Is Gamesalad

jrmatthewsjrmatthews Member Posts: 1
edited November -1 in Miscellaneous
I'm looking for the right tool to make children's books, not games - where young children can read along with pictures and text and maybe touch something on the screen and hear a word or sound. It's wouldn't be a game - really a digital book with some interactivity.

Could anyone tell me if you they Gamesalad is the right tool? Any insights are appreciated

Comments

  • SlickZeroSlickZero Houston, TexasMember, Sous Chef Posts: 2,870
    GameSalad would be ideal for this.
    Warning There was an error rendering this rich post.
  • SparkyidrSparkyidr Member Posts: 2,033
    There is even a story book template in the marketplace.
  • PhoticsPhotics Member Posts: 4,172
    I'm considering adding comic book elements to BOT. Heh... this is a side-project in the app. So if that's one of the secondary and tertiary objectives, GameSalad should be good enough to hand a children's book as the main thing.

    Although, if the book is wordy, like The Unofficial GameSalad Textbook, I don't recommend GameSalad. I thought it would have been cool to make the textbook with GameSalad, to show off the power and versatility of the software. But unfortunately, the text management is insufficient for something like this.

    I had to use Xcode instead.

    AH, OBJECTIVE C... THE HORROR!
  • xyloFUNxyloFUN Member Posts: 1,593
    jrmatthews said:
    I'm looking for the right tool to make children's books, not games - where young children can read along with pictures and text and maybe touch something on the screen and hear a word or sound. It's wouldn't be a game - really a digital book with some interactivity.

    Could anyone tell me if you they Gamesalad is the right tool? Any insights are appreciated

    Hey J R,
    Making apps for children is a lot of fun so if you are looking for a "fast" way to get your book into the app store, GS is the ticket.

    There are other options such as Cocos2D, Corona, xCode plus about a dozen lesser known "pay per app" sites but the first three require a steep learning curve and the other ones charge at every step and therefore I would not recommend them.

    GS offers one more advantage because you'll be able to reuse your iPhone high resolution artwork for the iPad (unless you are willing to redraw everything).
    If this is you first app (and I assume it is) than GS will get you there fastest. If you have scripting coding knowledge, it would be worth looking into different and cheaper options available.

    Good luck with the app and also the sales (i make kids stuff too) :)
  • PhoticsPhotics Member Posts: 4,172
    Heh.... you used the "C" word.

    I don't think I'd use Corona for a book though, unless I was planning to port the book to Android or something like that.

    One of the major advantages to Corona was no splashscreen, but GameSalad recently resolved that problem. Corona is cheaper than GameSalad profession, but it's a lot harder to use.
  • Rob2Rob2 Member Posts: 2,402
    The major advantage of Corona is performance plus a responsive and communicative development team that have redefined the concept of a beta.

    Corona has a great Comic book sdk and Comic Book Authoring Guide, and is far more suited to the heavy lifting that a snappy book requires.

    http://developer.anscamobile.com/code/corona-comics
    http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/eyes-of-the-prophet/id378967777?mt=8

    GS is a fantastic tool and totally capable of doing what you want but I recommend you look at both.
  • mynameisacemynameisace Hull, UKMember Posts: 2,484
    Personally, I have both a pro Gamesalad and Corona license. I almost exclusively use Gamesalad for my game creation and cannot recommend it highly enough to everyone, it is a very very powerful SDK used in the right way.

    BUT... For your case, I would use Corona; I think that it would be better suited to make books, especially if you take a quick look at the comic book centred API's.

    If you want to make interactive books though, I'd use GameSalad, as the ease of adding the interactivity would be a lot easier.

    Ace

    Ace
  • PhoticsPhotics Member Posts: 4,172
    Rob2 said:
    Corona has a great Comic book sdk and Comic Book Authoring Guide, and is far more suited to the heavy lifting that a snappy book requires.

    Not really, GameSalad can do exactly the same thing as that example. Zooming in on an image and swiping is really easy to do with GameSalad.

    Oh... the example uses arrays!!!
    So what?! I don't need it.

    • With scenes, it's easier to do memory management too.
    (Have you actually used the example for a 30 page comic?)
    • For retina display graphics, GameSalad is less tedious.
    • Deleting multiple actors of the same type, GameSalad is easier.
    • Did you try four-way auto-rotation on that comic example? I think GameSalad is much better at auto-rotation support too.

    And with GameSalad, it's simple to add narration. Invisible actors with rules can do the work. Sure, I could fight with Corona to get the features I want, or I could click checkboxes in GameSalad.

    Heh, BOT is coming!
    I think it will raise the standard for the quality of GameSalad games.
  • CodeMonkeyCodeMonkey Head Chef, Member, PRO Posts: 1,803
    http://gamesalad.com/game/1923 Example Children's Interactive Book.
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