Questions from newcomer
Hi All,
New to GS and loving it. I have a few questions that I couldn't find the answers to here in the forums.
1. I have two actors of the same type colliding, and they are then destroyed. I created a rule to destroy this actor upon collision, and then spawn a new actor that basically displays "poof". However, since both objects are the same type actor, it displays the poof twice. How can I make it display the "poof" only once?
2. I created 7 actors and have them fall randomly. However, as random goes, sometimes you won't see one actor for quite a while, then all of a sudden you'll see them come a bunch at a time. Is there a way to control the randomness such that there won't be too many gaps of like actors and have it be more consistently random?
3. I created a scene (background) image of 960 x 640. When I drag and drop it into the scene, it doesn't appear to maintain the resolution since the image looks slightly blurry. I looked again at the original image and it is sharp. What would cause this and how can I correct this?
4. I tried to download the demo of high score from here:
http://gamesalad.com/game/3538
But when I click on download project it just loads the project in safari and runs it. Is there another place to download the project from?
5. After creating an actor with an image, is it possible to change the image later on and leave all the attributes and rules alone? if so, how is that done? I noticed my graphics have some flaws and I need to clean them up. Not sure how to replace the actor image with the new image.
6. I've read what I could find here on gravity but I'm still not sure on some things. How does density, friction, restitution, and drag affect the fall rate of an actor? or do they affect it at all? and when I have an actor falling, and I click and drag him to the top, he falls faster the second time down. Why is this and how can I change that?
7. One last thing for now :-) I noticed a slowdown in GS after a while. When I click on the back button for example, it can take a minute or more to load that page. i.e. going from preview back to edit an actor.
I have a macbook pro with plenty of hd space and 4 gb ram. Any thought? or do I just have to exit and restart.
Thanks for all your help,
Roderic
New to GS and loving it. I have a few questions that I couldn't find the answers to here in the forums.
1. I have two actors of the same type colliding, and they are then destroyed. I created a rule to destroy this actor upon collision, and then spawn a new actor that basically displays "poof". However, since both objects are the same type actor, it displays the poof twice. How can I make it display the "poof" only once?
2. I created 7 actors and have them fall randomly. However, as random goes, sometimes you won't see one actor for quite a while, then all of a sudden you'll see them come a bunch at a time. Is there a way to control the randomness such that there won't be too many gaps of like actors and have it be more consistently random?
3. I created a scene (background) image of 960 x 640. When I drag and drop it into the scene, it doesn't appear to maintain the resolution since the image looks slightly blurry. I looked again at the original image and it is sharp. What would cause this and how can I correct this?
4. I tried to download the demo of high score from here:
http://gamesalad.com/game/3538
But when I click on download project it just loads the project in safari and runs it. Is there another place to download the project from?
5. After creating an actor with an image, is it possible to change the image later on and leave all the attributes and rules alone? if so, how is that done? I noticed my graphics have some flaws and I need to clean them up. Not sure how to replace the actor image with the new image.
6. I've read what I could find here on gravity but I'm still not sure on some things. How does density, friction, restitution, and drag affect the fall rate of an actor? or do they affect it at all? and when I have an actor falling, and I click and drag him to the top, he falls faster the second time down. Why is this and how can I change that?
7. One last thing for now :-) I noticed a slowdown in GS after a while. When I click on the back button for example, it can take a minute or more to load that page. i.e. going from preview back to edit an actor.
I have a macbook pro with plenty of hd space and 4 gb ram. Any thought? or do I just have to exit and restart.
Thanks for all your help,
Roderic
Comments
I'll try and tackle a few for you:
4. Right click the download link and do a 'save as'. Then change teh ending of that file to .zip (from (.game) it will then uncompress into a GS file which yiu can open and edit
7. Save and quit reopen often (in fact on your main project save it as a new name each time you get a little progress ie: gamev1.0, gamev1.1 etc) that way if something goes funky yiu have a good copy
... more to come
5. Yes. Create new actors and drag them into the lower left panel .. it will ask you if you want to update the old ones.
.. more to come
1) You can click on one of the actor's, and in the "instance" of that actor, change the rule so it doesn't spawn a "poof" that way, the prototype actor is the only one that will, or just make a new actor that doesn't spawn poof, but not sure how you're setting the scene up so I can better answer your question.
2) How do you have "Random" set up? Is it on a timer: every (x,x) seconds? Random is an issue, and sometimes the same string appears, or the same number under random.
3) Do you have photoshop or a similar type program? Make sure you set your image to 72 dpi, as some images are 300 making them blurry when you drag them into GS.
4) I believe you "right click" download, and pick a name to save the file, then you change it to a .zip, and unzip it, and it should appear as a GS project file.
5) You should be able to just drag and drop another image into an actor if you want to create another actor with the same rules, but different image. BUT, if you have animations, then you need to click on that actor, and change it by opening the actors rules up.
6) Gravity can be enabled in a "scene" or enabled on the actor. I recommend the latter because it's easier if you want to create gravity on single actors like enemies and the player, that way, you don't have to worry about elements, and other things in the game being affected by gravity.
Restitution affects the "bounciness" of the actor, so the higher the number, the more bouncy they are.
Density is just how heavy an actor is, and friction I believe affects how one actor responds when touching another, such as movement etc.
7) Yes, there is a memory leak in GS that has improved, but you still have to shut down and restart GS to purge the memory.
Hope this helps, and apologies if my answers weren't what you were looking for, I typed them up real fast, GL!
No. 3: Make sure your image is set at 72dpi
No. 5: Yes it is possible. Just simply import a new image into game salad, and just drag and drop the new image onto the actor. It won't affect the rules etc.
No.7 : This is a known memory leak with gamesalad and not your computer. It is getting fixed...slowly.....slowly...........slowly.
Hope that helps a bit.
Chobbipod
1. Tshirtbooth, I still don't understand the "make an attribute called game.poof set to 0"
What should I do with this attribute? Keep in mind that there are 2 of the same actor in the scene. So any attribute I give it will be used in both instances.
2. Good suggestion
3. The resolution was set to 300, so I can fix that easy enough.
4. Ok, I got that to work.
5. Thanks, now I understand.
6. I tried this line " self.motion.lin.vol.X to 0 " and it seemed to work sometimes and then not sometimes. Any other suggestions?
Thanks again!
Now, I just need to figure out the double poof issue :-)
Thanks.
Can I maybe send it to you, so you can see what I've done?
Thanks!