Lots of Actors, Lots of Rules. Am I out of luck?

ShaneS429

I am working on a basic game right now.

It is a simple 8x8 grid of blocks (64 total), of various colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.

Below the grid is an orb that indicates what color blocks can currently be pressed and it alternates every 3 seconds.

The goal is just to press as many blocks as you can of the correct color and increase your score before the time runs out.

Well today I got a full working level of my game. All the blocks add score, go invisible, randomize new colors, etc when being pressed.

I tried to play the game on my 3GS and it takes about 10-15seconds to load into the game and upon doing a Reset Scene, it has been giving me the loading wheel in the corner for about 15minutes now and still had not reset. I know the reset works because when testing it in the previewer it takes about 2-3 seconds and then resets.

I then went back and removed half the blocks and the reset scene worked on my 3GS after bout 10 seconds and the time went down as I removed blocks.

Does this mean I am out of luck when it comes to my game? Clearly the game will run if I do a 4x4 grid of blocks but that does not make my game fun or challenging in any way.

I have no idea what I can do to cut load/reset times and I think there might not really be a way.

Any ideas?

dmilinovichiii

Nope. To my knowledge there is nothing you can do. Maybe you can use 4x4 except the blocks move around?

Krogothic

I would take a backward approach, does not sound like to many actors, but maybe a problem with the rules / logic, add them actors again and try to remove a few at a time and find the errors.

Or more then likely you will have to make a few changes to stream line it, times, constrains, animations

Not sure how the actor rules are, not sure if they are all physics based I would start there.

Thanks,

Krogothic

RH

It should definitely be able to work. I'd go about it with two prototypes, the orb (with 1 instance) and the coluored actor (with 64 instances) and a one local attributes on the coloured actor to indicate which colour it is.

ShaneS429

RH said:
It should definitely be able to work. I'd go about it with two prototypes, the orb (with 1 instance) and the coluored actor (with 64 instances) and a one local attributes on the coloured actor to indicate which colour it is.

That is exactly how I have it set up. The orb is one prototype and 1 instance. The blocks are all 1 prototype with 64 instances on the screen with essentially the same code on all of them.

In code for my blocks is quite lengthy. It is something along the lines of:

1: Position on the X and Y
2: Randomize a color, change to appropriate color image, and set its state to Active when the game first loads
3: Go through all the rules to check if the block is pressed and if the color of the block matches the color of the orb - Then proceed to give score and change image to an grayed out version.
4: After 1-2 seconds, randomize a new color, change to appropriate image, and Active.
5: Interact with a "Line Bomb" power up
6: Interact with a "Radial Bomb" power up
7: If Time <= 0 Change to a Steel Block and make Inactive.

Each block only has 3 variables: Color (int), Active? (bool), Pressed (int).

Like I said, if I can reduce the total block amount to say sub 30. It will still take 5-8 seconds to load, but the Reset Scene function will actually work. But at 64 blocks, I let it try and reset for an hour and it was still loading.

I only spent a week on this so far but I'd really hate to give up on it.

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Just a side question. How many people use the Pause function vs programming their own pause function? Would this be more efficient?

4:

ShaneS429

Here is a quick video from my phone showing the most recent version running a 3GS. The video starts with me at the GameSalad Game list and picking the game. It's about an 18 second load.

I then play the game for a bit, and you can see it runs fine. I press the pause menu which takes a second to load up, and then hit Restart to trigger the Reset Scene behavior at which point you can see the game unpause and begins to load to reset the scene. It will hang there forever so I just cut the video after 10 seconds to show what I mean.

I know the reset scene works because I have it working when testing on the mac and when testing using 30 or less blocks.

JohnPapiomitis

try taking out the reset scene and replace with a change scene behavior changing to the same scene your on and changing all attributes back to there startign values.

the 60+plus actor will likely cause you prooblems thouh on the 3gs

ShaneS429

JohnPapiomitis said:
try taking out the reset scene and replace with a change scene behavior changing to the same scene your on and changing all attributes back to there startign values.

the 60+plus actor will likely cause you prooblems thouh on the 3gs

I'll give that a shot. I'd only really have to reset maybe 10 values or so and that shouldn't be a big deal.

I just spend an entire week making this so far and I'd hate to just to have to abandon it. I mean it's not an original idea, super nice graphics, or anything but I want to get 1 completed game out there.

tenrdrmer

ShaneS429 said:
I just spend an entire week making this so far and I'd hate to just to have to abandon it. I mean it's not an original idea, super nice graphics, or anything but I want to get 1 completed game out there.

I'm gonna bust your bubble here.

You need to spend a few months working with game salad before you publish an app. You should in fact spend a few months on the single app you publish.

That way of thinking is very irresponsible and likely will only mean you wasted the time you could have been using on a good app when it it sinks into the abyss of failed apps.

Sorry to come down on you here but there is more than enough S*** on the app store. if you know now that your app is sub par then you need to do what is needed to make it at the very minimum par but really should be striving for above par.

The idea that "it's only 99¢ so surly people will buy it" is a load of crap and only makes the Powered by GameSalad splash look even worse for all the other GameSalad developers out there.

ShaneS429

tenrdrmer said:
I'm gonna bust your bubble here.

You need to spend a few months working with game salad before you publish an app. You should in fact spend a few months on the single app you publish.

That way of thinking is very irresponsible and likely will only mean you wasted the time you could have been using on a good app when it it sinks into the abyss of failed apps.

Sorry to come down on you here but there is more than enough S*** on the app store. if you know now that your app is sub par then you need to do what is needed to make it at the very minimum par but really should be striving for above par.

The idea that "it's only 99¢ so surly people will buy it" is a load of crap and only makes the Powered by GameSalad splash look even worse for all the other GameSalad developers out there.

I really think you are biting my head off for nothing. I never said this was a game I planned on a releasing in another day. Game play elements are still being worked on and I am still making this multiple levels with multiple amount of blocks and colors and power up effects. The graphics as they stand are more or less place holders until I really devote time to them and I have been working with gamesalad for a few months.

I would never dream of taking a template and just submitting them to Apple or just making some random, keep the ball in the air, type of game. My next few games are going to be games that are going to be spent months on as a friend is joining my team to help me work on games.

I also never said I was planning to sell this for 99cents to just make a quick buck or because people will think that anyone will buy it because it is "just 99 cents."

I completely understand where you come from and I know what type of people you are talking about, but I am more frustrated about spending any amount of time on a game and find out it can't be done due to something on the more technical side of gamesalad or the iphone device.

Krogothic

Possibility drop it down to 7x7 or 6x6 will also be easier to click the blocks anyways I noticed how much you even missed, also the hud screen looks abit big, you could make the blocks bigger and use some of that area to work with, give it the illusion its bigger then it is. Also add helpful hints screen during the load its something to look at.

jonmulcahy

make sure you have moveable unchecked for all the blocks. loading physics for that many items will murder performance