in the background.
If your game is based on the game timer, then things get more complicated, but it's still possible to get away with this - something like having an attribute that tracks how long the game has been paused (game.pauseTime) and calculate that into any game time-based calculations.
One tip.. make your rule that toggles the pause either initiate the pause when touch is released, or move the button when the pause is toggled (or both). Otherwise double-taps will be detected, and it will make it very annoying (and buggy) to pause and unpause. You could also use a timer - if button down for more than 0.3 seconds then pause, but that's also kind of annoying to use.
Pause feature would be very handy for those of us mostly interested in platformers or action based games. The number of times I play games at work and get interrupted when I start to do well is crazy, but luckily they have a pause feature!
dhondon said: Sure, but if you're have to pause the game to change the music/sound levels or to check out the help/instructions, the home button is no longer as useful:)
That's what I'm wondering. Simply pausing the game, like in the old Nintendo Entertainment System way, is not really going to help GameSalad developers. Instead, only some of the actors should be frozen... but something like that can be accomplished manually.
Like the Angry Birds or Cut the Rope in-game menus, that's like a pause... but it's more than that.
Photics, I agree. If there were a pause behavior, it would almost defeat the purpose by completely pausing the entire application, when what you really want is to pause the main action/movement/timers. Currently my pause button only gives the user the option to quit the game, but there could be a lot more options.
Also on topic of double-tapping home.. clicking an iAd also pauses the game just like double-tapping home, if iAds are displayed during the game :-P
From what I understand, it was a store scene behavior that was removed. Something like that is different than just pausing the whole game.
At first I was like, what's wrong with GameSalad? Why is it so hard to pause the game. Although, I think that there is something tricky to it. Pausing the whole game should be easy. iOS 4 makes that possible. What would make GameSalad games better is complicated and probably better handled manually by the developer.
If not, then maybe that's something for discussion here.
If the goal is to create Angry Birds / Cut the Rope menu systems, then what would make that easier? Stopping the actor, while storing the actor's velocity and position, is the trick.
Maybe the following behaviors are better...
Pause Actor - when the game.Pause behavior is true, this actor will no longer be able to move. It's physics related attributes will be stored until the actor is unfrozen.
Pause Scene - Store a scene's data for later use.
Pause Game - Everything in the game is frozen. The player needs to touch the screen to resume the game.
My point is that I think this is more complicated than just pausing the game. The GameSalad team is working on this, but a pause behavior didn't make the 0.9.0 launch. Why not? What issues occurred? I'm surprised that there isn't more discussion on this matter.
When pause didn't show up with the last update, I didn't notice a lot of complaining about it. Was that because pause isn't as necessary or is that because there's a feeling of futility in the community?
Photics
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If your game is based on the game timer, then things get more complicated, but it's still possible to get away with this - something like having an attribute that tracks how long the game has been paused (game.pauseTime) and calculate that into any game time-based calculations.
One tip.. make your rule that toggles the pause either initiate the pause when touch is released, or move the button when the pause is toggled (or both). Otherwise double-taps will be detected, and it will make it very annoying (and buggy) to pause and unpause. You could also use a timer - if button down for more than 0.3 seconds then pause, but that's also kind of annoying to use.
Like the Angry Birds or Cut the Rope in-game menus, that's like a pause... but it's more than that.
Also on topic of double-tapping home.. clicking an iAd also pauses the game just like double-tapping home, if iAds are displayed during the game :-P
At first I was like, what's wrong with GameSalad? Why is it so hard to pause the game. Although, I think that there is something tricky to it. Pausing the whole game should be easy. iOS 4 makes that possible. What would make GameSalad games better is complicated and probably better handled manually by the developer.
If not, then maybe that's something for discussion here.
If the goal is to create Angry Birds / Cut the Rope menu systems, then what would make that easier? Stopping the actor, while storing the actor's velocity and position, is the trick.
Maybe the following behaviors are better...
Pause Actor - when the game.Pause behavior is true, this actor will no longer be able to move. It's physics related attributes will be stored until the actor is unfrozen.
Pause Scene - Store a scene's data for later use.
Pause Game - Everything in the game is frozen. The player needs to touch the screen to resume the game.
My point is that I think this is more complicated than just pausing the game. The GameSalad team is working on this, but a pause behavior didn't make the 0.9.0 launch. Why not? What issues occurred? I'm surprised that there isn't more discussion on this matter.
When pause didn't show up with the last update, I didn't notice a lot of complaining about it. Was that because pause isn't as necessary or is that because there's a feeling of futility in the community?